Things of the Week 18th March 2016

Well, the past week or so has seen plenty of developments.

Today, some great news for someone other than me: Snowbooks have announced they're reissuing Cate's novella The Bureau Of Them (which I've always said is a brilliant story) along with Mark Morris' Albion Fay, Ray Cluley's Within The Wind, Beneath The Snow, John Llewellyn Probert's The Nine Deaths Of Dr Valentine (to be followed by the sequel, The Hammer Of Dr Valentine) and Gary Fry's Scourge. All good books, and it's great to see them getting another chance (except for Gary Fry's, which is brand new!)

In other news: time ticks away towards the Big Day of the Bestwick-Gardner nuptials. We've sorted the venues for wedding and reception, sent out the invites, even managed to arrange a honeymoon after all! This week, we chose our wedding rings. It's feeling realer all the time as it gets closer. It'll be weird to have a ring; I've never worn one before...

Finally - developments with the crime novel! Tom sent back the MS at the beginning of this week, with more or less the last round of edits and notes. This is pretty much the final draft; in the next few days I'll get his final edit to go through, and then - well, hopefully, the first potential publishers will get to see it in the next week or two.

That's scary, as well, in a way. Up till now it's been 'yay! I have an agent!' and 'yay! I'm preparing my novel to send out to publishers!' Both of these make you feel as though you're getting somewhere - and let's be frank, you are - but without the risk of actually submitting the book and finding out that actually, no, nobody wants it.

Yep. Meet imposter syndrome. An old friend of mine. Well, not exactly friend. More like one of those people you started hanging out with in the '90s and still find yourself in the company of today, even though you have nothing in common any more and all they do is sit around smoking weed.

We all know someone like that, right?

Oh.

Well, anyway. The novel is ready to wing its way out into the wider world (well, a slightly wider world than before) and so the question of 'what's next?' arises. 

Black Mountain is with Tom, so hopefully he'll have some thoughts on that soon. Meanwhile, I'm nearly two-thirds of the way through The Devil's Highway (productivity slightly slowed by those final rewrites.) What comes after that will depend on a host of variables: I have a number of projects to crack along with, things to finish or to start. 

In the meantime, though, I'm going to chill a little this weekend... in between writing more of The Devil's Highway, that is. Anyone interested in being a beta reader, let me know...