The weekend came and went without incident - more or less. I'm not sure where those days went though. Nor yesterday. Probably in a haze of copy-editing, proofing, scratching the head and hoping that pretty soon, like the schedule says, this issue of the magazine will finally go to print. Work continues to get this site figured out before the end of the year. For those that missed it, many months ago, I moved here and built the site straight out of my head, live onto the page so that I knew when things weren't right and thus would be fixed pretty damn fast out of shame. The idea was - and still is - to call myself out on the projects that are going somewhere and identify the ones that were simply a good idea at the time but didn't have enough legs to take them anywhere special. The stone is being chipped away at fast and things are starting to feel like they're a little more achievable - then again, I did give myself a list from hell.

What's intriguing about this "thing" that I'm doing, is that I'm still torn between doing everything myself or working with a publisher - or rather, starting the long task of finding one. I made contact with an author that I haven't spoken to for about five years yesterday who had a bad experience with a large publishing company and only through being smart, managed to rescue himself and his canon from oblivion. He seems happy now with a much smaller publisher - we must talk further. Insider info can be invaluable. That was closely followed by this article I found, in which a novel, despite great things being said by email from the big guns themselves, appeared to remain in development hell for over ten years. Ten years!

Nobody has ten years to spend waiting around to decide if your book is good enough to publish or not. I don't care who you are or how big - that's nothing more than being shit at your job and you should be handed your papers and told to never come back again. Apart from it being incredibly lazy and oh, the lies you must have spun over that period, that's somebody's life being played with. Which is a good a reason as any to have an agent, but there's nothing written in law to say that the agent will do any better either.

I know a published author who doesn't live so far away from me who can't even get her agent to respond to her emails. Genuinely important emails about touring, money and what the status is of the book she submitted over six months ago. With a little research, we discovered that he was probably sleeping with one of his other female authors who is selling books at a good rate. Which all goes to prove one thing regardless of where you stand in life. When you're on the up, everybody wants to know you and be associated. When you're on the way down, they scatter like crows. The solution so far as I can see, is to do everything yourself (and I mean everything) and remember not to be a dick to anybody whether you, or they, are on the up or down. Nobody will ever care about your product as much as you do. Somebody will always take a bigger cut for the privilege of working on it than you will and you will forever be wondering when the axe will fall when your new one sells a little less than the last one.

It's harsh out there.

Then again - having your book in front of millions of shoppers every day is damned priceless. Such is the need for a publishing company - actually, that's not true. "Such is the need for a distribution company" would be more like it. It will change. I know it will because I know how the distribution points work and in a digital age, the stores are struggling to make it work on a daily basis. I just don't know when.

Now, you're probably feeling like I am. Sitting there thinking that yes, "Smith is correct. I must do it all myself because nobody else cares but me" - but the idea of selling a ton of books via a real store never goes away. Maybe that's a good thing. I'm just going to keep moving forward as best as I can - that's all any of us can do.

Also noteworthy out there this week is the appearance of Rowling's new book which has replaced 50 Shades as the "item of the week to pimp to death" in all stores across the land. No idea what it's like - it's not about a boy who is a wizard so I don't really care, but if you're a published author who wants to sell millions, that's what you're up against. I haven't even seen James Herbert's Ash in that many places since it (quietly) appeared last week - and The Wrath of Angels from John Connolly in even less places. That's sad - but not as sad as being a moth eaten hare on the end of a couple of sticks:

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Talking of making it, which we kind of were, I'll leave you with the trailer for The Runaways movie. Much under-rated, highly enjoyable and if you've not seen it already, please go and sit in the corner.