On the first work day of each year I like to spend the day meandering around my office, scratching my arse pondering what the future will bring, or more accurately how I can shape it to deliver the things I like — royalty cheques, big advances, gold plated hovercraft.
It's all bullshit of course, because there is no controlling the future, and increasingly it seems impossible to make out even it's broadest, vaguest outlines. But it is my habit to do this every year, and today was the day.
I'm in the middle of a deadline train wreck right now, with about 15,000 words to write on the first draft of the World War 3.1 manuscript for Audible, a secret television project which I can't talk about, but which will need the equivalent of about two weeks full time concentration, and the final instalment in The Cruel Stars series due at the end of March.
I spent about half of the day wandering around, muttering to myself about how to juggle those three large scale commitments, and then in the second half of the day I attended to some actual paying work on each of them. Just an hour or so, nothing to even get the rusty old wheels of the imaginarium turning again, but enough to remind myself that I do have to put the shoulder to those wheels and give a little push.
It all feels a bit surreal. We managed to secure our boosters a week early by going to a chemist in the city where they didn't ask too many questions. That was then. A friend of ours tried the same thing a few days later and was turned away.
I do wonder how much of today's carefully laid plans will be swept away by this wave or the next of Covid. I saw in a tweet today that Pulp Fiction bookstore had early copies of The Shattered Skies, which was nice.
But it did remind me that the book should have been out twelve months ago. Maybe longer. It was written, but the pandemic delayed everything. On the other hand, I'm glad I didn't try to launch a book in the middle of the worst of it. I know a few people who did that, and it did not go well for them or their publishers.
But it does make me wonder, after a day of carefully planning out what is to come, why I even did that. What was the point?
Well hot diggerdy!!!! That just made my day, and not back at work till next week so this constitutes as legit holiday reading (with requisite martini in hand)
I think the US did hard cover, but the Brits went straight to trade paperback, probably because the publisher was acquired by a bigger publisher last year and they were looking for savings.
Man plans …God laughs . I don’t plan past the dinner menu with any certainty.
Yeah, I'm totally buying a few hardcovers when I come across them. They make great presents for my converts.
Gold plated hovercraft, yes, but can you live in it? I think not. More books please.
Well hot diggerdy!!!! That just made my day, and not back at work till next week so this constitutes as legit holiday reading (with requisite martini in hand)
Wait, what!!!! The Shattered Skies are out already!!!!! (Runs to the virtual bookstore in anticipation)……
Any way to get a signed edition?
I just hope you've made the appropriate scratchings on your calendar for September so as to avoid the Christmas crush.
On another note, why are there not, or when will there be, hardcover copies of TSS?
Actually, turns out the global supply chain crisis strikes again. Hardcovers from the UK arrive March 29 by packet steamer.
I think the US did hard cover, but the Brits went straight to trade paperback, probably because the publisher was acquired by a bigger publisher last year and they were looking for savings.
Thanks guv. Looking to get a hardcover set.