Announcing a Savage Generation

It always seems like the really big news you have to sit on forever and a day!  But okay, the cat's now out of the bag: The Bad Neighbour wasn't the only novel I sold to Flame Tree Press last year.  There was a second, and now it has a cover and it's up on their website, so I reckon I'm okay for me to announce it.

The book now known as A Savage Generation has been through rather a lot of titles and iterations since I wrote the first draft the better part of a decade ago.  For a long while it was just Funland, the first novel I wrote full time and the only one I've ever blogged regular progress reports on, what feels like half a lifetime ago.  Then it became War For Funland and sat on the metaphorical shelf for a long time, as the sale of Giant Thief and the need to write its sequels absorbed all my attention.  When I returned to it soon after I packed in the day job for good, it was with another new title, Degenerates, and a good deal more experience.  I wasn't wholly happy with what I found, but there was a ton of stuff that worked - so the only way forward was to tear what I had down to its foundations and build it up again.

Under any other circumstances, I'd feel wary about a novel that had gone through such tumultuous growing pains.  In this case, I genuinely think the result is something I couldn't possibly have written in any other way.  it's a sprawling, complex novel, stuffed with characters and ideas and plot threads, some of which belong to a much younger me, some of which came in later.  Perhaps it's not the most cohesive thing I've ever written, but it has an energy and sprawling ambition that I'm not convinced I could replicate if I just sat down and tried.  Possibly it's even two books by two different versions of me mashed together, but if so, I spent many a month neatening the seams until I was certain the results stayed glued!  In short, it's a crazy goddamn thing, but I'm proud of it, and I've glad it's found the home it has.

And here we are and I haven't said one word on what it's about, so here's the blurb:

Sickness is ravaging America, driving the infected to savagery.

Petty criminal Ben Silensky is determined to get his girlfriend Carlita and son Kyle free of the quarantined city they live in - determined enough to risk a foolhardy crime and then to team up with Carlita's equally desperate cop cousin Nando.  Once they're out, Nando is certain they'll find a safe haven in the prison, White Cliff, where his uncle works.  But unbeknownst to him, White Cliff has already become a survivalist colony named Funland under the management of entrepreneurial convict Plan John.

In Funland itself, guard Doyle Johnson is shocked when his ex-wife abandons his son Austin into his care.  Fearing the vulnerable position he's been placed in, he recruits the help of Katherine Aaronovich, the prison's doctor.  However, Aaronovich's traumatic past has left her with vulnerabilities of her own, along with a radical theory on the nature of the epidemic that will place all their lives in jeopardy.

As the last vestiges of civilisation crumble, Funland may prove to be the safest or the most dangerous of places, depending on who comes out on top - and what can't be held together will inevitably be torn apart.

Oh, and the fact that it ended up under yet another new title?  That's just because Flame Tree weren't thrilled with the previous one.  But hey, I'm happy with what we settled on, and it surely does look cool in bright blood red, smeared across that image, doesn't it?

Full Time, All the Time

Yesterday I left my day job.

Which, considering I'm a contractor and that I'd been there for nearly two years, isn't that big of a deal in and of itself.  The important point is that I did it by choice, that I'd been planning to do it at this point in my life for a very long time, and that I have no plans to look for anything to replace my IT day job with another.

Or, to put it another way, my full time job description for the foreseeable future is "writer".

Obviously there are many ways in which this isn't a sensible or even a very sane thing to do.  We're in the middle of an interminable global recession, the ice caps are melting and punk is almost certainly dead.  Things have been going well for my burgeoning writing career these last couple of years, but with the Angry Robot deal now over, I'd be lying if I said I have much in the way of an income.

Then again, this isn't something I've done lightly.  I've always wanted to be a writer, and I strongly believe that life is too short to spend it not doing the things that are most important to you.  I've been planning for an awfully long time so that one day I'd have the opportunity to do this, and it's become clearer and clearer that I've taken things as far as I can around full time work.  I've completed two novels in the last couple of years, and it's left me hardly any time to do any other writing, let alone have anything as luxurious as a life.  It's been apparent for a long time that something has to give.  And now it has.

What happens now then?  Well, first things first, I'm having a short holiday, while I can still afford such extravagances.  After that, November will be mostly taken up with research, planning and conferencing, which means World Fantasy in Brighton and Thought Bubble in Leeds. Then in December I start my new novel, hopefully get back to the book I drafted before Crown Thief, War For Funland, and perhaps dig into some currently-secret projects that I'm nearly ready to move forward with.

