Updates on Stuff
Hey, everyone. Good to see you here. Thanks, as always, for opening this newsletter and feigning interest in the things I do.
Speaking of which... let’s dive right in.
Since we last spoke, I finished off the third draft of the new book (GJD), gave it a quick polish, and sent it off to my agent and a few trusted friends. Yeah, I have beta readers. Most of them I’ve known for many years, so they’re all in that great position where they know me well enough to not worry about hurting my feelings, and I know them well enough to know... well, they’re worth listening to.
If all goes well, I’ll have feedback from all of them (including my agent) in the next two weeks. At which point I’ll probably spend another two or three weeks going over all their notes and weighing/ignoring/incorporating them. It all depends on their feedback. Might take a little less time, might take a lot more. I won’t really know until it’s in front of me.
In the meantime, I’ve started the next book. If GJD is the next book you get to see from me, then TOS (its current acronym) will be the one that comes out after it. I’ve been trying to make this a bit of recharge, away-from-the-screen time, so mostly I’ve been sitting out on the back deck with a legal pad and just scribbling away by hand. For me, this is a great way to power through stuff, because it grants this sort of automatic first draft status to whatever I do. My agent absolutely won’t read a loose pile of yellow paper (really nobody could—my handwriting’s pretty awful) so there’s no question this will need another draft. Which means I can do anything here. Cross stuff out. Write in the margins. Draw arrows telling future-me where things should move. It’s very freeing. I don’t write this way all the time, but it’s nice after being stuck at my desk for a big block of work. Right now I’m about... 16,000 words in? 17,000? I’d be more exact, but the word count function isn’t working on my legal pad.
Bonus points-when it’s finally time to transcribe the legal pad onto my computer, I end up doing a lot of editing right there. Picking a better word, tweaking that reveal. I recommend trying it out if you’re looking for a way to shake things up in your writing.
I’ve also got one last anthology story to finish. And then there’s two comic book pitches I want to polish. One completely original, one loosely connected to something you know. Don’t get too excited-- these are just pitches. I’ll let you know when excitement is warranted.
And that’s where things are at.
What else can I tell you about...?
Well, the new website’s done. Trying to pull a lot of things under one umbrella and I’ve now done that over at PeterClines.com. The FAQ is there, the ranty blog, all my books, and some other stuff. Please feel free to check it out, bookmark it, go there frequently. Also, just because Twitter is ever inching ever closer to being unusable (or complete collapse), a reminder that I’m on Instagram and also Mastodon.
Last time, you may recall I talked with you a bit about some of the issues with Substack and some of their questionable business decisions. A few of you offered thoughts and comments. And I’ve had more time to think about it. I think for now I’m going to keep this going. I’m going to try to strip out as much of Substack’s ads and promotions that it keeps plugging in, so you’ll get as little of that thrown at you as possible. We’ll see how that goes. And if it doesn’t... well, we’ll try something else.
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Watching-- Star Trek: Picard, The Mandalorian, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur
Cool Stuff I’ve Been Reading-- The Murderbot books by Martha Wells. I also just got the last Silvers novel from Daniel Price (a few months early).
Cool New Toys – A week or so back I had this silly idea to re-buy a knockoff model version of Grimlock of the Dinobots I already have and paint this one to look like the blue G2 reissue (if these words mean nothing to you, don’t worry. It just means you’ve made better life choices). Anyway, I found the KO model on eBay, bought it, and also found a few G2s that I bookmarked for reference pics. And then a few days later... someone offered me a ridiculously good price on one of those original blue G2 Grimlocks. So I have both of those now.
And that’s everything. Talk with you again soon.