Prospective dates for the Under the Hill duology
Woo! I have a duology. That sounds very fine. Even better is the fact that I can now say that Under the Hill: Bombers’ Moon should be out in April 2012, followed in May 2012 by Under the Hill: Dogfighters. I sent off the cover art sheets today, so it’s all beginning to feel a bit more real.
On the blogging front, I’ve been second guessing myself again recently. One of my many problems is that I do have a tendency to follow advice, and in this case it has been the advice to think of my blog as a marketing tool and a way to build my authorial ‘brand’. I read, all over the place, that should commit to updating it on a regular basis, and I should make sure I only put stuff up on it that reflected my brand.
The result of which was that I made a resolution to post once a week on a Monday. And then I immediately couldn’t think of anything to blog about. I have a group of interests that looks like a lotus flower, it’s got so many separate petals, but whereas all the things that interest me are united by virtue of interesting me, that’s about all the link there is.
I should (according to this advice)remember that I’m a m/m romance writer, and blog about m/m romance. But that’s terribly limiting. Besides, all my friends are writing about m/m romance, and covering all the topics I could possibly think about better than I could. Also – to be frank – I find it easier to say what I want to say (if anything) by writing a story than I do by sitting down and attempting to analyse it in some kind of meta post. I enjoy reading other people’s theories, but formulating my own feels like letting the genie out of the bottle. That genie could have been powering a story instead.
I could write about writing – but what do I have to say that’s different from what everyone else is saying? No one needs my inchoate thoughts when they could just buy a ‘how to’ book and get it all in one spot.
So I think I’m going to go back to posting whenever I like, about all the stuff that is irrelevant to my brand but interesting to myself. Since my brand as an author is to be the author that I am, surely nothing I find interesting is irrelevant to it? Even if it is Nazi talking dogs or Steampunk cell-phones.