So, hey, full time writing.  It's a thing, all right. 

Deep breath...

All That News I Don't Have

I said when I put up my last post that I didn't have any writing news, and then realised straight away that I actually have loads of writing news.  It's just that none of it is really the kind of stuff that I'd normally blog about.  Still, saying I have no news implies I haven't been up to much, and that's the exact opposite of the truth.  So I thought I might as well set the record straight, even if I was the one who unstraightened it in the first place.

First up, there's the novella that I've been working on since around the start of June, and hope to finish soon.  I've never had much desire to write a novella before, but I had an idea that was too small for a novel and way too big for a short story, and I needed a project to sink my teeth into for a few months, to keep myself busy until ... well, until the massive thing that's happening next month, that I should probably keep quiet about until then, in case I jinx it or something.  Anyway, the novella's currently called Patchwerk, and its best described as ... um ... kind of a Moorcockian multidimensional science-fiction / fantasy thing.  Well, maybe that's not how it's best described, but put it this way, the fact that it has about twenty-five people in it but they're all the same five characters should give you a fair idea of what it's like (and what a gigantic headache it's been to write in places!)

So there's that. And there's the second, as-yet-untitled volume of Endangered Weapon B, which I finished a few days ago and now just need to format ready for winging over to Bob.  It's fun stuff, if I do say so; we find out just why the Professor's been so interested in resurrecting the dead, just about everyone from volume 1 returns, mostly in the most absurd ways possible, and - at the risk of giving away crucial plot points - there's a bloody great, ridiculous fight at the end. Oh, and I get to parody a load more stuff, from John Carter to Bride of Frankenstein to Endangered Weapon itself.  (Thinking about it. mainly that last one.)

Then there's the planning.  Oh so much planning!  I just recently wrapped up a synopsis of what I fervently hope will be my next novel, and that's with my agent John Berlyne right now, waiting on his feedback.  There's my ongoing figuring-out of how to nail down War For Funland, the book I wrote a first draft of between Giant Thief and Crown Thief and would really like to write a second draft of one of these days.  There's the third novel that's at the mostly-in-my-head stage.  There's the new comic series that Bob Molesworth and I are hoping to put together, which I'm sketching out bit by bit, with a view to getting a synopsis together in the next month or two.  There are short story ideas piling up, there's the film script I've been plotting for a couple of years now...

That might sound like a lot, and it probably is, but from my point of view this is no bad thing. For all the love I have for Damasco and his world, one of the hardest aspects of writing Crown Thief and Prince Thief was how much they dominated my writing time, to the exclusion of all else.  I'm always happier with a few different projects on the go, and I'm happiest when those projects are as different from each other as realistically possible.  So, right now, when I have a dozen things in the pipeline and none of them are the least bit similar to each other ... well, that's an okay place to be in.

2012; or, My Damasco Year

At the end of 2011, I wrote about what a tough year it had been on a personal level, what an unexpectedly triumphant year it had been for my writing, and how everything had somehow ended in a weirdly positive place.  So I guess I can't just say the same again this year, right?  No?  Well, okay then.

Anyway, looking back, it feels a lot like stating the obvious.  Any year where you try and write a publishable novel from start to finish around a more-than-full time day job is never going to be easy, and any year where both your first and second novels are released is going to have its moments of pure unadulterated awesomeness.  It's almost impossible to look back at 2012 right now and believe that I managed to cram so much of either into it; that this time twelve months ago I was putting the finishing touches to Crown Thief, waiting for Giant Thief to come out, and getting ready to move to London to start my new job.

Now London is my second home, Giant Thief's release seems an awfully long time ago, even has been out for a while, and all my energy is going into finishing the second draft of Prince Thief and ending a story I started five years ago, with no idea at all of what I was getting myself into.  For me, 2012 has definitely been the year of Easie Damasco, and I'm deeply glad that for every reader who's failed to get on with the despicable reprobate there have been plenty more who've taken him into their hearts.  It's more than he deserves, frankly, but it's still pretty amazing to realise that my books are out there in the world and that Damasco, in however small a way, has broken and entered his way into the minds of complete strangers.  Hard work it may be, but this novel writing lark definitely has its rewards. 

