To celebrate the official US release of Winter Song (yes, really! Have I mentioned it already?) the lovely, intelligent and charming Sharon Reamer has updated an interview with me that orinally ran in Allegory magazine a full twelve months ago.  There’s plenty more where that one came from!

In fact, I’m not quite sure whether it’s actually in the shops, or just means that it’s officially in a warehouse in Omaha, or Oregon, or…

And this morning I finished the wip. 613 words over, but that’s not bad for a 105,000 word novel. It’ll be put to one side now, while I think about re-writes for a month.

Finally, but equally importantly, I wrapped the last of Kate’s presents yesterday.

All done and on target — a nice red letter day!

It’s also the day before Kate’s birthday, by which time I need to have sneaked any goodies into the house and wrapped them. So usually in August I’m getting a little stressy. Although this year, I no longer have the annual influx of applications for the SLF‘s Annual Travel Grant.

Still, when I planned my summer workload it seemed to be against a view of one looooong siesta as I dozed beneath the apple tree from the end of the 1st year in May, to the 2nd year in early October.  I calculated that if I could finish the draft of Ultramassive by August 31st, I could take a month off before going back to uni. So far, so good; I’m 80% of the way through, and if I can keep producing my target wordage, I’ll make it, bang on schedule.

And although Dark Spires is to be launched at Bristolcon, the printers only need a couple of weeks, so I figured that with any luck I could even write the story for it in early October — at least, if I was lucky… if not, then late September. 

Ah, I thought smugly. A plan is hatched…

The first flaw came at the end of May. Angry Robot announced that they were gearing up the US launch to start with Winter Song. They are launching in September, but monthly deliveries go out on the last Tuesday of the previous month, which is….de de de de de de de…August 31st. (It’s actually great news, but it was about two or three months earlier than I’d expected, and Leeee keeps shouting at me for more interviews and more blog material!!!!)

Now, having thought that I could get away with a gap before turning my full attention to Dark Spires, it transpires that WTP’s lovely copy editor is expecting her first child soon, and we need to get all the editing done soonest. Last Friday I learned that it’s due…August 31. 

And that first annual deadline hasn’t gone away — at some point I need to get Kate’s birthday presents before she returns from holiday on…August 31st. (Can anyone recommend a mains-operated DAB radio that also picks up FM?) 

I know, I know. I could be writing, blogging, editing or…ew, shopping…instead of whinging about it. But hey, my therapist tells me it’s good to share.

But if anyone else has any deadlines for this date, keep them to yourself – at least until September the 1st.

Please? Pretty please?

But now I’m within 19 days of finishing the Ultramassive draft, and the last sub  for the anthology is in, so come September I might even take a day or two off. Although there’s Mrs H’s birthday to sort out.

So I’d better get on with some shopping….

And on other news, I passed the two-thirds mark on Ultramassive.

One unexpected side effect of spending so much time on less than a dozen submissions is that I’m finding it a real battle writing my 1500 words each day. I have enormous admiration for those writers who can work on one book in the morning, and then focus on another in the afternoon.  My next task is work out how I can mentally multi-task.

More tomorrow on editing, though.

But despite being slightly worried about resuming novel-writing, once I got going, I found slipping back into the groove of writing Ultramassive surprisingly easy. I think that I’ve achieved a certain residual momentum. Or maybe the day ‘off’ did some good.

My only reminder of work yesterday was when Lee rang me from the Angry Robot office for one last minor edit for Damage Time. It came as Kate and I were buying some sandwiches for lunch in a bomb-site/Sainsbury’s-under-construction, on the edge of Exeter. I thought, ‘shall I tell him where I am?’ but decided against it. He might have felt guilty, whereas I was actually glad of the distraction.

And Damage Time cropped up again this morning, with this timely link provided by the lovely Liz van Zandt, via Facebook. I proposed in the novel that society might be entering a phase whereby economic factors affect people’s living arrangements, and even marriage. In the draft it raised more eyebrows and hackles with the crit group than perhaps any other point, which surprised me.

I suspect that I’m not done with blogging about this yet. In fact, I know I’m not…thanks Liz.

I finished ‘Spindizzy’ my story for Dark Spires over the weekend, or rather, I finished the main part of the narrative. I needed to write some short inserts that are pastiches of Golden Age SF. I started out fairly restrained, but as the morning progressed the battles got ever bigger, the villains more villainous and the women more beautiful. All in the space of a thousand words!

I’d almost forgotten how much fun SF can be.

Meanwhile the other stories have started to come in, and I’m enjoying reading them.

Tomorrow worn’t be quite so enjoyable, as it’s my stepfather’s funeral, so no blog tomorrow, and then it’s back to work on Ultramassive on Wednesday.

But getting back at midnight, and rising at 5.30 does not make an ideal situation in which to put the novel aside, and to start working on a story for Dark Spires.

Still, it has to be done so I gritted my teeth and with the ease of giving birth, ground out 2250 words this morning. That’s actually about 50% more than I planned, but I found the first 1500 so tough that it was only when I passed target that the words began to flow with anything approaching ease.

And now they’ve started to slow again, so I shall put it aside, and maybe read some review material this afternoon. Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker arrived this morning, and yea verily, it looks good.

Yesterday I had to shoot into Newton Park to drop off my second consecutive change of course form, as I managed to balls-up the first. Because my academic grades were insufficient to qualify for the BA course, I had to take the DipHE in the first year as the equivalent of academic probation.

So last week was about changing up to the BA course, but the more I thought about it, the more I debated whether to continue with Media Studies, which is interesting but demands most work for lowest return in terms of grades. So I’ve switched from a joint to a single degree, but that meant printing out and completing a second change of course form, which meant a second consecutive visit to the Ghost Town (cue the Specials aka) that is NP.

While I was there I printed out my interim timetable, which was immediately obsolescent  as soon as the Head of Department signed the change form.

So unless I can suddenly access the timetable network remotely, I shall need to make a third visit to the site!

Meanwhile Kate’s taken the day off, which meant a lovely lie-in; with no alarm I slept through until the decadent hour of 7.30. So now I’m running about two hours late. Not that I’m complaining, you understand — the extra sleep was loverly…

The bad news is that the Newton Park buses only run every hour in the holidays, and my train arrives about two minutes after one leaves. Go figure.

So to pick up assignments and drop a change sheet in, I need to be there before twelve, when the office closes. Fun fun fun…