I finished the massive revision of my next novel over the weekend and sent it off to my agent yesterday. Now maybe I can go back to some kind of normal schedule (one that involves more than three hours’ sleep a day) and actually do some useful things around the house. My wife deserves some kind of medal. Mo’s been running interference between me and the world whhile I dig through this mountain. But I’m through and the book is off.
I get anxious about these things. Bitter experience (largely of my own devising, I hasten to add) has taught me that having a book out is no guarantee of someone buying the next one. I’m afraid that despte being a fairly different person from what I was when I was publishing more regularly Lo These Many Years Ago, and despite clearly having a much-improved approach to publishing (and to the world in general), I still drag my past around like a boat anchor.
This is the first time I can recall being able to be anxious/eager/impatient about waiting for a book to be published at the same time I’m anxious/eager/imaptient about a book I’ve sent off.
It’s actually kind of fun.
New novel? That sounds awesome. I kept up with your news site and have to ask, is it another long awaited sequel?
Also, I would have loved for skipp and spector to have asked you for a new short story. I loved LPD’s (that’s the book that turned me onto looking for your books), I really think your story was one of the best in the BOTD and would have loved to have read another take of that undead world. Well I can’t wait to get Elegy Beach and I’m about to reread Ariel (1st time I bought it was the online edition and MS Reader crapped out on me so I was never able to finish it). Keep it up.
Nope, not a sequel! This thing is like nothing else I’ve published. At the same time it’s a distillation of themes and styles that run throughout my work. If that makes sense.
Skipp & Spector haven’t worked together in many years. Truth is I was delighted when John Skipp asked to reprint “”Like Pavlov’s Dogs” because I’ve always been fond of that novella, and because there was no way in hell I’d have time to write a new one. And to be honest I’m not that interested in writing anything about zombies (a word I didn’t use once in the novella, btw) right now. Like vampires, everybody and his sister is writing about them. Been there, done that, wrote the manual. 🙂
I’m delighted you’re rereading ARIEL! If you’ve followed it this closely, I think you’ll have fun with the footnoted Afterword. And I certainly hope you like ELEGY BEACH.