But what's really surprising is all the other stuff that's happened.  I didn't expect to get much else done in 2012, all things considered, and I was reconciled with letting the other strands of my writing - all those many, many strands! - fade into the background for a few months.  What a nice surprise, then, to win my first writing contest, via This is Horror and Spectral Press, and as a result to have my first chapbook published, meaning I ended up with not two but three whole books out in one year.  And how unexpected it was that I managed to get a bit of short fiction out there, and even, just as the year began to expire, to make a few good sales. 

Now I get to look forward to 2013, and to think hard about where I go after Damasco and I finally part ways.  I know I should have at least two new books coming out, in the shape of Prince Thief and, (in some more not-entirely-expected good news), the first Endangered Weapon B trade paperback - not to mention the German edition of Giant Thief and the audiobook of Crown Thief.  But who knows what else might happen?  The same goes for my planned projects; right now, my agenda for the coming year involves finishing Prince Thief and the second volume of Endangered Weapon for the end of March, then writing a science-fiction novella, then writing at least one draft of a new, as-yet-untitled novel while simultaneously rewriting my second book War for Funland more or less from scratch,  plus putting together a short story collection and likely writing a second graphic novel that's been at the drawing board stage for a while now.

But good plans are made to be unplanned, right?  And really, I'm mainly saying this so that I can look back on this post in twelve month's time and feel stupid.  Because, as the bloke from Stingray so famously never said, anything can happen in the next twelve months.

Crown Thief Update: The End of the Beginning of the End is Nigh

Wow, look at that novel word count gadget, huh?  Nearly 91'000 words!  Rounded up, that's damn close to being 91%!  And that's really close to 100%, right?  Which must mean I'm really, really close to finishing!

Orrrrrrr not.

However, unlike with my last book Funland, which overran like a mad thing on a treadmill, I did actually know I was kidding myself this time around.  Truth is, this time it wasn't bad planning to blame but my being far too lazy to do slightly complicated mathematics.  The sad fact is, I couldn't find a wordometer that actually calculated the percentage completed for me - so I figured it would be easier to pretend Crown Thief was going to be a nice round 100'000 words in length and save myself some brain pain.

Which of course begs the question, how close am I to actually finishing?  Or, to put it another way - just how much did I cheat the stats by?  And the answer to that one is ... eight thousand words.  I think.  Assuming, that is, that all four of the remaining chapters stay within my guesstimated per-chapter count of 4500 words, which so far only four out of eighteen chapters have actually done.  But, even taking that into account, it's unlikely I've got more than about twenty two thousand words to go in total.  At my current rate of 6000-ish words a week, that means I should be finishing around the middle of July, a week or two behind my hoped-for end date and nearly two months ahead of my worst case scenario.  Barring disaster, I've about three more weeks of work before I can legitimately type "The End".

Based on the last four months, however, "barring disaster" is like saying "barring the sun coming up in the morning".  Frankly, I'm not entirely sure how I've managed to stay this on target through the bewildering whirlwind of crap that's been swirling since christmas.  I won't go into details here, but let's just say that if anything could go wrong this year it probably has, and if it couldn't it probably did anyway.

So, far I've dropped a week behind the schedule I set out way back in March, and to some extent that was only because a couple of other major projects became too urgent to sideline.  I'm quite proud of this fact.  I'll be really seriously proud if I wrap Crown Thief up for the 8th of July, my current target date.  Of course, it's probably worth pointing out that by "wrap up", I mean, "finish the first draft."  There's still a ton of work, in the form of at least two more drafts, left to do.  Still, I feel fairly good about what I've got down so far, and how close it is to what I intended.  Here's hoping I don't completely screw the pooch in these last (fingers crossed!) three weeks.

Full Time Again, (Not So Deliberately This Time)

Last year, I deliberately took around four months out of fulltime work to write my second novel, (currently running under the title of War For Funland), an endeavour I rattled on about extensively on this here blog and kind of summarised here.  A key point of that summary was that it wasn't entirely an experience I'd choose to repeat.  Writing full time?  Hell yeah!  Writing with the deadline of financial meltdown and permanent unemployment hanging over your head?  Not so much.

Yet, nine months on and here I am again.  In fairness, it wasn't quite so  - or, let's be honest here, remotely - deliberate this time.  Well, such are the vicissitudes of contracting.  Still, I'm determined to make the most of it, and since I just happened to have started a new novel at the beginning of February, it's hard not to see the twitchy finger of fate in all of this.

