Out of touch for a while

I'll be a little scarcer (read: really scarce) for a while. A close writer friend of mine has been diagnosed with a very aggressive disease, and I'm going to stay with her for a few days (going incommunicado). That it's November doesn't help, or that it's pretty close to the anniversary of my mother's death, sixteen years ago. The Big C really puts everything into perspective - writing, legacy, life and death.

Counterpunch edits

I got the edits for "Counterpunch" yesterday, which all seem relatively minor--a couple typos, passages where the rhythm is off, house style things and that's pretty much it (I guess I'm just a clean writer overall, and "Counterpunch" has come out pretty clean overall). So that could be easy, right? Err, no. I've recently been on a bit of a "trip to the past" with regards to my style, which tends to mean paring the fluff down even more, using a tighter POV and overall better structure.

Which means, knives are out and I'm giving this book the full treatment once I have a moment. (Work at work is crazy. We're again under strength, thanks to holidays and people leaving. Which is somewhat unfortunate in terms of timing.) The biggest decision I have to make is how to deal with any potential connected work.

Right now, there are a couple "missing scenes" from "Counterpunch" that would make a good addition to the book. Originally, I was hoping to write a related project (possibly a novella), this month, but I don't think I can fit it in. I'm also thinking that that novella might actually belong to a potential sequel or might stand completely on its own. The main issue is, the novella puts everything that happened in "Counterpunch" into a completely different light, and it seems wrong to simply deliver that like an afterthought. So, potentially, that idea might be large, it might start where "Counterpunch" ends, and I'm running out of time on the "Lion" sequel and a number other projects.

A couple days ago, a good friend told me she has an aggressive cancer, which in many ways brings home mortality (apart from all the other emotions that I can't speak about--least of all in public. That's stuff that I need to work through on my own, really). From my family history, I have a good chance to get cancer, too, so at least I have a fair idea how I'm going to end.

As a writer, it made me think of all the books I really want to write. It's that old mind-game: If you only had a year to live, what would you write?

In my case, that's "finishing Dark Soul" (a project that's ~20 years old), "Lion 2", and the two WWII novels. So that's basically what I'm going to do, before I think about any short stories, novellas or sequels to anything else. The WWII novels especially have been heavy on my brain, so I'll focus on those for the rest of the year and likely all of 2012.

2011 has been an insanely productive period, but part of me thinks "stop messing around" - it's like I'm running to all these other projects largely because I'm scared as hell to mess up the historicals. I'm scared witless of getting any of that stuff wrong. It's time to turn around and face that particular tiger.

I have that one short story to write and "Counterpunch" to edit, and then I'll tackle those three books. It might even mean that that's all that's coming out in 2012 or even in 2013, but I'm OK with that. If I still have time to play, I'm sure I'll find some projects to fill up the rest of the schedule.

"Scorpion" just around the corner

It's real and becomes more and more real now. I have a cover, so the time of denial is over. "Scorpion" is coming out. (Yeah, books are real while being written and then when they are coming on - in between they fall in a state of "not quite real", when I tend to forget all about them.)

Anyway, the amazingly talented Reese Dante has created no less than 8 covers, three of which were totally different drafts and the others were variations on those.

I'm very happy with what she's come up with (go, have a look).

It's spot-on. My cover spec (always an exercise in helpless frustration about trying to translate an emotion into an image... I'm not a very descriptive writer) told Reese that Kendras was black and big and has blue eyes (that's what Jaishani look like in that world). And that he looks like a "mean motherfucker". Yup, exactly the words I used.

So, we can all agree that Kendras on the cover looks like a mean motherfucker. Or, as one reader put it: "Wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley, but happy to meet him in a hotel room."

Hah. EXACTLY.

In my "real life", I've come out to my team in the bank. They were great about it (*waves in case they are reading*). Even offered feedback on the eight version of the "Scorpion" cover. I think that calls for a mini office celebration on release day. :)

Also, my eyes are fine. After LASIK, I have to admit that I didn't like reading and pretty much avoided it where I could. After editing 8 hrs/day in the day job, my eyes felt tired, worn out, and I had lots of blurriness at the short distance which made reading actually hard work - like consciously focusing on words. So I stayed away from reading. Thought and watched and observed during my commute rather than read. (Hence no book reviews and a huge pile of work I need to get through becouse I promised - sorry guys, I literally didn't see this situation coming).

I noticed these issues less and less, though, so I'll go back to reading. It's three weeks after LASIK, and my eyes are doing really well. Sometimes a bit of a dry/blurry feeling early in the mornings, but far less issues with near-vision blurriness. Thanks for bearing with me while I was healing.

Now back to work.

LASIK - one week later

I've had my one-week check-up with the opticians and my eyes are healing "well". The flap (the bit they cut open) has "sealed itself well", I can now rub/touch my eyes and if I get water in the eye (from, you know, showering), it won't be the end of the world.

