Monthly Archives: July 2023

School’s out

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Oliver Hale on Unsplash

You know how last week I said that I could see normality ahead? Well scrap that. It is officially school holidays. And Exhibit B has brought a leaving present home from nursery in the form of a sharp little tummy bug that she’s generously shared with the rest of the family.  

I haven’t mastered school holidays yet. I haven’t had to, not really. Last year was the first time Exhibit A had one, and then my wife was on maternity leave so I could wrangle a bit of time in the cabin.  

This year I have no such get-outs. My wife has not only returned to work, but she’s in a new position, which means she has to be double-diligent – not that she’s ever otherwise. So I have to parent hard, like I’ve never parented before.  

All of which presents me with something of a dilemma. How do I keep up with my writing?  

This is, of course, a problem that has been encountered by a large proportion of the population of the modern world. And to some extent the answer is simple: I don’t. Writing can wait. This blog can wait – though I don’t like to leave you all hanging, if I’m not writing then what do I have to write about anyway?  

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

But I like writing. I like to be moving forwards. Just to… stop… seems somewhat counter. I mean, I’m writing this the day after my sick daughter was up most of the night, and so I can’t honestly say that stopping doesn’t have its charms, but I’ve trained myself to work diligently if not exactly hard. And there’s always the fear that a break will end up lasting forever.  

Anyway, I also have my commercial editing to do, for which I have a job all lined up. The world doesn’t just stop because the schools do. I need to find a way to get back into the Editorum and get the work done. Because the clock is ticking and, contrary to popular opinion, I do actually care about deadlines.  

I’m just not sure how to proceed right now. I mean, like all these things the answer must be dialogue with my wife and perhaps the roping in of some grandparents at some point. But there are only so many favours I can ask.  

Maybe I’m just tired and cranky right now. I’m sure all obstacles, and the courses around them, will be much clearer after a good night’s sleep.  

But I’d welcome any strategies or tips other people have for surviving this, the toughest time of the year.  

Back to the real world

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

Finally it feels like I’m having a normal week.  

No travel, no sickness (at time of writing), no children-mysteriously-off-school. No conventions, although that’s not necessarily a good thing. And, definitely a bad thing, no paying work.  

All of this means I can actually try and recover some normality. It feels like it’s been a long old time since I could just sit at my desktop and recover some of the shattered threads of my social media life and, above all, work. This week – which so far means this morning only – I have been working on Breathing Fire. Having completed my latest pass of Our Kind of Bastard I have taken a step onwards to look at my most recent – and therefore roughest – manuscript.  

It’s a bit early in proceedings, but I actually have some feedback on this one. This is the alpha release – buggy and suffering from inconsistencies – that I’m hoping to get out to my eager horde of beta-readers in a few months time. And yes, my reader has (rightly) pulled me up on various errors. These are, mostly, of the typo-variety so far, which is great as they require little brainpower to fix. They’re also kind of embarrassing, though not nearly as much as the bigger issues are. Consistency with previous novels in the series is a major one. Also whether a certain character is still wearing clogs or not.  

I am, by and large, enjoying this pass. It’s the manuscript I have least familiarity with, and has been written in fits and starts, so I’m surprised it appears on first glance to have held up fairly well. I’m able to pass over it fairly quickly, for the most part. I believe I have commented on my laziness in previous ramblings? Anything that requires little input from me is a good thing.  

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

There are potential bigger issues. Some of the characters are (sort of deliberately) a little abrasive and hard to ‘enjoy’. There is an extended chase scene – and by ‘extended’ I mean it lasts some 60 pages – is this too much? And numerous other ‘artistic’ decisions-cum-mistakes that may well need addressing, many of which have been flagged by Reader A.  

I’m going to hold off on acting on these for a little while – until I’ve got my trusty band of beta readers to tenderly eviscerate the thing. I always like to have at least two people agree on what doesn’t work (and, if I’m lucky, provide a clever solution) before I make big changes.  

I mean, I’m not even halfway through this pass at time of writing. I might get to a certain point and decide that what I originally wrote is patently ridiculous and how on earth could I even conceived of such a notion? One can only put off doing the brain-work for so long, and the sooner you can get to grips with it the more likely it is that your next wave of readers gives you only relatively easily-solvable problems to overcome.  

So work certainly beckons. But, for once, I’m quite happy to swim along and enjoy being pulled by the current.  

Ahead there’s the looming rapids of the fact that, as we stand, there’s no chance of anyone ever reading this pretty-darned-good novel as I can’t sell book one to anyone.  

The short con

Posted on by
Reply

Once again I have thrown aside the shackles of normalcy and gone to my favourite convention: Edge-Lit, back after a four-year absence and in the hands of a new director. I say it’s my favourite – it is, let’s be honest here, the only convention I’ve ever been to other than the Winchester Writing Festival back in 2013, and which, for some reason, I don’t really count.  

This gives me lots to talk about. Why don’t I go to more? What’s so great about Edge-Lit? Should you go a-connin’? And how do you get the most of your experience if you do?  