This time around, I won't be taking my time in getting back to work if I can help it.  My financial raft is somewhat smaller than before, and the sharks will soon be nipping.  Still, I can't help but be a little pleased at the prospect of some consolidated writing time.  Two weeks in and I can already feel parts of my brain coming back online that were driven into deep-freeze by the nine-til-five routine.

I'm also trying to learn a few lessons from last time.  Hammering out wordage like there's no tomorrow just doesn't fit with my writing style.  I like to be able to go over what I've done, revising as I go, and if I can't do that I get very twitchy and assume that everything I've done is rubbish.  So this time, the target per week is 6000 words.  It's not a huge amount, in fact it's not that much more than I was managing around work, and this time around I even have a solid chapter plan ... but hopefully it's the right balance between quality and quantity, and will mean I don't have to sideline other projects like my comics work.  I want to get this one as right as I can get it the first time through, and I don't want to put everything else on hold while I do so.

So ... the current deadline is the end of July at the latest, while the end of June would be absolutely ideal.  If I can get the whole of April to write solidly in then I should be able to make the former; chuck in a bit of May and the latter looks like a realistic possibility.

Why those particular months?  Ah well, that's something that'll have to wait for another post...

It's that Time of Year Again

See that wordometer thingumawhatsit over on the right hand side there?  The one showing a rather depressing 0% of 92'500 words?  Well that's significant, that is.  And what it signifies is that I'm about to kick off work on a new novel.

This may seem a bit of an odd decision, what with last year's effort, Funland, still languishing at the first draft stage.  Well, perhaps it is.  All I can say is that I have my reasons, some of which make plenty of sense and a few of which probably don't.  High on the list in the former category is the fact that after the gruelling battle against all the odds, my own stylistic limitations and common sense that was Funland, I'm sorely in need of a project that will be fun to write, (and hopefully, of course, to read.)  Based on the ideas I have, I think this definitely has the scope to be that book.

But fun or no, there are arbitrary targets to be met!  Because what's a writer without arbitrary targets?  This time around, the deadline is the end of August, which works out at 3000 words a week, give or take a few.  This time, too, I don't have the luxury of three months out of permanent employment.  So that measly 3000 words may not be as easy as it might seem.  Still, since I'm not starting until Tuesday - the first of February, again for reasons mostly capricious! - I only have to get down 2000 words in the first week.  Also, this time around I have a proper chapter plan, which for me is an innovation akin to the discovery of fire or the invention of table tennis.

I will, of course, be posting random updates on how I get on.  And that wordometer?  Expect it to go up some over the next few months.

My First Fantasycon, Part 2: All the Stuff That Is About Trying to Sell My Novel

For Fantasycon this year, I decided to try something a little different.

In fact, I decided to try plenty of different things, I guess - actually attending being the main one - but for this post I'm just going to focus on one, since I covered the rest in the first part (Buying art!  Spending £20 on a book!  Staying in a hotel that had clearly been designed by Stalinists!)

For a variety of reasons, most of them to do with my day job, I ended up going almost directly from finishing my first novel, Giant Thief, to beginning my second, currently known as Funland.  That meant I didn't have much time or energy with which to submit or promote Giant Thief - and the more time passed, the more my enthusiasm waned.  With novel number two out of the way, I knew I had to turn that around, but even when I started tentatively submitting my heart wasn't entirely in the process.

I'd been telling myself for months that if I made it to Fantasycon, one of the justifications for the expense would be trying to sell Giant Thief.  I had a few ideas, but one in particular stood out, something Rafe McGregor had suggested.  Rafe's idea - perhaps influenced by the decidedly unconventional theories of self-promotion ninja J. A. Konrath - was to print up a promotional sampler via a print-on-demand service like Lulu, and to hand that out in place of the leaflets, bookmarks and such that authors tend traditionally to go in for.

Now, before Rafe accuses me of trying to pass the blame for my dumb ideas, it's worth mentioning at this point that I'd completely misremembered the conversation.  In fact, Rafe had been considering the samplers as a method to promote an existing novel, not as an alternative to the traditional submissions process. This, of course, makes far more sense than my version, which possesses very little logic at all.  Unfortunately, by the time Rafe reminded me of this, and pointed out what a potentially terrible idea it was, I'd already decided to go ahead.  I figured that the risk - of alienating publishers by appearing to buck the traditional submissions process - was worth the potential gains.  It wasn't that it seemed like a particularly great idea any more, or that I thought for a second it might lead to a sale.  But thinking about my samplers had done far more to rekindle my passion for Giant Thief than cobbling together synopses and sending out sample chapters had.  For the first time in months, I felt excited about it, and could remember why it had consumed me for the better part of two years.


