Days Of Labor

For the next few days it’s going to be all about the commission to do the kiddy book. There’s not much time, but it’s not a tremendously taxing job, so it’ll be a busy, but not maddening thing. Of course, the timing is perfect.

Comments from readers are starting to come in on The Pale Summer, and they are about what I expected. I wasn’t looking to get picked on too much for my technique, and I wasn’t. But there are structural problems and now that someone is pointing them out, I’m kind of staring at the manuscript and rolling up my metaphorical sleeves thinking, “Okay, you bastard, you and me we’re gonna’ tango for real now…”

Some of the changes will be painful, but I can see the wisdom in the suggestions. Other suggestions I’m not going to follow through on, as this is all a matter of opinion after all, and that’s the nice thing about being a novelist (Or wannabe) is that this is all really my call. It’s one of the reasons why writing books has such enormous appeal to me is that feeling that this is all your responsibility, and budgetary constraints, studio policy, or even actor’s prerogative aren’t considerations at all.

The plus side of this is I can see this bringing down my word count somewhat, and letting me flesh out some things that had really, really been bugging me. Like I love descriptive passages, but hamstrung myself in a big way for this book to keep it short. Losing entire chunks of narrative will give me the room I need to let some of those sequences breathe a little bit more. On the other hand, there are other chunks of plot that I wrote, had a great deal of fun with, and they’re not badly written at all. However, they aren’t always completely in line with the novel and if I take them out, it’s one of those things that no one will miss if they didn’t know they were there to begin with.

I’m thinking I’ll probably keep them on the side and if the book does well, flesh some of them out and release a short story collection, Interludes of Summer or something like that, kind of as a “bonus DVD” where people can see more of what was going on in the novel that they missed in the first book. At this point, length is still everything. I don’t have the luxury yet of being able to write books with no consideration for size, and so I have to keep my eye on making sure that this one is still in the publisher’s “safety/newbie author range”. The book’s not badly written, which is the first and foremost consideration for anyone looking to publish a new author, but I’m getting pretty sick of size being such a limiting factor and I’m not taking any chances with this one.

So first up, kiddy book. Second up, the reconstructive surgery on The Pale Summer. Third up, mail it (along with The Fiance’s incredible cover) and sit there twiddling my thumbs hoping this time I get a nice Christmas present in the form of a book deal.

Okay, and in the meantime, write Lost In Loveless, the children’s novel. It’s going to be interesting to see whether I find this to be too hard for me to do with my “Horrible People And Intense Scenes Of Violence” sensibilities, or whether I’ll find this a refreshing change from my usual schtick of making people incredibly miserable.

And on that note, it is time for some Turkish food. Mmm… Beef and lamb…