The endless list

Week Two of professional writer and gentle reader, I do hope you have stuck with me. [CAUTION; this blogpost contains more than its fair share of brackets...see I already I am knee deep in them]

Here’s what I have been up to.

Dropped into LA, and this was the first time I have actually been outside of the airport! (Even if only briefly). I met [CENSORED] to talk about [REALLY CENSORED]- which as you can imagine was pretty cool. (As soon as I can possibly talk about this I will)

But because of all that I got a chance to hang out with three fabulous stars of the pod/vidcast community. Mark Jeffrey of the Pocket and the Pendant, Earl Newton of Stranger Things and Matthew Wayne Selznick of Brave Men Run. I’ve met Earl before (the details of how however stay in DragonCon) but never had a chance to meet Matt or Mark.

Mark was lovely enough to drive me to Venice where all of us sat down for a night of sushi and sake. Needless to say, we made Earl late for his late night LA meeting, but it was hella fun, and hopefully we didn’t wreck his chances of being the next (INSERT YOUR FAVOURITE DIRECTOR HERE)

Every time I meet with people from the podosphere I have a blast, and this was no different. I’ve come to the conclusion that aside from a few outliers, those in the community of creators are just as they appear to be online. It is always a delight to meet them.

I then flew to Virginia, and was on the road when I finally managed to get the first draft of Spectre to my editor at Ace. I don’t mind saying I was sweating bullets when I sent it to super agent Laurie. This is my first real sequel. (Yes Digital Magic is the sequel to Chasing the Bard, but only one character is the same, and the time elapsed is huge) And here’s the two things I realised.

1. When you sign the contract, start immediately!
2. Sequels are harder-because you just don’t have the flexibility you had in the original. The world rules are laid down, and you must abide by them.
3. Relax and have fun within those rules

Luckily Laurie came back and said she loved it- now we just wait to hear from Ace. I am sure there will be plenty of edits, but I will enjoy the breather.

Since then I have been attacking the aforementioned endless list. You know all those- things that pile up while your concentration is diverted. The email. The promotional ideas. The opportunities you couldn’t afford to miss.

I wrote myself a long list at the beginning of this week, and am slowly getting through it. Each one I strike off (even if others do spring up like the heads of the Hydra) seems like a little victory. I am slowly whittling it down to just ‘the big things’- like write another book or two.

Some of the other things I have managed to get in motion are

• Digital Magic back on track
• Erotica a la carte itunes app in the pipeline
• Applied for my free trial of Voices123.com (we’ll see how much professional work I can get there)
• Got permission to make some Geist promotional items with Jason Chan’s awesome artwork for Geist
• Started work on the website that will contain all the promotional and podcast work for Geist geistnovel.com
• Started work on my three short stories for Books and Braun: Bookmarks from the Ministry
• Sort out who I want to ask to write for me for the Geist podcast anthology.
• Send out scripts for the 3rd quarter of Digital Magic podcast
• Started planning and plotting for a third Order book to pitch to Ace

Ahead lie so many cool things, that I want to clear the desk a bit first.

I will be in New York City on May 17th, so if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook there will be an announcement of an casual get together. And then of course there will be a chance to catch me at Balticon- along with a clutch of other podcast authors. I’ll be at the DragonMoon Press booth, doing two readings, panels and participating in live recordings for other peoples projects. It’s going to be a fun weekend- so come along and say hi if you can.