So, at great expense, and with much screaming and throwing of furniture at Lulu's bewilderingly obtuse cover-designing software, I put my samplers together.  I compiled three chapters, my bio, and a short story - Imaginary Prisons, as published in issue #29 of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction - the latter partly because I was still hanging onto my misremembered version of Rafe's theory, and more rationally, because I thought I might conceivably peak the interest of anthology-only publishers.

The end results, pictured left, weren't exactly mind-blowing, and were a million miles away from what I had in mind, but at least they looked half decent.  I was particularly lucky to discover that Francisco Goya had been decent enough to illustrate an image from my first chapter in his 1818 painting "The Giant".  Unfortunately, neither of us banked on Lulu's deciding to reproduce it approximately thirty-seven shades darker than it had originally appeared, but it still looked just about okay.  I was armed and ready.

Now, it's worth pointing out at this point that I'm not the most naturally gregarious of people, and even if I was, I doubt that attending a conference on my own and then harassing complete strangers with samples of my novel would have been an entirely pleasant or relaxing process.  Despite encouragement and interest from the likes of Alisdair Stuart, Alison Littlewood and Geoff Nelder, the Saturday proved less than productive, and most of the samples I got rid of ended up with friends and acquaintances.  By five o'clock, I was a little despondent, not to say exhausted, and I'd barely shifted one in three of my Giant Thief booklets.

Sunday, however, went a little better.   Perhaps I was still drunk from the previous night - it's physiologically unlikely that I could have sobered up much from four hours sleep - and it definitely helped that the seller's room was much quieter.  Maybe more importantly, I was a little clearer on what I wanted to do ... that being, get rid of samplers, say 'hi' to complete strangers and learn a little about the publishing scene.  With my expectations realigned, I found that I was actually enjoying myself.  The highpoint of the whole experiment came from Nicky Crowther of P S Publishing, who was kind enough to actually be impressed, and to point out that my pamphlets would be much easier to read in bed than normal submissions.

So would I recommend this approach to other writers?  Not hardly.  It was expensive, time consuming, stressful and probably won't be in the least productive -certainly no one's expressed any interest yet, despite me including my contact details not once but twice!  But it did open my eyes to a lot of things that as a writer I can and perhaps have to be doing.  I can see now that it's vital to take the opportunity to talk to publishers - too often the only communication between our two camps is submissions and rejection letters, which gives each side a false impression of the other.  It's no bad thing to look at my work with fresh eyes, and failing that, in a fresh form.  I don't think anyone was grossly offended by my unusual take on submitting, so I guess it's okay to push the envelope a little.

Anyway, thanks for everyone at Fantasycon who encouraged and took interest in my mad endeavour, and especial thanks to the publishers who accepted my samplers.  It would have been a much, much less fun weekend without you.

Now to think of a crazy scheme that actually succeeds in getting Giant Thief published...

Funland (Finally!) Finished

There could have easily been another F-word in that title, because it was a heck of a travail towards the end, but as of a week last Wednesday the first draft of the novel so far known as Funland is in the can.  Not only that, but I'm fairly happy with the final part, which isn't something I really expected to be saying.

So what now?  Now I have a bit of a break, or the closest thing I'm ever likely to allow myself where writing is concerned.  My current plan is to leave the second draft of Funland until the start of next year, and concentrate in the meantime on writing new short fiction, editing the remainder of my steadily shrinking back-catalogue ready for submission, and trying to find a loving home for novel numero uno.  And if all of that doesn't sound amazingly relaxing then you probably haven't spent most of the year slaving over a difficult second novel!

I've already finished one short story (intended for Rogue Blades Entertainment's forthcoming Assassin-themed anthology) and I'm about to start another, so if anyone would be interested in sending me their work for proof-reading and would be willing to do the same in return then now is the time to get in touch.

