Temporary Deafness

 Hi all.

 I've had yet another conditional offer for Death of Ghosts. This one is from Austin Macauley publishers. I turned it down, for the same reasons that I refused Olympia back in the summer. AM then emailed back to say they really do want the book. Trouble is, I am not going to pay £2,500 up front. If they believe in the book they can push it themselves, and if not, I'll keep looking. I'll try to negotiate, but don't have high hopes.

 Still, and once more, it shows that I'm pretty close. The doors opening are the wrong doors, but soon (with luck) it will be the right one. I just have to keep working, keep improving, and keep ringing the bell.

 That's made easier because we bought a laptop last week. With two small children in the house it means any and every room is likely to be occupied, and if not now, it will be soon. So wherever I put the desktop I get interrupted. Now I can just slope off to another room and keep working. I've already written in the lounge, in the bathroom, and on break at work. The result is more work finished in ten days than the whole of the previous month - despite Evie deciding that whenever Mummy isn't there, she'll shriek at jetliner volume until a) Mummy is back, or b) Evie collapses in exhaustion.

 That takes about two hours. The first time I didn't get hearing back in my left ear for days. You can see why the laptop is important.

 I've also had an idea so stonkingly good that I can't shake it. In essence I've been wanting for years to write a story about Easter Island, or a Fantasy version of it, but my trouble is there's really nothing to say except what really happened. That's just history, not a Fantasy. So I needed something different, and couldn't think of anything original and interesting. Now I have. It will have all the things I wanted, like outrigger canoes and moai, but also include some elements of my own. I'm a little bit indebted to Terry Pratchett's Nation to be honest, for starting my mind down the path of thinking about the culture and people more than monuments and events. That's an outstanding book by the way. Meant for children, but excellent for adults too.

 See what happens when I have time to write? Although my temporary deafness might have played a part. It's hard to be distracted when you can't hear a bloody thing on one side.

 Bella has just arrived and is trying to work out what they keyboard is for. Her method involves hitting the keys with hands and feet. This may be a hint that Daddy's blog time is over.

 Pip pip.

Grubby and Desperate

 My wife and I welcomed our second child, and second daughter, early last month. As a result, in our house every day is filled with rushing about (Bella) and screaming for food (Evie), and then with cleaning up the worst of the wreckage. It's all very tiring, so it's a problem that the nights are disturbed too. But there's hope.

 On Friday morning I'll be having a vasectomy. I turn 50 next year (How? How?) so I can't really keep producing kids, not if I want to be around for the next 20 years to take care of them. Past a certain point it feels irresponsible. Plus my wife spent both pregnancies being quite unwell, so I don't want to put her through that again (Caz isn't keen either). So, time for the snip. Which means... several days of enforced rest.

 Or to put it another way, an excuse to sit on comfy cushions in front of my PC for days. With any luck Caz will bring me bacon sandwiches and beer at regular intervals, but never mind that. It's time to write that counts. Finally. Finally, a chance to get some solid work done.

 Strange thing, y'know, but having two small daughters doesn't half eat into your life.

 So, I have some adjustments to make to The Death of Ghosts, just tinkering at the edges really. There are a couple of things that need to be played up because they become important later, sometimes in volume two, but in once case not until volume four. The plot's laid out, I know the story in detail now, so the changes will be simple enough. Then run over the text, do another edit check for errors - you can never do too many - and push into volume two, titled The Life of Shadows. Quite a lot of nasty things start to happen in that. The main bad guy from volume one turns out to be very small fry indeed.

 I like a degree of unpleasantness in Fantasy. It shouldn't be all polished breastplates and men talking about honour. Sometimes life is just grubby and a bit desperate, and when the world is changing and there's danger all around that goes ten times over.

 Speaking of grubby and desperate, I need to get back to clearing up after the kids. Like I said, life isn't all glamour... but it'll do me.

Something Fresh

 Ignoring politics is hard. Especially now, when anyone can post anything on Facebook, true or not. The lies I've seen... if every claim that Labour has risen in the polls was true, they'd be at 200% by now. People are claiming the Tories want to close the NHS and starve primary school children. It's ludicrous, the politics of deception and deceit - but it works. People do believe it, and when the claims come thick and fast they reinforce one another. Repeat a lie often enough and people will begin to take it for true.

 But I have work to do, so I'm trying to limit my involvement. I'm afraid that the voters in Britain is no smarter than the American electorate which voted for Trump. They'll fall for deceit and fake promises. Well, that's their business. I'll take care of my family and my writing, and leave the great social movements for others.

 I'm still editing Fanged Fish. 70,000 words are done now, so there's not too much left to do. My plan is to finish that, then rewrite The Death of Ghosts, which needs a few tweaks early on. I wrote it in such a flurry that I didn't give enough emphasis to a couple of things that become significant later in the series. Or I should say... that was my plan. Because I've had a great new idea.

 I'm still thinking through the structure, and a lot of the background isn't clear yet. But the basis of the idea is a portal Fantasy, in which magic interacts with the world we know. People can cross here from their world, and return. Intelligence services track them too, so there's a thread of modern surveillance and the suspicion of terrorism as well. The terrorism matters, because portal fantasies have been done before and if I'm to do this, it will have to feel different to them, something fresh. There are other things in the story to do that - but I'm not going to tell you what they are. You'll have to read the book, kiddos.

 I have to write it, first, and with a new baby due soon that might not be so easy. Oh well.