Sorry for the lack of blogs, I’ve been deep in the editorial jungle, hacking away with the machete of no remorse. Oh wait, this is the developmental edit – I’ve been adding more than subtracting, as is usual for me! Part of that is recognizing where I the writer take my own knowledge of the setting and pieces of plot info for granted, and forget to share the needful bits with the reader! It is amazing how easy this is to do, until you get a few comments asking you the same thing a few times over!

Now I like to minimally signpost some things in my writing – hints and links to future events or other books, and I keep being asked to be less subtle. So fish in the face it is! (Not really, I don’t think!)

Anyway, it is going well, but will continue to fill my time for the next two weeks.

I do plan on having an ebook sale of The Thief and The Demon soon, to celebrate my gratifyingly positive Kirkus review, appropriately quoted snippets of which shall be added to my book description, when I can get around to it, haha!

So it has been just over a year since I re-launched my blogging efforts in anticipation of my first book coming out. And quite a year it has been. I have learned a great deal. I have not implemented all the lessons I learned. Exhibit one – I didn’t get my next book cover made in advance. That was foolish. Next time, honest. I’m in this lark for the long haul though, so I feel okay with being very incremental in my progress.

One of the great ironies that has been driven home to me in the last few months is my amusing choice to set myself the task of producing a high quality book once a year… after I re-enter the workforce. I had four years off and produced one book. Talk about missed opportunities in that stretch of time! It is what it is. I learned a great deal as I frittered away that time, and hindsight is teaching more with each month that passes. I do laugh at it, to be honest. I’m being more productive now in many ways than I was when I wasn’t working. Deadlines, while taxing and stressful, do get me to actually do the work. And this new process is a deliberate and conscious experiment – I’ve got to see it through, and then assess the final product. Before charging into the next round of writing, drafting and redrafting, ho ho! I think I’ll take some time off after I’m done with this one before starting the next draft. Spoil myself before fixing the next lot of deadlines into the calendar. If it wasn’t fun and so gratifying it really would be the most ludicrous pastime to dedicate yourself to. My pool game is suffering, let me tell you!

I’m also reading Moby-Dick. I started off reading it as an odd Victorian curio, wondering why it is regarded as a classic of American literature, but damn if it doesn’t just keep layering and building, to sections that are really quite sublime, because of what you have got through to get there, and how it all contributes to what comes after. The Try-works (chapter 96) is just astonishing, in my view. I’ll put the link to the chapter here, but I don’t think reading it in isolation does it justice, it’s the work taken by the reader and writer to get there that makes this chapter just a fantastic piece of art to me. And it keeps getting better as it builds towards its climax. I’m now 91% of the way through the book. Don’t tell me what happens at the end! The sense I get is this is a book where the author was just letting it all hang out, his ideas, his style, his structuring, his passions all pushing his envelope and unafraid to do so. Of course I say that with nothing but the impression of this book, I’d need to read his other works to gain a true comparison. But I’ve decided to read Crime and Punishment next! Books that I am glad I did not read before writing The Killer and The Dead, haha!

Lastly, it is amazing to me that given my love of all things gothic musically, that I never discovered Type O Negative until this week. I’d heard of them, but I’d never listened to them. Why, I cannot now imagine, because they hit a bunch of sweet musical spots for me. I started listening to Black No 1 (the full lenth version) on YouTube and just let the channel chose the songs after that – absolutely brilliant stuff, I’ve liked most songs more than the one that came before so far! I’d read about Peter Steele, may he rest in peace, in the past, but never, for some reason listened to his music. I have a sense I have a lot of exploring to do now.

Ok folks, that will do for now. I shall try to get back on schedule soon!