Some Theories Regarding Monsters, and Other News

A couple of bits of good news to enliven what so far has been a slow and somewhat agonising month on the writing front:

First up, I'm pleased to announce that Encounters magazine, from recent upstart press Black Matrix Publishing, will be including my story Some Theories Regarding the Current Crisis.  Some Theories is a short science-fiction tale, which I wrote a couple of years back for an anthology that (so far as I know) never saw the light of the day.  Since I'm still catching up with myself on the editing and sending stuff out front, that makes it one of the most recent of my stories to appear.  That period of the end of 2007, beginning of 2008 was when it first started to really feel like I was finding my feet, so it's great to see this stuff beginning to get out into the world.

In other, really belated news, I mentioned a while back that my poem Doppelganger - as published in Chiaroscuro webzine - received an honourable mention for anthologist-extraordinaire Ellen Datlow's annual horror best-of anthology in 2008.  What totally passed me by was that my story Rindelstein's Monsters (from the Comet Press Death Panel antho) got a nod too, for the 2009 edition.  Pretty neat that, and I fully intend to actually get into one of this things, by 2027 at the absolute latest.

Finally, if anyone's been paying attention they might have noticed that my novel wordometer doohickey has been mutating.  The good news is, I've finally broken my 100'000 word target; the bad news - you guessed it - is that there's still a ways to go.  Funland is raging out of control, and the focus now is on finishing it before it tries to take over the world or eat my brains.  I'm hopeful for getting it knocked on the head by close of play on Wednesday.  Frankly, if it isn't done by the end of the week then I might just stop.  Endings are overrated, right?

Funland: Weeks Eleven through Thirteen (and Onward...)

So tomorrow I go back to full time work of the non-writing variety, and what I've been referring to in my head as the Funland Experiment will come to an end.  Not quite the end I wanted - that, obviously, would have been getting the novel finished - but not a disastrous one by any means.  The current word count is around the 87'000 mark, and I guesstimate there's another 15'000 or so to go.  I hope I can do that by the end of the month, although I'm by no means sure.  To give some context, I'm typing this in a B & B, since I've moved out of my Newcastle address but can't move into my new flat in Cheltenham until the end of the week.  So there's still plenty to do, even aside from the day job.  Frankly, I'm torn between wanting to wrap Funland up and the urge to put it aside for a little while until I've settled in.  At the moment I'm edging towards getting it finished, but that plan may change quickly depending on how the next few days go.

Inevitably, I'm left to wonder if I did the right thing taking time off to write a novel.  Perhaps equally inevitably, the best answer I can come up with is "yes and no".  In retrospect, the experiment was flawed from the start: writing with the Sword of Damocles of unemployment and dwindling supplies of cash hanging over your head is less than conducive to the creative process.  That's how it seemed at the time, anyway - most writers, professional or no, have worked with the risk of financial ruin at their back, so maybe it don't do as much harm as it seemed to.  It'll be a long while yet before I can look at what I've done with anything approaching objectivity, but there's a fair chance that what I've produced is better than it seemed at the time.

Either way, I don't think this is something I'll try again any time soon.  There are two main reasons: firstly, I think it's going to be well over a year now before I'm ready to start a new novel, and secondly, I came far too close to running out of money and having to hammer my savings.  Getting a new contract took longer than I'd expected, and if I hadn't been relatively lucky it could have taken much, much longer.  On the other hand, I hope that when the smoke's cleared I'll discover I've written something close to what I intended, in a quite solid first draft.  To achieve the same around a day job would have taken a year or more.  And there was something strange and eye-opening about having some sustained time off from work; I think I've gained a little perspective for doing it, and my 'to read' pile is definately much smaller.  I certainly don't regret taking the opportunity - I just don't know if I'll have the nerve to try it a second time.

Funland: Week Ten

Not a great amount to say about last week ... things were going badly, so by Wednesday I decided to go with the backup plan and spent a couple of days trimming what I'd already done of part four and plotting out the remainder.  It wasn't fun or satisfying, but it got me back on track, and I hope to have the section finished off by the end of this week.

The big news now, however, is that I finally have a new contract confirmed, with a pretty solid start date  - the 7th of June.  That means two and half more weeks for Funland, and that around some seriously hurried flat-hunting and packing.  Am I going to get finished?  Not a cat in hell's chance, but I shouldn't be far off, and I'll be suprised if I'm not done by the end of June.  I always figured that if I got to the 80K mark I'd be happy enough to finish up around a day job, and I'm almost there now.  So while it would have been cool to type THE END on the night before I start, I'm still pretty happy with how things are falling out.

