Yes, yes, I know. It's been a while. Screw you.
(No, just kidding. I get it. I'm supposed to be a writer, so I need to be here writing, right?)
The truth is that it's been about 18 months since I last posted. Where is that post now, you ask? Well, unfortunately I had to take it down again. (Long story, which maybe I'll write about sometime.) But the gist is that sometimes things happen and then sometimes they un-happen and that's fine. It's part of being a writer. It's part of publishing. But when these things occur you kinda want to take a step back and just focus on the nuts and bolts of things, rather than chatting about it. (Although I *do* chat about it on Twitter, so that's clearly a terrible excuse.)
The main thing is that while writing is hard... and gosh it's HARD sometimes!... if you're working towards a goal, you just have to keep working towards it, even if that goal disappears or turns into a freaking huge tentacled beast and tries to eat you. Sometimes it might seem within reach and you can see the sunlight glinting off it, but sometimes the sunlight simply serves to distract you from the anvil that's about to fall on your head.
Recently we've had a lot of anvils. You might have seen them in the news. It's difficult to do too many writing things when there is an anvil storm. You want to be a published author? I wrote a piece a while ago now about embracing rejection and it's still true today. Yet it's not just rejection. You have to accept the anvils too. And the double-edged sword of hope, which half the time keeps you going, but also it's the hope that'll break you into tiny little pieces.
ANYWAY, I've learned over the years that part of the process is learning to get up again and keep going. That success lies in resisting the shit and persevering anyway. And, hoo-boy when you get one of those success thingies it turns out to be totally worth the wait!
Yes, that's me! I got a book deal!
So after I posted and then un-posted my last blog post 18 month ago, I went away and decided to work on a new book - an adaptation of a screenplay I wrote a while back. It was the kind of thing I always wanted to write as a kid, all very Indiana Jones, but with monsters and other worlds and stuff. And my agent, the brilliant Sara Megibow, only went and loved it. And then she took it to WorldCon in Dublin (I went too and it was brilliant fun) where she mentioned it to the magnificent Eleanor Teasdale at Angry Robot books, and Eleanor asked to read it, and loved it too, and then a month or two later we got an offer!!
So here we are. It's been a bit of a fun couple of months, that also included going down to London to have lunch with Eleanor and chat about all things books, as well as being invited to be on the Angry Robot podcast with Eleanor and Sara to talk about NaNoWriMo where my book title was revealed - Captain Moxley and the Embers of the Empire!
And if that wasn't enough, I've been seeing cover sketches by superb artist Dan Strange for my book on the quiet (IT IS AMAZING, I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO SEE IT), plus my book has since appeared for pre-order in all good bookshops (with a super-cool temporary cover) around the world:
Oh and also a couple of friends (Kathryn Alton and Anna) and I decided to set up a thing called the OcTBR Challenge - all about tackling your TBR piles of books for a whole month - and that went really well, so that was fun too and took up a lot of my October.
And I suppose I should mention that I also transitioned away from freelance copywriting to doing full-time fiction editing! So send me all your manuscripts!
Okay, that's about it. Not bad for what seemed like a quiet 18 months away from the blog, eh? However, yes, you're right, I need to do better. I will be back soon with more news, talking crap, interviews, and further updates. I promise. :)
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