I’m happy to say that this week I’m busily doing edits on my dark Fantasy novel, The Witch’s Boy. I should have the edits finished by the end of the week, which is one step closer to the book being released in a new edition by Lethe Press, hopefully before the end of this year 
I should probably take the chance to say that it’s not a Fantasy in the sense of being a m/m Romance in a fantasy setting – it’s a Fantasy in the sense of being a story set in a fantasy world without much in the way of romance at all. Having re-read it, though, I find I’m tempted to follow up Sulien’s healing in this book by maybe writing a novella where he’s well enough (psychologically) to venture on a relationship. It would be a little like fanficcing myself though!
On other good news, I finally watched the BBC’s new Sherlock Holmes fanfiction series, Sherlock, and thought it was great. I loved Holmes describing himself as “a high functioning sociopath,” because it’s very like him to know. I’ve never slashed Holmes and Watson, because my preference is for a Holmes who is asexual and completely absorbed in his work, so “I’m sorry, John, but I’m married to my job,” was a squee-worthy moment for me. (Particularly when combined with the social ineptness with which he read that situation entirely wrong.) Watson is a little dull, but then he’s the sort of character whose qualities take a while to become apparent, so that’s only to be expected at the moment. I’ll definitely be following that series in future, and it’s nice to have something to look forward to on the TV again.
Charlie Cochrane pointed this out to me, as she just got one of those “if you bought this, you might like that” emails from Amazon today. Amazon apparently thinks that she might like to pre-order Captain’s Surrender (2nd edition) at a special bargain price:
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated Eye of the Storm (Royal Navy, Book 3) by Lee Rowan have also purchased Captain’s Surrender by Alex Beecroft. For this reason, you might like to know that Captain’s Surrender will be released on August 3, 2010. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $4.55 by following the link below.
I’m not sure what it means by “a savings of $4.55″ – whether it means the book costs $4.55, or that they’ve taken $4.55 off the price. But either way it sounds like a good deal, if you happened to want a copy of the new edition in print.
and I’m still rolling along!
Or at least, I’m celebrating having passed the 90,000 word mark on UtH. Admittedly it’s only 60% done, but things have started rolling a little and developing some momentum, and I’m feeling positive about it again. I’m also getting things clearer in my mind for what needs to be changed in the next edit.
On other positive news, I started a diet and gym routine a fortnight ago and have so far lost half a stone. I clearly had it to spare, because none of my clothes feel any looser yet, and I don’t seem to look any different. The aim there is to eventually get back down to a UK dress size 14. Even when I was 30, super fit and solid muscle I never got below a 12, and that was on 1,300 calories a day for two years. So I don’t think I’m cut out to ever be skinny. I’d like to be fitter again, though, and it can’t be too late for that yet.
What I’ve realized, now that the shoulder pain has mostly gone away, is how much it affected my mood and my mental state. I wonder now why I thought I should be able to carry on as normal, when it was hard to move during the day or to sleep at night. Maybe a lot of my depression and writer’s block over the past year was due to constant sleeplessness and pain? In which case, I should make the most of the current painlessness while it lasts, because as Oxymandias’ advisers said, “This too shall pass.”
Guess whose author copies of the print second edition of Captain’s Surrender have arrived? Hee! And in a spectacular coincidence they arrived just three days after I’d ordered ten copies to take to the Ely meet-up. (Leading me to think that Samhain had been super efficient. Probably more efficient than is humanly possible.) However, silly me! These are my author’s copies according to my contract. Which is even better, because it means I don’ t have to pay for them
And the books are lovely! Oh, it’s so, so nice to see them with the new cover – to know I can let people take them off the shelf and not feel that I ought to explain that the cover gives a false impression of what people will find inside. Don’t get me wrong – I was over the moon when Linden Bay published it first, and I’m always going to be grateful to them, but the cover was a tiny bit of grit in my oyster, and now the second edition has turned the grit into a pearl.
As is the way with book covers, it looks even better in real life than it does on the screen. But unfortunately I can’t prove that with a photo that you’ll only have to view on the screen anyway. It won’t stop me trying, though
it may be a sign that you’re not.
