Off to Eastercon tomorrow and it's been hectic, with the added bonus of dear old Dad (91) deciding to take the doctors thoughtless advise that he gives up his Meals-on-Wheels food for a week for digestive reasons I shall spare you the details of. Thanks, Doc. And thanks also for not bothering to tell anyone else in his care team, nor me, or suggesting any alternatives for his main hot meal of the day.
Calls to social services, arranged for them to cook for dad at no notice whatsover, and I will shop for extra food. Gosh, how we laughed. Social Services people are wonderful. NHS? Hmmm....
I've been doing loads of reading and prep for the Writer's Workshop my writing group is doing. 3 stories done so far, one left for tonight. I've also been putting together what I'll need for the Dragon's Lair session - the synopsis, opening pages, plus a few prompt cards. The later hopefully helping me remember my snappy, comprehensive answers to the questions I've tried to anticipate coming from the panel. As I'm doing a reading too - first ever, but am trying to remember all the rules for public speaking from a course I did some 20 years ago - I've been rehearsing that too.
I've a couple of ideas to make the pitch more memorable and entertaining, but will only do those if the venue looks appropriate. If you're there, you might see them!
I'm finding this rather hard to believe, but I've just discovered I am a Finalist in the first quarter 2009 WotF competition.
There are 8 finalists, and three will be chosen, so I'm not there yet. nevertheless: Wow! And Woot!
Pounding the mean streets of New Malden last night, I was thinking about why I do what I do when I'm writing a novel, and why it seems to work.
Now I'm on my third book, The Method is reasonably well established, and boils down to this:
1. Do some world design and character development until it's rich enough that you can't bear not to start writing. (1-2 weeks)
2. Write until you feel your ideas, which now feel thin, vacuous and trite, can no longer sustain the narrative. this seems to be about 30,000 words; at my current rate about 10 weeks)
3. Go back to design
a. Make a list of all your characters - including the new ones which have made bids for fame so far - restate their motivations, objectives and outcomes, and make an explicit list of all the scenes they will appear in - adding any scene detail as it occurs.
b. Put together a spreadsheet of all the scenes in sequence, using what you've written as a start, then add all the new scenes in the correct order. Add columns for characters so you can see who is in which scene, and highlight the PoV character if appropriate.
(2-4 weeks)
4. Write the book scene by scene, referring to notes so you don;t miss all the cool detail and dialogue sound bites you thought of along the way.
So I started thinking this is like taking part in a play, and you're trying to understand the story and the characters. First of all someone tells you a bit about it, and you get interested. Then you read the actual script, just enough to get a feel for they style of the dialogue, the setting, and the characters. Third I'm actually in the rehersals, trying to get everything perfect, until finally it's show time.
That's the plan. Let's hope it will be all right on the night.
I'm delighted to announce I've sold my short story 'Fade' to the Catastrophia anthology from PS Publishing
Edited by the multi-talented Allen Ashley, Catastrophia will be will be "a collection of stories loosely themed around the theme of catastrophes, disasters and post-apocalyptic fiction." Publication is expected to be summer 2010.
rock and rolled and a whole load of other stuff too. 2009 (including Christmas 2008) has been a pretty difficult year so far with an ailing father requiring daily care, and my sister loosing her husband in a car crash.
Slowly life is returning to some form of normality, though in terms of caring for dad that will never be as it was and I don't believe he will now ever regain his full health or mobility.
So it goes. He's 91 at the end of this month and as a WW2 glider pilot, has literally been through the wars, surviving some desperate injuries and living with disability ever since. Looking after him can be tough at times, but he deserves much consideration.
One side effect of all this is that I simply do not have the time, nor the energy to keep my leather work going (www.tinb.co.uk) and I have decided to mothball that project indefinitely. I'll still be making a few things for pleasure, and for friends on request, but for the foreseeable future the Traveller in Black business is closed.
Which means that the free time I do have will be devoted to writing. This year the ambition is to write 5,000 words a week (I tried 1,000 words a day but that is just not possible some days), stay focused, and write, write, write.
Many thanks to Terry Edge for the motivation and inspiration to do this!
Well, I've been a good boy and have been keeping the novel and short story submissions going out the door regularly the past few weeks, as well as writing regularly. So far the result has been a rejection from Writers of the Future for a short story, and a rather encouraging one from an agent about my Ace Timewaster novel. It was still a rejection however, and I learned long ago not to consider complimentary rejections as a form of success.
I've also recently decided to revisit my first novel, a more traditional fantasy that did the rounds some years back (Gods, I've just looked, it was 97/98). At one time I really thought I'd made it with this one when it was shortlisted by the Virgin Worlds imprint. The imprint folded a few months later and
as it had thoroughly done the rounds by then I decided to put it to one side and move on. Now i think it would be a good idea to take another look at it, and so have decided to embark on a total rewrite. I'm intending to rewrite from scratch, 130,000 words as it stands now.
Hurrah! I arrived home tonight to find a contract from Hub magazine waiting for me for 'Unplugged', my first short story submission to that market. I've only recently restarted submitting and writing short stories, having spent the past two years or so writing a novel, so it's nice to have some good news so soon.
Hub is a great magazine, Lee Harris and his team work hard to make sure it keeps to its weekly schedule. 67 issues so far, with #68 due out later this week. With around 8,000 subscribers it's my biggest sale in terms of readership, which makes it even more exciting.
John Jarrold has just posted this on his web site:
John Jarrold has concluded a three-book World Rights deal for Scottish-based Finnish SF writer Hannu Rajaniemi. Hannu's debut novel (presently untitled) plus two further books were pre-empted by Simon Spanton of Gollancz for a high five-figure sum, on the basis of one chapter.
"I received this chapter from Hannu by e-mail in the morning (and loved it), mentioned it to Simon when we were talking about other matters, and three hours later I had a very strong pre-empt offer," said John Jarrold.
This is great news, not only for Hannu and John but for everyone like Hannu. It shows these things can still happen and that means one day it might happen to you - or me.
Meanwhile - congratulations, Hannu!
So my novel's been with an agent for three months and the queries I was invited to send have gone unanswered. Although I'm disappointed I'm not too surprised. Agents have clients, clients have books and books are either going into print or need to be presented to publishers. I know I'm somewhere towards the bottom of the list of priorities but you know how it is! For one thing I want to know, one way or another. For another he should jolly well read it anyway because it's really, really good! He'd love it, honest!
It was nice to see my first book review published in Hub magazine - Robert Buettner's 'Orphanage'. I've another one I need to write, and then have Charles Stross's 'Halted State' to follow. Watch this space - or rather Hub's space.
This year I achieved another first - having a single story rejected twice by one magazine. I submitted the story back in October last year, queried early this year to no effect, queried the query and got a rather terse response saying they no longer had the story and I should therefore assume rejection. Author retreats, mildly miffed, only to receive a mailed rejection in August for the same story, using my pre-paid and addressed envelope enclosed with the original submission. Author responds with a gay heart thanking the editors and commenting they must have really hated it to reject it twice, though in fact more than a little disappointed by this behaviour from a pro-rate market.
My next submission is rejected within seven days. Result!
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