I hope not to talk about this very much for at least six months but yesterday I began work on a new novel. I figured that whatever happens with The Family Of Noise, I don't want to be that person that only ever wrote one book and then made a valiant attempt to dine out on it for the rest of his life.
That's not being a writer - that's writing a book. I don't feel strongly about many things in this life but if you're going to be something in this world, you should really be it.
I've written a fair few shorts this last couple of weeks but I've kept them all offline to be a part of The Day The Sky Fell Down which is coming along nicely. I didn't mean to keep them all offline but I have, so now I feel guilty for not handing over a new story to read. This shall be rectified across the coming weekend by creating something out of nothing.
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I realised today that I was a little pre-emptive with the 'missing Ray Bradbury' comment I made in my last post - the BBC have published it right here, so er... you can read it there too. The wheels of a big machine take time to rotate don't you know.
In other media news, I've just been interviewed by The Sunday Times for something in the Style section this coming weekend - it's day-job related but I like (and so far, trust) the Times. They have a reputation to uphold and are more likely to retell what I actually said as opposed to making things up that they want to hear.
Talking of which... currently chasing up what happened with the CNN piece - if anything.
Funny. When I write it like that in a single paragraph, it looks like it all really happened. Which it did.
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There have been some good articles around the web this week - which makes a change. First, there's this article on buzzfeed called How To Get Published - it's not really about getting published at all, but it's still a good read populated by some great debut authors, and those people would be:
Alena Graedon, Scott Cheshire, Julia Fierro, and D. Foy.
If you're playing The Writing Game, it's definitely worth reading through but the thing I took away most from it was, if you're looking for a great example of what an author photo should look like, there's four great ones right there - particularly the one of Scott Cheshire. That's how you do it.
I also picked up on Neil Gaiman's tumblr yesterday, somebody had written to him asking for advice on being a failed novelist (published once and then dumped at nowheresville) - he said something very cool, and I quote:
"And maybe you’re ahead of your time: your audience doesn’t exist yet. Or maybe you aren’t letting your audience know that there are stories for them, and where to find them."
That's a great way of looking at your work if for no other reason than it's probably true. How do you even begin to let people know you exist and that they might enjoy your work? It's very much worth thinking about, however you do it - whether you're a writer or at war with another kind of artistic endeavour.