You’ll have noticed I’ve been rather less than my usual chatty self lately. There’s a good reason for this – I’ve been working hard on rewrites to my first novel, ‘Gravy Train’, as well as a number of other projects.
‘Gravy Train’ started life as a novella, rather like ‘Raise the Blade’, but when several of my writer friends pinned me to a wall and threatened me with dark deeds if I didn’t make it longer, I decided to have a go at just that. And after many months of scribbling, I’ve got it from 35,000 words to almost double the length.
Now comes the scary bit – submitting it to publishers. My first choice regretfully rejected it (no hard feelings – it just didn’t fit). But this morning I’ve taken the bovine by the facial protuberances and sent it out again. After first re-formatting the entire manuscript to take out lots of pesky extra spaces after all the full stops. And finding a few typos and howlers as I went.
On top of that, I’m about to submit two more short stories, one to an anthology and one to a magazine. Cue yet more fiddling and polishing, and a couple more deep intakes of breath.
After that, I’m hoping things will quieten down a little, and I’ll have time to catch up on all the blogging I haven’t been doing for a while. As long as my own gravy train doesn’t come shuddering to a halt…
First off is ‘Rabbit Stew’, a tongue-in-cheek tale based on an old (and terrible) World War 2 joke my Mum told me years ago, which is due out in Kannibal Cookbook from Down & Out Books soon, with proceeds going to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital.