Thursday 2 September 2010

First reviews and lots of travel

Reviews of Lion of Kent at Goodreads are doing good, - it's on track to be one of the highest-rated I've written/co-written. :)

I knew all the research of medieval boar-hunting would pay off...:)

Yesterday I got the galley of "First Blood", which all looks very solid. At this stage, it's all done and dusted, the main issues here are if the paragraphs look good. The galley stage is not really an editing stage, just a checking stage - are the pages in the right order, are the author names spelled right, that sort of thing. At work, when I do the galley, I end up knowing the magazine by heart... and you always, always miss something.

The secret project is moving apace. The lovers are reunited, now they only need to evade the crushing boot of the law. I'm not quite sure how they'll do that (especially since the law is personified by one of the coolest secondary characters... who wouldn't be stupid or do something without a reason). So, yeah, there's a 70-80k novel coming your way. And its first draft is 90-95% done.

I reckon it can all be wrapped up in the next 2 weeks or thereabouts, then needs editing and I need to finish writing the query and synopsis, which tends to take a week. I'll talk about it some more once it's done. There are some world-building details that need to be filled in, mainly some geography and technology.

Work is gearing up to be mad again - how I love the cyclical nature of magazine editorial work. Not. One relatively calm week, then progressively busy, until the last week is all mad dash and no sleep. But on the positive side, the Russian visa application was really quite straightforward.... compared to what they make my British colleagues go through, my application was fast and easy. I may keep that German citizenship - travel is uniformely easier than on a British passport. (And cheaper... I don't have to pay to enter Turkey, for example).

But right after the mad week I'll be in Moscow and help run a conference, which should be fun. And then Chicago in October. Wonder how many hoops they make me jump through to enter the US of A.

So, yeah, a couple big trips before the year's up. I do expect to catch up with my reading while at the airport/in the queues. I reckon I'll take WWII stuff and review stuff with me to Russia.

2 comments:

  1. Oooo. Yay for Secret project. And a big one too. I know someone who can't wait!

    Congrats on all the great Lion reviews. That's awesome.

    :))

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  2. I love that LoK is getting great reviews. As for the secret project, shouldn't there be no secret between friends?...tapping foot.

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