Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

Strange to use this title when for the first time in many weeks I needed more than a sheet to sleep under last night, after noticing that already the days grow shorter, and on my work days I rise in darkness once again. *Looks up dog days* Ha! How accidentally amazing that the official dog days end the day before my August 12^th deadline for beta reading feedback!

Be that as it may, these are my indolent weeks, bereft of the imposed structure granted by the drive to finish my next novel. Now I wait. I have tried to occupy myself with other things, other plans: my outline for the next novel grows ever more labyrinthine, mostly due to questions of genealogy and who did what to whom in the preceding generations directly leading to the current action and how that will affect motivations and interactions. I thought the tale would be straightforward, a good versus an evil, with a righteous triumph (spoiler alert), but as ever, even in the planning stage it becomes muddier than expected.

Having said all that, I will probably have a completed outline by the time this post goes live. A first draft of one, anyway, to be refined. By the time it is finished, if I had kept it interwoven in my first planning/ideas document about the story, I have no doubt it would be 37-44 pages long.

I have thought about writing the blurb for The Slaves and The Djinn, or The Gardener and The Goddess, a title I have warmed to as it is much more related to the core of the story than the older version. Yes there are a lot of letters, but that’s what cover design is there for! Having second thoughts about the title feeds into the focus of the blurb, which would typically at least in some way reflect or build on the title. I suppose I could write two sets of blurbs and see which come out better! Hmm. Not a bad idea, that.

This time next week my feedback shall be complete, and I shall start forging ahead because I do not have time to waste if I want to hit my publication goal for this year. I’m excited to have the return of an overall target: complete final rewrites and additions; and weekly targets to break down and assimilate the collected revision notes into large enough chunks that I’ll be done with the rewrites in 4-6 weeks tops. It will be the 43 problems weeks redux, though I hope to be simply starting with an unfortunately much larger number, and then whittle it down to zero, and have yet another day on which I declare the book done, with much more yet to do. Grammar checks, and then proofing and then formatting and another round of proofing the formatted text will remain to get through before done is truly done. The cud of the book must be chewed and chewed again. How charming. But it is what it is, if you want to do your best, and take some pride in the things you make. The process. The long road.

But before that I have a few more days in the sun. Or in the basement playing pool, you know, whatever works. The Thief and The Demon is currently on kindle sale in the US and UK, until this Friday. The Killer and The Dead is also on sale in the UK now until the 12th , and from the 11th to the 18th in the US.

Enjoy your summer, folks, may the dog days stretch lazily before you (what’s left of them), and be full of mellow enjoyment!