Re-learning

I'm currently re-learning my job - that is, writing articles. I have to read more Economist and Financial Times to work out how to spin the angles. In the old place, everything was so formulaic it was hardly worth it, but the new place requires actual journalism. What a shocker. (They are also beating the crap out of my old place for quality and circulation.)

It's a challenge, but I'm digging in and trying to make better stories. I'm writing too dense and technical at the moment, for fear of straying too far from the press release, so I tense up and what you get is tensed-up prose. I know the problem, now I have to fix it. More reading.

Tomorrow's hand-over of the old flat, which means one huge thing off my mind.

Did 766 words on "Scorpion & Steel" and will very soon hit 20k. No idea what publisher might want it, but I don't care and don't want to think about it (yet). I'm looking to finish it in August. Ish. Let's see where it goes.

I have covers and banners for "Lion of Kent" and a release month for "Don't Ask Don't Tell," which will soon be out from MLR Press. They say July.

It's almost surreal that a story caught in limbo for what feels like 4 years will finally be released. It's not been the experience it could have been, and that's saying plenty about it. Four years is a lot of time to change your mind about a story. I always want to re-write after about two years. Four years feels like prehistory. It's so far away now. But back then, it was a good story, and I'm glad it is coming out. Closure is important.

I have to update my website with reviews and release dates and excerpts, so that's a project for the weekend. In the meantime, I'll report on financial modelling while knowing next to nothing about it. I feel like an impostor, but I hope I'll be able to catch that professor tomorrow first thing and ask him some half-baked questions. Nothing like borrowing somebody else's brains to look smart as a hack.

Also read the House Style Guide. The fact that we use the Oxford serial comma makes me happy.