Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

I managed not to go see Alien: Romulus a third time this weekend. I did look at the times though. It was still in an Imax near me, I was tempted.

I am a massive fan of The Crow. Saw the 1994 movie four times at the cinema. Odeon in Glasgow. Did not go to see the remake because it looked uninspired in the trailer, had none of the vibe of the original. It appears from reviews and box office that I made the right choice. I’ll wait for streaming on that one.

Bookish update: I have worked on all the goals I set out a couple of weeks ago. I am going to work with the same cover artist as I did for the first two books, but the result of waiting until I was absolutely complete with the text before contacting him means he isn’t available until January. I want to dance with the one that brung me the last two times, so that’s the way it goes. If he has an opening earlier they’ll let me know.

This means that publication won’t happen until next late Jan/early February probably. A year and more ago I would have been disappointed in this because my goal was to work as swiftly as possible whilst maintaining quality of output. Now I’m cool with the wait: it gives me time to look into some new writing theory and see if I find anything useful in it to be applied to the next book, and time of course to outline and possibly begin drafting the next book. I won’t be doing nothing.

I have reached out to the formatter I’ve worked with before too. Yes, I know, nowadays formatting is getting easier and there are programs that do a great job, making it way easier than ever to format your own books. I’m just not there yet. This is the third in a series of linked stand alone novels, and I want the exterior and interiors to be consistent all the way through, as much as I can manage. So I will pay for formatting. Maybe the next book I’ll get adventurous! To the writers out there: what is your formatting strategy nowadays? Any favorite tools? Let me know!

I’m sticking a speculative toe in the waters of audio book production, and am going to have a go at getting The Killer and The Dead narrated. I’m not committing to it yet, it may be I end up with audio files that go unused, but if the result seems to me to be solid enough quality in terms of sound and narration, I may surprise you with an audio book release. And if TKATD can get an audio book, then The Thief and The Demon will surely follow.

Copyright and LCCN: yes, up to speed.

That’s about it. I’ve started drinking no caffeine chai tea in the evening to avoid sleep disturbance. I had such an interesting dream last night, I really should have written it down. It is now a faded ghost in my mind, I can only remember feelings, nothing specific for my mental fingers to hold on to, though I know there was a lot of detail at the time. Sometimes I get a second go through of the same dream, or remember former dreams when inhabiting new ones, so if it does come back I will make notes.

That’s it for today. This blog brought to you by the 1978 opus Long Live Rock’n’Roll.  Well, the first six songs as I wrote it anyway. The last two as I futz about getting it published. Until next week, adieu!