I am an ambivert: perfectly capable of performing, of being sociable, even introducing myself to strangers… just not always. And the con scene has always seemed like a bit of an in-crowd to this outsider. I had no friends to accompany me, no great knowledge of anyone or anything. I am anxious and nervous and not always best at breaking into new spaces.  

I came across Edge-Lit through – where else? – Twitter. I went as a one-time meeter and Twitter-chatter-to of the lovely Rod Duncan – and because I was feeling good the day I booked. So I went, and I had a lovely time, talking with Rod and through him a miscellany of wonderful people, such as the future founder of Space Cat Press, another person I’m now lucky enough to call a friend.  

And then there was the evening. I still remember lurking alone at the bar, being too shy to talk with anyone, then slowly catching another lonely eye and gradually being drawn into conversation, and then less shyly going to a pub that has become habit and legend…  

Friendships have a way of growing and spreading and spilling over into other walks of life. Because of a few chance acquaintances I made on that first foray, I now play Blood Bowl with a group of editors, publishers and miscellaneous. And it was with these people that I spent much of Saturday night. Social media is a great way of expanding circles, which is, of course, one reason I’m so sad at the turn Twitter has taken.  

I’ve been to Edge-Lit four times now, once as a contributor. Each time has been fantastic, inspirational.  

In a way, I got least out of the visit on this occasion. I had no wares to push, no new publishing deal to amplify. I met possibly the least ‘new’ people this time. I gave out not a single business card or bookmark.  

But I had such a lot of fun, talked with all lovely people, and really feel part of the Edge-Lit community.  

So why don’t I go to more cons? Why not go bigger and harder?  

There are so many answers to this that I really don’t know where to begin. I still feel like an outsider, that’s one. I mean, I do now have friends how are going to FantasyCon, or BristolCon, and it would be lovely to join them. But these are bigger events and I can’t cling to others’ coat-tails all the time, can I? And there are those two old canards, money and time.  

Edge-Lit is not all that expensive, all things considered. Tickets were only £35 – but add in travel and hotel and book-money and beer-money and food-money and… well, it soon adds up. Time is even more of a factor – time and guilt. I have two small children and a long-suffering wife. How can I abandon them for what is, at the end of the day, mostly a jolly?  

Can I recommend cons to you? And how do you get the most out of them? Well, I do believe I’ve written on this before. I love Edge-Lit, but I have no substantial ‘gains’ for the going. It’s not a place to meet agents. Authors, yes, but not agents. If you’re going to try and benefit your career you may well be disappointed. I mean, the pub/bar is a great place to network, to meet people with whom you have much in common, and it’s these occasions that are the most valuable – to me, at least.  

Oh, and there are also panels, workshops and interviews. Good times, Inspiration aplenty.  

Should you go a-connin’? No. You don’t need to. It’s not going to break your career if you miss out.  

But it is a lot of fun. You meet authors, you meet editors, you meet the idiosyncratic and the esoteric.  

I have never had a bad time at Edge-Lit. And I really would like to go to more cons.  

The slow death

Posted on by
Reply
Photo by Kaffeebart on Unsplash

Life is funny. We have our ebbs and our flows, our ups and our downs, and it is important to treat those imposters the same.  

For those that don’t know, I found my publisher on Twitter. A call for submissions came onto my timeline – I forget who or how – but it was close enough, genre-and-wordcount-wise, for me to think ‘hmm, sounds like Night Shift might be up their street’. I sent it off, then nine months later found an acceptance in my inbox.  

Now Twitter, like my career, is dying. And I find this hard to take, for I have made some very good friends on the platform, and have been relying on it for some time to keep me abreast of literary and professional news.  

The reason for its demise is well documented and cruel. People are leaving; not necessarily abandoning the platform, but withdrawing the personal element that made it such a rich place to visit. It’s become corporate (when not fascist) and cold. Like many others I am not planning on deleting my account, but the fun of the place seems be distinctly lacking.  

The problem I have – and many, many others – is that there isn’t a real alternative. Twitter, for all its faults, had become a sort of default forum of news and updates in publishing and literature as a whole, both authoritative and gossip-based. Many people are exodising to other social media sites, such as Mastodon or Bluesky. I myself have set up an account on T2.social (same username, if you happen to be about). The problem is that these sites are fragmentary, selective, and I simply can’t believe that all will survive.

Photo by MARK ADRIANE on Unsplash

So how will we find our information? And, for small creators like myself, how will we tell people of our products? I mean, I’ve always been rubbish at this anyway; but at least I was rubbish in company.  

At least our old print friend, The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, is still about. In a lot of ways this Twitter debacle is proving the short-sightedness of the internet (and TV streaming services – but that’s a rant for another day). And at least I still have this space, my very own blog (which, incidentally, I pay for – not to grumble about that, but don’t get the wrong impression either).  

I just have no way of telling people it exists.  

All a little depressing this week, I’m sorry about that. So let me finish by being a little more upbeat. I have finally opening my first reader of Breathing Fire’s email. I have not gone through the detailed notes, but initial response is that it’s not as apocalyptically devastating as might be thought from what is, after all, a very early draft. I mean, there’s still a huge amount of work to do, and some major areas that need retinkerisation, but it’s not all Doom.

And from ‘not all Doom’ the green shoots of optimism emerge.