‘Clowns to left of me, Jokers to the right…’

Heh… 25th time (I think) you’d think I’d just be ‘meh, another book out.’ But certainly for me it hasn’t ever got there. It takes me well into the next book to get over it. My ‘baby’ is out there to sink or swim. Like every author born, I tell others not to check the star ratings and reviews – and do, obsessively.

I usually manage to chill after a day or two, though. I continue to try and promote the book, but after a while you know that, really, you have got through to the hard-core fans, and all you’re doing is irritating the rest of the readers with repeats of what they see as spam. I am fairly sick of authors who I never see online… unless it’s advertising their next book — and then they repeat the same advert 500 times.

So: the key, as always is to get going, hard, on the next book as soon as possible, and if not, at least on some displacement activity. I normally engage in something suicidally dangerous to help me get things back in perspective. I suspect this is not for everyone. This has been particularly bad because I hurt my back (in the most mundane, dull way possible – stepping sideways through a door) which meant I couldn’t even be physically silly, and was struggling with pain. I find it doesn’t help my thinking.

I’m a Prometheus winner, I’ve been a Dragon finalist twice (and I hope STORM-DRAGON gets nominations for that) I’ve made something of a living out of being a writer. I’ve written a lot of books, taken a fair amount of flack (including CHANGELING’S ISLAND getting slated by Damian Walters in Guardian… Grauniad – in a hit piece where he’d read the first paragraph, called me a racist and failed to work out the ethnicity of my lead character in the book he was attacking (This is up there with declaring Johnny Rico a white supremacist). You’d think I’d be used to it and blasé by now — and I am somewhat, compared to my first book. Only somewhat, compared to the rest.

What I am saying is: this normal, don’t let it get to you. And, yes, get working on that next book. The question that always gets asked is ‘you mean the sequel?’

If that is what it takes, yes. If you are really fast and can have a book out every couple of months, yes. If you’re glacially slow… also possibly yes. I would say… if you’re somewhere in the middle of those, ‘no’ might be a good answer. Sequels, I was told many years ago, sell 10% less each time. I didn’t believe it, because I ALWAYS want a next book if I loved the first one, and am invested in the universe, but I now have enough books out to tell you there is truth in it.

There is, of course, a market for sequels (just as there is a hate for unfinished series, to the point where a lot of readers won’t buy ‘first of a trilogy/series’ unless they are all available.) but just be aware if the first didn’t sell much, the second may well sell less — which is why I am busy with an entirely different book.

A snippet:

The alien animals weren’t there anymore. “Where did they go to,” the titch demanded, actually sounding quite upset.

“What went?” asked Mick, head bent under a load.

“Those things. Those birds that looked like kites.”

“And lizards. They’re up there, watching us,” said Johnno, who had put his load down.  He pointed.

The odd creatures were hanging next to each other, like kite-shaped washing on a bent, feather-leaf topped bamboo-plant near the overhang.

“Oh. I thought they might have gone away,” said the titch, more cheerfully.

“Huh. I thought they might have gone to fetch their mates,” said Mick. “And we’d have hundreds of them. What are going to call them? Can’t go on with kite-bird-lizard-snakes

After a brief pause the titch announced. “Snalizbrikit!”

“What?  Or do I say ‘bless you’?” asked Tal.

“First three letters of each one,” the titch explained.

“Aha. So, why not… Kitbriliz…?”

“Too long, both of them,” said Johnno, interrupting before he finished. “They would have eaten someone before we could tell anyone to look out for them.”

 “We could just call them ‘Barry’,” said Mick, flopping down and reaching for a bottle of water. “He was one of my teachers and he looked a bit like that. I reckon he ate worms too.”

“Was he a good teacher?” asked the titch.

Mick pulled a face. “Nah. Nasty piece of work.”

“Then let’s call them after something nicer,” said the titch. “In case the thingies get offended and turn nasty.”

“Then they’ll be Rojy,” said Mick. “He was good value. Looked at you skew, like those birds, too.”

“You called your teacher Rojy?” asked Tal, whose relationship with teachers had been distant and formal.

“Yeah,” said Mick. “Rojy the bodgy… to bodge is kinda slap things together to fix them. He had an old groundcar, made from four wrecks, that was forever breaking down. He fixed it with wire and tape.”

“I guess ‘Bodgy’ would make a good name for those creatures. Put together from other bits, but they kinda work.”

“Here Bodjy. Bodgy, Bodgy, Bodgy! Who’s a pretty boy then?”

Tal could think of few things less pretty, unless it was the tentacle-beasts, but the Bodgies did not agree. One dropped down and squirmed over to Mick, looking at him curiously.

For those curious: these are links to STORM-DRAGON’S blog tours and video

L’Ombre de l’Olivier,

According to Hoyt,

A Song of Joy.

Raconteur Press