This means that the most vulnerable time is over. I can relax a bit now (after hearing horror stories of scarred corneas). And I don't have to use any eye drops any more - which leaves me with the stuff against dry eyes, which I'll likely need a little bit longer.

Doc said my vision would continue to become clearer. Long-distance, I'm way better than 20/20 (two lines more). Short-distance, I have moments when my vision is really sharp and crisp, but it's temporary at the moment. However, if that level of quality becomes permanent, I'll be shocked in a very very good way.

May do light sports, no full contact stuff for another three weeks. That's OK. I can hold off on the boxing for another three weeks. :)

Call me Eagle Eyes

Friday I had LASIK - Wavefront-guided, because they promised me that my view might end up better than "good", so I figured what's good enough for snipers and astronauts is sure good enough for me.

One day after the operation (and the day *of* to operation was essentially a write-off), my vision was better than 20/20. One eye lags a bit, but the other more than compensates. I'm on a "three different eyedrops, four times a day" regime, and one of those drops need to be kept in the fridge (putting fridge-cold stuff in your eye is... special). But so far I'm following all the orders.

Things are still healing, and I have the "halo" effect, which means that sources of light blur in the darkness - but I'm not nightblind (another possible outcome post-operation), and I don't have "ghosts". However, my short-range vision (the area from here to the computer screen) is a bit hazy. Apparently that'll fix itself once the brain has recovered from the shock of no longer dealing with short-sighted eyes. Also, my ability to focus fluctuates a bit. Sometimes, things are clear, then they are hazy again. But the far distance is great, so I'm perfectly entertained looking out of the window, noticing all the little details.

It'll take a few weeks or even months for the eyes to completely heal, but I'm in no rush. I can write, I can work, my eyes just heal at their own time. So far, money very, very well spent.

On the writing front, I'm making good progress on the boxer story, which is more than 30k now and might just turn out to be 40-50k. Writers not updating their blogs means they are writing more stories.

I'm not ill, I just feel rotten

I'm in denial about my health at the moment, but when I got up and my vision greyed for a moment I thought, "okay, maybe I do work from home today". I don't want to go into graphic detail, but I seem to have the cold from hell. Blood is involved, too. Headaches. Woozyness. It's not the "clutch blanket, hide in bed" kinda cold, but it's bad enough that the last thing I want is to commute, cattle class, into London.

So I'm working from home, surrounded by Lemsip, dressed in several layers of clothes I can strip really fast when I get too hot, and also food so I remember to eat. (Last thing I want do to with a raw throat is eat - also, my body goes "Uh, no, don't give me food, can't you see I'm BUSY fighting those virii/bacteria, idjit.") At least I'm mostly coherent.

On the writing front, "Father of All Things" went back to Carina on Saturday (12. Feb). It got a completely new ending, and rewrites of about 6-7k of text. Which sounds easy, but trust me, it isn't. That book will be out on 15 August.

Then Dreamspinner has just emailed me to tell me that "Scorpion" in now in the editing stage. I expect the whole manuscript to come back to me in the next 4-6 weeks. Working on that will kick-start "Lying with Scorpions", the sequel.

My boxer story (the fist fighter, not the garment or the dog) hit 10k yesterday. It might grow to anything between 30-60k, but I expect it to be in the mid-range of that, so around 40-45k. I'd love for it to turn into a novel, of course, because I love the main character, as random and bipolar as he is. Working title of that is "Untouchable", but I may yet change that.

Then I got a very insightful, well-written review from Book Utopia for "Lion of Kent". While I respectfully disagree about the relative quality of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and "Lion of Kent" (DADT is four years old and I'd be shocked if I hadn't developed as a writer in the meantime, plus, Kate Cotoner is hugely talented and really made the novella shine), there's a lot of food for thought in the review.

"This historical does what not very many in this genre really do for me – made me forget I was reading a historical. It’s not because of the lack of detail to create the setting. It’s the opposite. The story is just so well-realized that it never feels intrusive, never feels like I’m being reminded page after page that this happened a long time ago. It rings of authenticity, which is a credit both to the rather seamless prose and the meticulous structure of its presentation. There aren’t awkward information dumps, or pages of facts that have nothing to do with moving the story forward. I sank into this story as if I was a squire within Sir Robert’s household already, a natural extension of the world the authors created."

Read the rest here.

I'm apprehensive about writing the sequel to "Lion of Kent". It's not just the amount of research or the fact that, most likely, I'll be writing it alone, it's above all the extremely high expectations I have for that book. I'd hate for it to be any worse than "Lion of Kent".

Research for "Iron Cross" continues, but I'm slow on the word count. While I consider 1,000 words written on any story a good day's work, for "Iron Cross", 100 words is good work. I keep wondering if there's something wrong with my outline or plot that it moves so slowly, or if I'm lazy or procrastinating, but I don't think it's that. I may still hit my deadline with that - May.