A week off work!
Bliss!
Sheer bliss!
Though before I left my colleagues to a work place without me for a week, (they hid their sadness behind backflipping, high fives and triumphant cheers! Bless their brave fronts!), I was publicly recognised!
My operations manager educated the team about Mr McCrory during a Q and A session and posed the question :
'Jev is not only an excellent guitar player but an accomplished and published writer (his words, not mine!). Three points to anyone who can name the book he wrote?'
I've been working there a while, The Force bless them, but blank faces responded to the question. A friend of mine answered correctly.
Swan Song.
Thanks, Chris Belshaw!
What followed?
'He wrote a book?'
'He's published?'
'He can spell?'
And so on and so forth.
Which leads me beautifully, confidently, to the week I have taken off to edit my SS manuscript (which I think has been more talked up here than The Bible on Jesus' blog!) and make a real confident start on my second book!
Let me tell you people, NOTHING is more liberating than a free week, an empty Word doc and a fridge full of beer!
I fear that my imagination may run rampant so much to the point that my publisher may question my sanity.
I fear that my characters may get themselves involved in such dire straits that my eighty thousand word planned novel may blossom, just so I have the time and space to get them out of said dire straits.
I fear that if my characters decide to labour under the illusion that with every word, they are illuminating the world (like me when I am drunk), this story may read like 'The Alcoholic's Guide To Life And, you know, Stuff.'
I recently re-read my first two chapters for my second book.
It reads like a teenager's fantasy of birds, London, beer, violence and sex.
As I read it back, I'm struggling to see where the downside is!
Kidding! (Sort of)
In all seriousness, I always thought Swan Song was a bitter, brutal, gritty glimpse of life for a London vampire.
I'm thinking now maybe it showed too much heart and that I could have gone further.
Believe me, THIS book.
Will.
Go.
Further.
