Next!

So I think we can safely say my holiday is over.  I think it ended a few weeks ago, in fact, ‘cos of all the work.  But!  It hasn’t been unproductive.  As well as… you know… the work… my flat has been cleaned for the first time in whdfkljeiflong, I’ve joined BECTU, sorted out my paperwork, tidied up my finances, read a lot of books, swum a Swimathon and generally calmed down from a bit of a theatre-tastic time.

But also, did I mention, the work?  Ignoring the music gigs I’ve been lighting (which I personally feel don’t count as ‘theatre’ and therefore don’t count as ‘work’ since my only two jobs are, as we know, writing and theatre lighting) there’s been three big things on the plate.

1.  Copy and proof edits of the Gameshouse novellas.  Remember those?  Wrote those a while back now, and they’re slated for publication in ebook form sometime… well… soonish, I guess?  I don’t really have the exact details on their publication, but when I know dates, I’ll throw it up here asap.

There are three novellas, telling the story of the Gameshouse – a place where the great and the powerful gather to play chess, dice, cards and assassins, sometimes with real assassins, for anything from gold through to empires and the lives of men.  The first is set in Venice in 1610, and tells the story of a new player fighting to crown a king.  The second is set in 1930s Bangkok, and deals with a game of hide-and-seek, where all of Thailand is the board that you may play on, and the forfeit is the player’s mind.  The final story begins in the present-day, and is the story of the ultimate game played for the biggest prize – the Gameshouse itself.  The stories are designed to stand alone, but there is also a running narrative that builds up to book three as the characters cross path and moves that were made in the 1600s come back to haunt players four hundred years later.

They’ve been going through proof reading, which is the final stage of editing before publication, so will hopefully be with you fairly soon!

2.  Initial edits on Claire North novel no.3.  I finished this book a few months ago, and for my money, it’s a bit long.  I know I’m not selling it there, but this is a good thing – it’s a nice long book that will be made infinitely better for my trimming it down a bit, cutting away the surplus nonsense.  It’s currently with my editor, who I’m sure will have the blue pencil scything through the pages soon…

This book tells the story of a woman who people forget.  You can meet her, talk with her, walk with her, eat with her, laugh with her, but the second you turn your back on her, she begins to vanish from your memory.  It’s as if no mind is capable of holding her image long-term.  Needless to say, this has some downsides, but also a few ups – for one, she’s a fantastic thief.

3.  Beginning Claire North no.4.  Well, no, technically, it could be pick-your-pseudonym-book, because in discussing it with my editor she basically shrugged and said, ‘I think it sounds great, God knows how it’ll turn out, go forth, do your thing’.  Have I mentioned that I love my editor?  I’m not great at beginning books – I tend to write a few different starting points, delete them, find one that works, get a fair way into it, then delete the first 10,000 words, and then really get going.  Once I get going it’s fine, but beginnings are always fiddly.  I can’t really say too much about this book, as it’s so far from getting a publisher’s seal of approval it’s practically illicit to whisper about it at all, but it’s there, on my hard drive, looking scribbly… I guess this falls into the category of a Watch This Space…