Bloody Hell!

I shouldn't blame my computer - it's all my fault for being such a twit.

There I was, slaving away on the edits to Florida Key, correcting a Word document, as authors do.

Then I realised that I've been correcting the wrong document, and had to go back over thousands of words to work out exactly where I began going wrong.

Some might say that I began going wrong at the very beginning, but I'm having none of that.

After HOURS AND HOURS, I finally figured out where I was, and what I was doing - and now I'm all up to date. Time for a celebratory cup of tea.

Take Cover!

"You'd be, like, really smart not to miss out and buy the book everybody's talkin' about. A lotta bad things happen in it. It's tremendous. Amazing. Terrific. Believe me, it's all fake. This is a work of fiction, and it's gonna be huge."

There's a lot of news right now concerning the country in which Florida Key is mainly set.

I may as well have a bit of fun while I'm getting on with the editing.

And here is the latest cover, featuring ME on the cover. I'm still looking a bit overweight, but apparently Designer David had to trim AN ENORMOUS amount of my stomach off. I hate to think what I looked like before.

Getting Serious

For Florida Key, the plot-line was inspired by a bike-radio

It's Sunday today.
I have almost a whole day to get on with some work on Florida Key.
Editing, editing, editing. The willpower required to get on with it is enormous.
It's very easy to get side-tracked into doing something else.
Like now.
So before I begin with that, I thought I'd do a blog post.
Today, no more jokes - this is now SERIOUS.

For anyone remotely interested in knowing what the key stages are in 'how to write a book', here they are (for this author, at least), divided into segments;
THE STORY, THE PROCESS, THE PRODUCTION, THE PUBLICITY, THE LAUNCH, THE MARKETING, and hopefully THE SELLING:

THE STORY
1. Get an idea (easy)
2. Think up a rough plot-line (easy)
3. Begin writing the first draft (still quite easy)
4. Work out how the story can develop (getting harder)
5. Keep writing to the end (hard)
6. Read over what you've written (easy)
7. Make sense of it all (impossible)
8. Go back and make some corrections (work)
9. Re-write the whole thing and repeat points 1-8 above until 2nd draft is complete (frustrating)
10. Re-write again until 3rd draft is finished (satisfying)

After THE STORY comes THE PROCESS, and I'll cover that in the next blog-post.
Because now I really must get on with EDITING, and not BLOGGING.

Don't Panic!

As Corporal Jones would have said, "Don't Panic, Mr. Mainwaring!"

But I can't help it - I've got myself in another fine mess by declaring the launch date of Florida Key to be April 22nd in Wivenhoe, and June 24th in Montolieu...

AND THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO

I can't even begin to think of the launch, the promo, the music, the invitations, the food, while I'm still working on the words, going through all the edits, corrections and cock-ups.

And I'm only about half way through, which means I've got another half a book-full to get through.

But never mind - thanks to Adrian at the favourite (and only) wineshop I know, I am at least able to get my head around the drinks provision, so no need to worry, I'm telling myself.

So, we're not all doomed!