So the first draft of Power, my latest bit of novelling, is with an editor I picked at random from the internet. It’s a horrible feeling, waiting for a verdict on whether someone else (particularly a complete stranger) thinks a project is worth your money and their time. Hence, blogging. It’s a distraction and keeps the writer muscles from atrophying.
I had so much fun writing that first draft. Unexpected twists and turns took the story in all sorts of different directions and introduced characters with whom it was a pleasure to work. I was riding high on it for a couple of months, but now it’s been two weeks of waiting for a report and confidence is low. Ah, the rollercoaster of authorship.
This is my sixth novel. Number one – Maneater – was published in the US in 1993. You can find it on Amazon but be warned, it’s filth. Numbers two and three were abandoned at around draft three, due to lack of confidence and an agent who kept trying to shoehorn me into a box that fitted a particular publisher. Numbers four and five are at second draft stage and will become my next projects once Power is finished. (Assuming it isn’t bottom-drawered because the editor doesn’t rate it, in which case anyone reading this blog will be hearing all about Wasted and Trashed instead.)
A return to novelling this late in life is, I confess, a bit of a mid-life crisis. At 50-something, it would be easy to coast downhill towards retirement, keeping busy with the beloved, paid employment, climate activism, the dog, the chickens, the renovation of our home that will now have to be squeezed in between drafts. But my mother died last year. She wasn’t very old, and it smacked me in the face with the fact of mortality as well as loss. So, a return to novelling. And a bash at self-publishing. I haven’t the time or will to woo another agent, then a publisher. But I do have time to woo you, dear reader; with you I hope to form a warm and lasting relationship.
To this end I will be strewing petals in the form of free short stories, excerpts from works in progress, and special BOGOF deals. OK, not the BOGOF deals, but you get the idea. Content, people, content.
And in due course, all being well, Power will be published online, with a limited-edition print run for those who like an actual book in their hands.
If not you, who? If not now, when? – Howard Johns, Energy Revolution
Sophie Galleymore Bird 