So That's Good, I Guess!

As a writer, it's been an exciting week.  Lots of back and forth with the publisher, got to see the cover art for Quite Contrary (I wish I felt like I could post these covers here), they're making audiobooks for Sweet Dreams and Wild Children.  This all just blows me away.  It's more interest expressed in my work than probably my whole previous life together.  Multiple (routine) doctor's visits and home repair have filled all moments in between, and physically and emotionally I'm wiped.

The writing upshot is that Metal, Candy, Flesh is going to have to go on hold.  I wrote exactly one chapter and learned a lot about what the book will be, but for the first time in a long time I have professional obligations.  Curiosity Quills wants a Wild Children story for publicity purposes.  No problem there - I've got a story in mind already, although of course it'll take a few weeks to write.  After that, they've asked me to write a book, and having someone come and ask you 'Please write Book X' is a weird experience.  It's seeming more likely by the minute that I will.  I'm not sure, but until I do know I can't dive into Metal, Candy, Flesh.

Wild Children Is Out!

Let it be known that on this day, 12/12/12, I am back in the novel selling business!  Wild Children is out, published by Curiosity Quills, and for those who want a copy here is their web page with links to order, or the US Amazon page if you want to skip straight to that.  The process has been one disaster after another as my cursed luck tried to stop me from being published, but victory is mine at last.  I want to thank my publisher Curiosity Quills, in fact.  They soldiered on despite multiple hospitalizations, real life threatening stuff.  Right now only the ereader version is out, but they do paper copies so that should be on the way.  Heck, I've seen the interior .pdfs and this book is SO GORGEOUS.

Oh, and they set up a Facebook author page for me!  It will be a mix of theirs and mine.  We're getting me linked up as one of its administrators right now.

A New Doll House Story

So, I've been hard at work doing Authory Stuff, which is basically writing.  I just finished another Doll House story, Doll House: Amethyst, which I will link to below this paragraph!  As far as I know, Curiosity Quills only wants my books, but I'll run it past them before publishing it online.  A short story gave me a nice break between books, clearing my head enough that I will likely do the major edits on Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain next.  My 'ol buddy Albert Berg said he thinks the later fights need to be more tense, and he's right, so I gotta fix that.  You can't be good at something if you're not willing to do it right.

For your enjoyment: The draft version of Doll House: Amethyst.

On a side note, I finally changed my blog photo.  If current publishing dates hold, I may soon be selling enough books to matter.  While I was absolutely a nobody, random internet art was fine.  I can't use art I don't own if it's even kinda helping make money.  It might be illegal, and it's for damn sure rude.  Fortunately, I have old cover art that I legally own to take samples from!

And That's #4!

Ladies and gentlemen and mysterious future beings who will read this blog to learn what an unsavory person their favorite author is, I finished the book!  Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain is written!  I just shopped the manuscript around to a bunch of friends of various levels of friendliness.  What they do and don't like will be very instructive, here.  I'm far less confident that this book is any good than I have been with others.  I wanted to write a light-hearted, gentle book, and this is as pleasant as I can get.  The problem is, I don't know if I have the skills to write a gripping narrative that doesn't involve misery and death!

Soon, I shall know if the book is any good.  After that, once my head is clear I'll need to do a proofreading run on my own - tying up loose ends, making sure references from the end of the book match the beginning, tightening language, correcting typos, all that sort of jazz.  Then, unless I've learned it's an utter failure, I offer it to my publisher and see if they're interested!

Presumably I'll be writing other things some time in the interim.  I'd like to do some short stories, but I'll have to see how fast Metal, Candy, Flesh takes over my brain.  I'm still reeling and it hasn't entirely penetrated this book is finished, so I can't predict.

Oh, and I wrote the last twelve thousand words in one day.  THAT was CRAZY.

So Close

Moments ago I finished writing the second to last chapter of Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain.  One left.  It will be a big chapter and may be broken up into multiples later, but structurally it makes sense to write it as one.

I hope my sanity holds up.  I get very obsessive and impatient this close to the end.  That resulted in the last chapter of Quite Contrary being very sub-par and needing to be rewritten entirely.  I do not intend for that to happen again.

Soon, book four will be complete, and I'll shop around copies to my writer friends to find out if it's any good.

And Then It Did

Good news!  Verity is out of the hospital and on track for a full recovery.  We finished up the editing on Wild Children.  I am now officially done with my responsibilities for all three books, and publishing can move ahead!  I can also clear my head of those books and focus on writing new ones.

Apropos of nothing, here are three quotes I really like:

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

"When you stand before me and look at me, what do you know of the pain in me, and what I do I know of yours? And if I threw myself to the ground before you and cried and told you, what would you know more of me than of hell, if somebody told you that it is hot and terrible? For that reason alone we humans should should face each other so reverent, so thoughtful, so loving as if facing the gates of hell." - Franz Kafka

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. - C. S. Lewis

Well, That Didn't Happen

TOPIC #1

Okay, so I've been engaging in one of mankind's most predictable stupidities, holding off on anything else until the great project in front of me is over.  That was book editing, and the editing of Wild Children dragged on and on, and I am only free now because it has been semi-sorta-canceled.  My editor is in the hospital again, and this time it's serious and I am crossing my fingers for her, even the evil fingers.  I hope everyone else will, too.

TOPIC #2

Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain has actually continued apace during this entire process.  I think I just finished chapter 14?  The problem there is that I can't post the WHOLE book online if I intend to get it published.  I've reached the point where I reluctantly decided I should stop putting chapters on my blog.

TOPIC #3

I think I need a nap.