Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

Ah, the period after you send off your work and before you receive any feedback is a magical one, filled with dreams and delusions, words like ‘perfect’ and ‘incredible’, the yearned-for fare of the affirmation seeking author. A golden hour stretched out into days or weeks, to be shattered by the first honest critique to land in your inbox. I can’t lie, I love it, and overindulge massively in daydreams of beautiful responses. It happens again, after publication, or after a competition entry, and similarly lasts until the first reviews come in, or the competition ends, all too soon.

There is time enough for brutal reality, and to be honest, I’ve already received feedback, and started making changes, because I knew what I created was not perfect. Might still be incredible—that depends upon the reader! As much as I enjoy the golden hour, I’m not sad for it to end, because I embrace the task of making what I have better, and that is exciting, my friends!

This book has been another series of experiments, in the narrative shape, in the choice of protagonist, in the use of a new outlining technique, in the setting of (for me) harsh deadlines that require me to write and revise quickly. I’m trying to learn, while remaining acutely aware of my deficiencies. An unopened book on grammar sits at my elbow as I type. From the 1990s. I bought it then, it has moved with me several times, and I’ve barely cracked the spine. I think I did once, and the dense dryness of it drove me away, tears in my eyes.

I have written: a new short story is in progress, the first in a series based around a dark harbor. I like it, don’t know what I’ll do with it. It has the feel of a folk tale to me, and I could easily expand it to a dreamy novella, but think I will write a terse version first, and see how it looks once done. I also wrote a 35 minute blurb on how to do an interesting Indiana Jones movie with the hero at 80, just for fun. It wasn’t very good, but sounds like what hit the screens would not be hard to better. Watched Raiders last night. So much gore for a kids movie! Awesome! I totally forgot the bit on the boat.

I have written a few short stories in the past year or so, the plan being to use them as rewards in my mailing list of the future: yes folks, I don’t have one. I have mentioned that marketing and self-promotion are not my strong suit. Now I’m writing this one, with plans for a few more and see how they fill out, I quite like the idea of just producing a book of them, all World Belt related, but I may get a better return keeping them as elusive freebies to the mailing list loyal, whenever that happens. A few tomorrows from now, a few more stories from now.

I also looked at my old novel from many moons ago, thinking to have it copy edited into a basic shape (that boy really did need to read his grammar books), and then I could play with the plot elements, trying to keep it true to my 25 year old vision. But then I read a chapter. So much error. So overwritten. Brutally clichéd and cringeworthy. It’s bad. Like, bad, bad. But beneath the cringe are some interesting bones, and I know I can be pretty surgical with this stuff when chopping, cutting and re-stitching it back together, and hope then it could be brought back to life. The 25 year old’s vision may get stomped on a bit in the process. Sorry buddy, but it sucks right now. And do I have the time? A quick thing becomes a more involved thing with that amount of work, and I wasted a lot of years on it already when I had no clue what I was doing. So I’m debating it, indecisive about taking the plunge, because once I start really going at it I’m going to have to be all in, and do I want that amount of commitment? I’m not sure. So it will probably wait. I’ll finish off The Slaves and The Djinn, outline the next novel, and while doing that, consider if I can do a side hustle on the old book. I have other side hustley book projects waiting for me though. Tricky.

So there you have it folks: I await more feedback, will weigh and collate it, then revise. Until I have received it all I will write a short story or two, and maybe jump into some other projects to pass the time until I must focus, with another deadline, upon TSATD. A mental writerly palate cleanse is probably a good idea—go somewhere else as a writer now so I can come back fresher and a little detached from the new book, all the better to revise cleanly.

Happy July 4^th, my American chums and pals!