Funland: Week Nine

Just a quick'un this week, since I've nothing remotely interesting to say.  I hit my target for last week, although it was a lot like pulling teeth, particularly towards the end.  Even working around checking my e-mail every three minutes for news of the job I'm waiting on I kept up a steady (if painful) 1500 words a day. 

Now, I'm not sure of my next step.  Do I try and push on through to the end of part four, which is looking like being another 10'000 or so words off?  Or, since I have no real deadline, do I go back to the drawing board a little and focus on getting the remainder as right as can be?  The latter seems to make sense, but then I have a feeling it might just be my subconscious urge to skive and prevaricate talking.  Anyway, the two things that occurred to me yesterday are that a) I don't really need to make a decision right now and b) any decision I do make stands a good chance of being changed by a development on the job front. 

So for the moment I'm plodding on as I was, eyes firmly on the tantalisingly close three-quarters point!

Funland: Week Eight

Last week was another no-news week in many ways, I lost three full days in travelling to an interview at the other end of the country (which thankfully the interviewer turned up for this time) and was so knackered from the unaccustomed driving that the last couple of days were hardly productive either.  I did at least reach the crucial three fifths (60'000 words) mark that's been eluding me for so long, finally finishing part three around Saturday lunchtime.

This week, though, things should be seriously looking up again.  I've no more interviews on the horizon, which is potentially awful news from a not-ending-up-sleeping-on-the-streets perspective but really good news for Funland.  Today was the first day in a while that I achieved the magic two thousand words, and you know what?  It felt good.  I see no reason I shouldn't hit 70'000 by the end of this week.  Of course, the devil makes work for rolling stones and all that, so maybe I shouldn't be tempting fate, but it would be nice to return to the kind of productivity I set out with, if only for a little while.

I'd thought about trying to actually write something about the whole novel-writing process this time around, but I suspect I'm too much in the thick of it right now to make any sensible observations.  I still wonder if I've been overambitious trying so many new things and stretching myself in so many directions all at once.  Writing with a big cast is new to me, and writing from multiple third-person perspectives is something I've only tried before on a much smaller scale, (in fact the only time I can think of off the top of my head is in The Painted City, recently published in Andromeda Spaceways).  I've never written anything with such a strong crime element before.  I've written my first proper sex scene - the only other one had a golem as one of the protagonists and probably doesn't count.  I've eschewed chapters in favour of this weird parts system, which may or may not have been a terrible idea.

Perhaps trying to jump just one or two of these hurdles might have been the wiser plan, instead of going for the lot in one go?  Time will tell, I guess.  To anyone facing a similar quandry, I would say that at least I'm learning more and faster than I ever have before, and I have a feeling the risks taken this time around will pay off if and when I get round to a third novel.  Either way, part of the intention for Funland was always to take the chance of being over-ambitious - and at three fifths and counting, it's too late to worry about it now.

Funland: Week Seven

Something of a no news week, which is one of the reasons I'm posting two days after it ended.  Between an interview last Tuesday that I travelled four hundred miles for only to have the interviewer not show and another interview yesterday at the opposite end of the country, I haven't had much time and my head hasn't really been in the novel-writing game.  Getting back into work is now the priority, and the more of Funland I can do around that the better but I can't let myself worry about it.

Taking that into account, I didn't do terribly last week, I'm a hair's breadth off the three fifths mark and the end of part three, and again I'm quite happy with most of what I produced.  But I'm once more behind where I'd hoped to be and worse, I haven't done the planning I'd intended.  So I should be able to get part three finished pretty easily, but whether I can roll on into four is another matter.

All of that said, if I get the job that I actually interviewed for (and for that matter if I don't) I should have ample time to get, at the very least, part four done, and a good chance of getting finished completely.  It would be fantastic to know I had a start date and return to the carefree innocence of last month, when writing really was the only thing I had to think about.  Ah, the halcyon days of four weeks ago...

Funland: Week Six

Wow, is it really week six?  According to the original plan, the revised plan and the revised revised plan, that means I should be past the half way point.  And I am!  Things have gone considerably better than expected at the end of last week, and early yesterday afternoon I broke 55'000 words.  Considering that I lost a couple of days to my interview, (now rescheduled for tomorrow), that puts me about where I should be.  Plus, I have most of part five - though oddly, not part four - planned out.  And I've written some stuff that I don't want to take out back and shoot.  In short, things are reasonably back on track.  If I can hit 60'000 and get part four planned for the end of next week then I'll be a happy bunny.

