By the time I publish this blog post, I'll be well and truly knackered, but also hopefully feeling rather pleased with myself. That's because, while I'm writing this post on Saturday, by the time I publish it, it'll be Sunday evening, and if there's any justice in the world at all I'll have finished the first draft of Crown Thief, my third novel and sequel to the upcoming-from-Angry Robot Giant Thief.
By the way, those last couple of links are to the Amazon pages where you can preorder Giant Thief ... because as of a couple of weeks ago, it's available to pre-order! But hey, let's try and stay on subject here...
Ahem. Right at this minute, I'm maybe 2000 words off finishing Crown Thief. Despite all my doubts and worries on the way here, it feels like it's going to be a good and resounding ending. All of the structural stuff and even the last line is in place, so unless I get hit by lightning - less of a stretch than you'd think after the last few months - it'll be done. Hopefully, I have time for a couple more major drafts before my end of February 2012 deadline.
It's a prospect I'm fairly comfortable with, because somehow, improbably, I seem to have written a sequel I'm mostly happy with. I say improbably because on a personal level this year has been more or less a disaster - or rather, a long series of disasters - and the idea that something worthwhile could have come out of it is a little gobsmacking. Is Crown Thief a better or a worse book for all the craziness that's gone on around it? Has it suffered or gained from being written in more than half a dozen different places, most of them hotel rooms? I have no idea. All I know is, I'm glad to be feeling a little proud of something that's suffered such a difficult gestation.
I already have some ideas of what needs to be done during the second draft - cutting out a few thousand words being fairly high on the list. But in the meantime, my next big job is to make a few small changes to Giant Thief that the Angry Robot guys have identified. Once that's done, there's the slim possibility of a month's break, or the closest thing that we writer types ever get. I'd like to write a short story or two, and to tie up some loose ends on other projects, maybe get the script for the next issue of Endangered Weapon B finished and...
Okay. So, maybe not exactly a break, then.
On a sidenote, and in one of those strange, cosmic moments of perfect timing, I just now got a look at the first cover draft for Giant Thief. Without going into details I can't go into, I'm still giddy from the fact that I get to work with an artist I have huge respect for. And then, on top of that, that he's knocked the ball so far out of the park on this one that it's landed in another park and concussed another metaphorical batter ... well ... it's a good-looking cover, is what I'm saying. And, knowing the artist in question, it's only going to get a whole lot sexier.
Apart from the whole "knackered" thing, then, not a bad weekend all told.
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