I finished the first-round edits on AFTERLIFE. Now it's winging its way through cyberspace back to Kim, and I can relax. Huzzahs! To celebrate, I started writing the sequel, which I'm calling Afterburn (and hoping nobody gets any ideas about acid indigestion or whatnot). I wrote 200 words. According to my word meter, that's 0% done. Behold!

200 / 70000 words. 0% done!

Is there any? The only thing that springs to mind is Talia Gryphon's godawful Gillian Key series, although Gillian is a Marine in the same sense that I'm a quantum physicist. Surely there're more?

I've got this vague idea for a story in which the protagonist is an ex-soldier now working for the British government's anti-zombie task force, and she's carrying the zombie virus. So eventually she's going to become a zombie, but in the mean time she's struggling to hide the symptoms (like, you know, hair loss, weird bodily odour, craving for raw meat, other stuff that I haven't thought up yet) and continue to work at solving Zombie Related Crimes!

My dad's an ex-soldier so I can go to him for research, but I'm sure there must be UF novels out there already with military heroes and heroines. Romancelandia is full of SEALs and Marines and so forth. I assume there's a level of cross-over somewhere?

I'm deep into the edits on AFTERLIFE now (I know! Time is a-wasting, but they insist on keeping me trapped in this insidious day-job!) and I'm realising a few things.

Firstly, I'm very lucky in that the majority of the edits are format changes. Changing UK spellings to US, for example, or altering punctuation. Quick and simple.

Secondly, it pays to turn in a clean manuscript the first time round. The first draft of AFTERLIFE was about 7k shorter than the finished version, was missing a plot thread or two, and had lots of logical errors. How glad am I that I fixed all that before submitting to Damnation Books? Extremely. Leaving aside the fact that the original draft probably wouldn't have been picked up in the first place, having dealt with all these big issues early means I'm only dealing with little issues now - rephrasing, polishing up sentence structure, etc.

Thirdly, you never know it all. I'm amazed at how many passive sentences Kim Richards (my superstar editor) has picked up in the manuscript. I'm amazed that I didn't notice them myself, as I'm very quick to jump on other people for passive constructions (as laburton could tell you). It's brilliant how much difference tiny little adjustments to a sentence can make to a whole scene, how much stronger they can make your characters' voices.

Fourthly, writing is not all wild parties and cocktails. I mean, don't get me wrong. I feel incredibly lucky to have made such massive leaps forward with my writing career this year. I'm in a place now I didn't think I'd ever get to this time last year, and I can (hopefully) only go forwards from here. But there is a lot of minutiae and nit-picking work that goes into producing a finished book, which I hadn't fully appreciated before. I knew on an intellectual level, but now I know first-hand, and I'm absolutely in awe of the work that goes on that we as readers never see.

Fifthly (sp? Is there such a word? See, you never know it all), you're never finished. As soon as the edits for AFTERLIFE are done, I'll be working on SILVER KISS. Yes, there's lots going on there that I'm not yet at liberty to discuss. I've got to put together a blurb and an author bio before anything else, and there will soon be edits, marketing, and promotions galore to deal with. That's before I even think about any forthcoming edits for MOTHS, writing the sequel to AFTERLIFE, not to mention writing the sequels to SILVER KISS. Seriously.

But I love it.

I'm back at work after my glorious, fun-filled, productive, Baileys-soaked week off. Sigh. I got loads done last week. I finished rewriting Wild and emailed it to an interested editor (fingers crossed, but shall not think about that too much). I made a start on the synopsis so I can sub it elsewhere too. I got cracking on the edits for AFTERLIFE. I had a short story accepted for an upcoming QueeredFiction anthology (okay, that wasn't exactly me being productive as all I had to do was read the email saying it had been accepted, but it counts, dammit). I went to a few local bookshops to ask about getting AFTERLIFE in stock, and now have some people to call regarding that.

I also managed to be fairly social - visited my parents and my grandparents, and spent Thursday night getting utterly and complete drunk with Kyle and chaostheory , which was fun and necessary.

All of which just reminded me once more that I want to be a full-time writer. Soon. (Not the family-visiting and the drinking. That was awesome, but doesn't contribute to my writing scheme). So yeah, back at work today, already missing the carefree days of yore when I could stay up until 5am playing Super Mario 3 and then sleep in until 12 noon and spend the day watching reruns of Mock the Week and Come Dine With Me write all day. I have hypernostalgia for last week.

I've seen the concept cover art for SILVER KISS! I can't share it yet, but it is gorgeous!

QueeredFiction have accepted my short story, Moths, for their Queer Gothic anthology. Yay! I'm so excited - I really wasn't sure about this story when I submitted it, so it's nice to be validated, lol.

Now I am going to crawl into a corner and rock back and forth whilst my brain recovers.

Because I am off work all week, mwhahaha, and because I got my AFTERLIFE badges this morning, I bring you a daily dose of said AFTERLIFE. Enjoy!

 

( Snikt! )

And if you'd like an AFTERLIFE badge, and maybe some other junk too, let me know! I'm happy to send them out to people coz I've got absolutely loads :)
 

Most of my AFTERLIFE promo gear has arrived now, barring one thing (damn you, Royal Mail, damn you and your strikes!), so now I'm trying to organise some fun stuff to do with it all. I will be having a big giveaway here when AFTERLIFE is released (only 26 days by my count), so stay tuned for that. I'll also be having some guest bloggers here during December, which I'm excited about because OMG Real! Live! Authors!

And I'm also trying to organise a bit of a partay here in Cambridge. Really just so I can say "yay, published! Life goal achieved, can die now thnx" and everyone can say "huzzah!" and buy me drinks.

Somewhere in the middle of all this organisation (I am not organised. Really. You should see my desks at home. I have three. None of them are used for working at ), I'll be doing the edits for AFTERLIFE and plotting the sequel, tentatively called Halflife at the moment. I'm pretty excited about starting it - I plan to throw in mad monks, paranormal investigators, journalists, and possibly more cocktails and jazz bars.

This is a slightly longer snippet, just because it's one of my favourite scenes, featuring one of my favourite characters - Nicomedes.

 

( Pulped eyeballs ahoy! )