If I hadn't managed to get things rolling on my own, I think discovering Justin Lee Musk's fanastic blog might well have done it. Justin offers a few timely reminders of why temporarily giving up the day job to write may not have been the stupidest, craziest thing I've ever done, however much it may feel like it on the tough days - and also plenty of much-needed practical advice.

Funland: Week Five

You know last week when I said that I thought things were set to go downhill?  Boy, was I on the money.  Most of this week has been spent wrestling disaster from the grip of success.  It all finally came apart on Wednesday, when I realised that although I was on target, I was so unhappy with what I was doing and where I was going that I was running the risk of derailing the whole project.  It was literally getting to a point where just adding to the mess was making me miserable, and it was clear something drastic was needed.  So I spent Thursday cutting back some of the wastage of the last three days, and Friday doing not a whole lot of anything.

In retrospect, the problem was two-fold.  Part one was just bad planning: I expected that by the two fifths point I'd have a pretty good idea of where things were going and that proved not to be the case.  Worse than that, it was clear that some of the waypoints I had in mind weren't going to work, and some of my initial ideas were starting to look like bad calls.  Although those things looked catastrophic and insurmountable at the start of the week, I'm already starting to see ways round them.

Part two is a little more tricky.  It's been increasingly hard to concentrate with a major interview hanging over me, and until I know which way that goes I have no idea how much time I have left for Funland.  Clearly, if I'm going to be back in work in a couple of weeks then there's no point trying to get it finished, and I'd be better aiming for a point that will be easy to pick up from when the dust has settled.

Am I beating myself up about falling behind schedule?  A little, but not too much.  I'm a lousy planner, so perhaps I did well to get this far; plus, if I'd had a rigid plan I suspect I'd have had to chuck it out by now anyway.  I'm nearly at the half way mark and, thanks to Thursday's cutting, I'm reasonably happy with everything I've got down.  All in all, things could be worse.  So the revised targets are these: by the end of next week, I hope to be at the 50'000 word point, which is where I should have been by tonight.  More importantly, I want to have a clear idea and thorough notes of where the rest of the novel is heading.  Shouldn't be too difficult, right?

We shall see...

Funland: Week Four

I think this past week has been the one I've enjoyed most, and also the one I've worked hardest in.  I was determined to get the weekend off and I had a friend visiting on the Friday afternoon, so in the end I just got my head down and plowed on through.  I finished Friday at just under 2400 words in about five and a half hours, a personal record by quite a considerable margin.

I seem to be dealing better with the problems that have been tripping me up for the first couple of weeks, where I couldn't get my head around how a scene began or where it was going and ended up noodling about on Wikipedia instead of forcing myself to think it through.  Now I just go work on something else and let my hindbrain mull it over - even if I don't know how that goes either it still seems to help.  That said, by Thursday I had so many scenes on the go that I had to get it all mapped out on paper just to make sure I didn't leave anything unfinished!

Sad to say, week four may have been the peak of the project.  I've written all the stuff that I had well planned out, I have an interview scheduled for the week after next and generally need to start thinking seriously about getting back into regular work ...  all in all, I suspect reality is going to start intruding more and more into this odd little interlude.

Anyway, this time next week I should be just past the half way point, which is pretty awesome considering that it feels like I've barely started...

The Living Dead ... the Movie!

I just discovered that the The Living Dead anthology I was in back in 2008 has a trailer.  It's extremely cool - especially the zombie schoolkids. Click here to watch on YouTube.

I also discovered I have a couple more stories out, but since neither is 'officially' out I'll hold off posting the details for a little while.

Now, I really should stop playing on the internet and get back to writing Funland.  36'699 words and counting...

Funland: Week Three

Not much to tell this week; I'm still on target, and even though I'm taking most of Monday off I still have high hopes of hitting 40'000 words by Friday.  I'd say that generally I've enjoyed things this last week more than the last two, I'm starting to shuck off the habits of the day job and write in a pattern that actually suits me.  It's still tough going, but at least I know now that I can do the 2000 a day if I just push myself hard enough.  The biggest problem is still getting going, I worry that my self-discipline is slipping a bit (especially when it comes to getting up in the morning!) and that if it slips too far I may suddenly find myself missing those all-important targets.  So next week's resolution is to get my days back to a more regular pattern, and see if I can't stay away from the internet a little more - well, except for researching obscure facts about American gang culture, that is.