Ghosts of imagiNATION.

It seems Thursdays are becoming my blogging days. I didn’t plan this. It just sort of happened that way. I guess now’s a good time to sit down and come to terms with what this blog really is. It’s funny because I can remember when the word “blog” didn’t exist and everyone had “online journals” like Livejournal or, in my case, a Deadjournal. So when “blogging” became a part of the cultural vocabulary, I figured it was all the same–you know, all these people writing their own journals about whatever. I didn’t realize until relatively recently that the term “blog” has grown to incredible proportions, with all sorts of flavors out there. I never considered myself much of a blog reader until about six months ago when I started a new job that required me to be in front of a computer all day long. Some blogs are updated all the time, 24 hours a day; others, not so much.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I’d like to think of this as a “journal blog” of sorts. It’s me, my thoughts, opinions and such, recent happenings and announcements of writing-relating things. It’s the viewpoint of another writer trying to “make it” somehow. I probably won’t post every day. It may be irregular depending on what’s going on at the time, because 1) I have a life (however miniscule); and 2) I have a job. Some folks are lucky enough to blog as a profession. Until someone decides to start paying me to wax poetic, rant and/or bitch about whatever comes to mind, I’m afraid I’ll have to just do it whenever I can, and whenever I have something to say or share.

That’s two full paragraphs of digression. I hope you don’t mind.

I finally started editing my novel, imagiNATION. It’s been a long time coming, and I admit I’ve been putting it off for as long as possible, even going as far as starting other stories that weren’t full developed in my own head. Why have I been running from it? Well, it’s complicated. It’s a very personal story (well, all stories are personal, on some level, but this one goes deeper than that), and writing it was part of a healing process. Once finished, I realized I need some time away to obtain the required level of objectivity. So here it is, over a year later, and I decided to take it to work with me.

And lo, red ink did flow as blood. It was slow going, but I did slice my way through about 8 pages of text (out of maybe 400 or so). There’s a long way to go, but now I’ve started, and I’ve no choice but to keep my head down and trudge forward. I’ll update about this along the way, as I suspect this process is going to take about as long as it took to write the damn thing in the first place, which was about nine months.

It was a very difficult pregnancy, you see.

I mentioned last time that I’d started a new story that would probably become a new novel. That’s true. I did start something. And it will become a novel–just not yet. I have about 7k words of it. Not much at all, in terms of the projected scope, but it is a start, and I’ve decided to give it more time to gestate. I’m not ready to pursue a novel of its kind of length just yet. I don’t like have a billion projects running at once, and it’s time I finish imagiNATION once and for all.

That’s not all the editing I’ll be doing, though. I’m going to make it a point and finish editing some of my other short stories so that I can make them available here. For those of you who are new to my work, you’ll find plenty of surprises. As for the rest of you who are familiar, you’ll find plenty of old favorites.

I received the [last] proof copy of ALT on Monday and it was spotless. I submitted the book for distribution approval that same evening. Hopefully the Distribution Gods will smile down upon me. Hopefully, within 6 to 8 weeks, ALT will finally be available on Amazon and other retailers.

In the meantime I’ve been looking into a new possible course with the e-Book version of the novel. Cory Doctorow released all of his novels for free online under the Creative Commons license project, and has been insanely successful over the last few years. I put up a poll on my deviantART profile to gauge a response and, for those who bothered to vote, a little over 50% said they’d be more interested in buying the book itself if they could read it for free. Of course they could be lying, but they’re mostly nice folks so I’d like to think they’re honest.

I’m going to get some more feedback on this before I go through with it. In the meantime I’ve removed the e-Book from Lulu until I make up my mind. Hope you don’t mind.

I think that covers it for now. It’s been a long day, so I think I’m going to kick back and relax for the evening.

Later, folks.