I was discussing this with Mirien the other day, both of us observing that we’d known some really poor writers who were convinced they were geniuses, and some really wonderful writers who needed to be encouraged every step of the way, and were always on the verge of giving up, because they thought they were rubbish.
Nathan Bransford is discussing this phenomenon on his blog today: You tell me – why is it so hard to tell if our writing is good? And one of the commenters there suggested something I’d never heard of before
The Dunning-Kruger effect
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the perverse situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.
(Copied from Wikipedia)
I would have said that the unskilled don’t know what mistakes they’re making, and therefore think that they aren’t making any. As a writer (or other craftsperson) becomes more knowledgeable, they begin to understand all the places where they could be getting it wrong, and to sense all the places where they could be getting it more right if only they were better writers than they currently are. Therefore, it’s the people who know something about what they’re doing, who will be convinced that they’re doing it badly.
The only cure for this affliction, I guess, is to carry on doing it regardless, becoming more and more aware of how badly you’re failing to reach perfection, until eventually you give up (whatever artistic endeavor it is) altogether, kill yourself, or become resigned to creating (what you see as) substandard work. I don’t know whether there’s a happy ending to this one!
Which is a bit of a bummer as I don’t really like Stephen King’s books. (Too modern for me.)
Clearly Ely is the cultural centre of the UK, because not only does it host photoshoots in the tearooms and the m/m meet happening here in September, but this weekend was the Ely folk festival.
Despite a lot of improvement in my shoulders, I’m still not up to dancing yet, so I went along as one of the Riot’s musicians, and now sport a lovely bruise in the crook of my elbow from a full weekend of bodhran playing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Much to my surprise, about a month ago the editor of Out magazine contacted me to say “how do you fancy doing an interview? We’d send someone over to talk to you. And can you find us some other female authors of m/m fiction who could come along too?”
After being duly gobsmacked and panicking about what a stylish New York reporter would think of the state of my house, I emailed the authors in the UK I knew about, and asked whether they’d like to come and be interviewed too. Whereupon Out emailed me back saying “actually, we only want one.”
Which is how come (to cut a long story and three days of frantic cleaning short) last Thursday Erastes and I were interviewed for Out magazine by Cintra Wilson. If I had only had the sense to Google her, I would have been even more intimidated than I was, but (perhaps fortunately) I didn’t have the sense, so I didn’t know I was being interviewed by a doyenne of popular culture in New York, and I was only mildly and generally intimidated by the thought that here was someone of much greater sophistication than my own. Read the rest of this entry »
July 9th,2010
Life |
1 Comment
LOL! I got the entire contents of this post into the subject line But yes, after a day spent entirely on getting Rose ready for her Prom, and finally waving her off about a half hour ago, it’s just marvellous to come home to such a wonderful review as this:
All in all, Beecroft delivers a romance that is complicated, emotionally satisfying, and thoroughly compelling. I’m fairly certain that Shining in the Sun is her first foray into contemporary romance, but I have to say that I’m very much hoping it’s not her last.
From Katie Mack at All About Romance, who has chosen it as a Desert Island Keeper. Thank you so much Katie I’m particularly happy (in one of those perverse writerly ways) to know that although she found Darren hard to like, she couldn’t help understanding and sympathizing with him. Coolness
How long is this novel going to take? It’s 82,500 words long already and only on chapter 12 of 20. It is the giant life-sucking project of DOOM. How many times must the characters explain to each other what the other characters explained to them? How many times must Sumala and Flynn break out of the same prison, only to be thwarted in their plans of escape before they actually decide to do something other than just go home? Why must I be so acutely conscious of the amount of editing this is going to need when it’s done? Why can’t I have it finished now so that I can get down to the editing? Why can’t I have it finished now so I can write “Whirlwind Lads” or that piratey one which doesn’t yet have a name? What happened to the days of squeeing over actors and actually having fun? When did all this get so damned serious?
Frustration, thy name is “Under the Hill.” I can’t believe this was originally only going to be a novella!
