Apparently My Lance Is Free

Well, sort of.

It has to be said that I have not been busier than I have been in the last couple of weeks for a long while. The up side of this is that I am feeling really positive about the work that I am doing. The down side is that no one is, as yet, paying me for my work. But then it has only been about a week that I've engaged in such activity so early days yet.

I guess this does leave me with something of a quandary. I will need some income eventually, after all. The thing is I am finding that I have more energy and do more useful work when I'm not actually, you know, going to work.

I'm finding the removal of the salary safety net has had, paradoxically, the opposite effect than one would expect on my mood and outlook. I just hope that someone would like to retain my services before I have to return to the haven of being someone else's employee.

The other thing that's been really good is that I have met lots of other self-employed people who do a staggering number of different things and meeting these people is far more interesting than going into a work place and meeting people who are employed by the same employer as you. People, on the whole, are usually interesting for one reason or another, but people who are pulling their own weight and going their own way in life are just more interesting in and of themselves, or maybe it's just novelty.

Before I go I should draw your attention to the new link on the top right to my new freelance services page. I hope to expand this with case studies and examples shortly but it is there and available, that is the main thing.

(By the way, hope everyone is getting along with the new look. Let me know.)

The Elias Anomaly

Well, I suppose it had to happen.

Maybe it didn't have to happen, in the strictest sense, but I threatened it enough on the podcast and what-have-you. So I present for your perusal and delight "The Elias Anomaly" on Wattpad. Blurb to follow.

Who is Joseph Elias? 

There wouldn't be much point asking Joseph. When he takes a trip down a glowing tunnel located behind a local department store he discovers not only that he is wrong about a great many things, but also that he has little idea about how to make things right. 

Dulcinea Fernandez thinks she's got Joseph's number, but how much can a Caretaker of Endoverse Inc's gigantic artificial reality theme park, AKA The Cluster, really be expected to know about anything? The answer, unsurprisingly, turns out to be 'not very much at all'. 

There are others who claim to know something about Joseph Elias, the Agent, and Simon Grace of the Department of Sub-Realities, for example. The problem there being their transparent motivations to fulfil darkly mysterious agandas, which essentially reduces their trustworthiness to zero. 

In the end it's up to Joseph and Dulcie to sort out the problems of Joseph's anomalous existence on a journey that will make you question the nature of reality and consciousness all the while not quite being able to get rainbows to render correctly.

This is, obviously, a development of the serial work I was doing last year, but I haven't tied myself to such a punishing schedule for this one. Don't expect weekly updates but I will be getting to the end as it's within view of my current place within the text.

I'm also interested in seeing how Wattpad works with regards to it being a sort of DeviantArt for writers. I am still yet to find anything on there that enthralls me enough to get past the first couple of chapters. I might hope that if you go and check out Elias I might have made that task, for you, just a little simpler.

In Other News

The Bridgetown Tales blog has surpassed 1000 hits this week! Which could provide some explanation of why I have not been posting so much. I have some video reviews to put up but while BT is going so well I want to ride the wave of enthusiasm. Besides which it will be November soon enough.

I have sufficient BT in the bank at this stage to ride out eight weeks of non-productiveness. It sounds a lot but in a couple of other busy weeks I managed to chomp through two of my buffer occasioning this mad scramble to get back on top of things. Running a serial is somewhat exhausting.

I am managing to cram in other activities such as reading books for review, reviewing Starfall for gotchas in preparation for beta and even little bits of other new work here and there. Bridgetown Tales has taken precedence in writing time, however, because it's fun to be writing a serial and also fun to be writing something which is proving to be somewhat popular.

Will try to post a bit more often. Have promised this before. Mean it this time. Honest.

All Worth It?

This morning I have awoken to find that one person that I almost certainly don't know (bought through .com so US or India surely) has bought a copy of The Silent Majority.

Was it worth it? In this world where literally thousands of competing media vie for every available second of every human being's attention, you betcha.

I appreciate the fact that friends and family put up with me doing what I do. I know it's a pain. My wife listens to me read things to her (a stamp of quality she honestly wouldn't bother if they were rubbish) my beta readers provide me with insights and everyone else gives me support and recognition.

In a very real way when someone random buys a copy of one of the books, any of the books, it validates all their effort in tolerating the odd habits of a man who moans about not having enough time to fiddle about with Neverwinter Nights because he's too busy writing a book.

So I guess we all thank you anonymous purchasers of people's novels because otherwise we would all have been wasting our time. One of us slightly more than the rest is all.

At Last!

Please visit the books page to see my wares! 50% of the profits made from sales until Jan 5th will be donated to the Office of Letters and Light, the charity that runs National Novel Writing Month.

Back Matter

Just a quick note of my final and utter completion (bar beta based show stoppers) of the first three books in the Chicago Shadows series. A typographical swoop over vols 2 and 3, the assembly of some front and back matter and the posting of the e-books to Amazon and we're all set for the launch.

I remember reading the words of a literary agent back in 2005/2006 whose one piece of solid advice was: polish, polish, polish. I believed the words back then but with the reservation that going over and over the same Office Suite Document/Text File/Hard copy over and over again would be a route to navel-gazing OCD insanity.

The true answer to this problem, aside from spending money on assistance, is to ensure that you continually change your perspective on the material prior to publication. This is the reason for me to compose in a text editor, edit in Manuscript and read the thing aloud from an e-book before giving it the rubber stamp. Final typographical flourishes take place in the final ODT file. Every fresh pass is a different look at the same material, every polish reveals mistakes that had hidden behind the previous format.

It is not enough to just comb through and through. It won't help, it will just make you blind. You have to find your own way to change your relationship to the finished article.

Also, as my beta readers have testified, my editing in Manuscript became better the more I edited. Editing has become a new skill set, a different type of writing, and I am pleased to have discovered it because it is its own type of creative process.

Not long now, exciting times.

Postcard From Nano

It's November madness, as usual.

I've got really into Taliesin, I was concerned that if it wasn't a pastiche of a cop show the words might not come so easily but 22 days in and the finish line has been crossed. I would dearly love to plug on to the end but I have three books to publish, another to edit and, oh, check the sidebar.

So the remainder of the month must be spent marking up, fixing and finalising CS1. Then it's time for an early December release and time off over Christmas. Time off that will include a bit more blogging. Promise.

Two Down

Pleased this morning to have finished stage 2 editing on Pleasant Rest AKA Chicago Shadows Vol 2. That should be ready for Beta by about the 15th October now, all being well.

Only Street Cleaning to go and we'll be just about ready to rock and roll. Although, November is coming up and that, of course, means all hands on deck for Nano...

Busy, as they say, busy, busy.