Pippa's Journal - 7/11/12

With all my co-bloggers off to Anaheim to celebrate their latest Golden Heart awards, I'm flying solo - eeek! So bear with me if there's a bump or two. :-P

Summer in the UK seems to be a misnomer at the moment. I'm writing this post on the Sunday, and once more it's raining outside. Ironic, really, since back in February the water companies announced a hosepipe ban after the UK suffered its driest winter on record. Within a couple of weeks of the ban taking effect, the heavens opened and have pretty much carried on that way ever since. With my family of redheads being as white-skinned and sunburn prone as I am, I don't miss days of blazing sunlight. But the constant wetness of this 'summer' is making me feel depressed. And rather soggy.

And the summer holidays are fast approaching. In the UK they run from mid-July until early September. Wet days mean bored kids stuck indoors with a mummy frustrated by her lack of writing time. For some crazy reason I've signed myself up for my first nanowrimo - Camp Nanowrimo, that is. For the whole of August. While my kids are home. Insane? Quite likely. Still, I wrote Keir during one summer holiday in the hope of saving my sanity and 'finding' myself. Now I find myself stressing over how to keep the kids from strangling one another...if I don't get there first. :-P

Summer is meant to be fun, and even if the weather lets us down in a typically British fashion, I'm determined this one will be good. My sister, myself, my eldest and my neice all have birthdays within two weeks of one another from the end of July. Keir will celebrate his third 'birthday' on the 17th. On the 23rd August I'm meeting up for real with the first writer I ever friended on Facebook - Ian Peaston, a talented scifi author and musician who will be playing at the Edinburgh Festival. I'm so excited I could scream! Ian was the first person to show me that I wasn't mad - or, at least, only mad in a way most authors are.You can check out his writing here and his music here. Both are unique and imaginative, and have gone a long way to inspire me on the way.

But in the mean time, I have yet another exciting piece of news...

Success

Keir will be available in print! Woo hoo! For various reasons, it seemed unlikely when I first signed my contract. Keir was outside the word count limit for print editions, although there was a sweetner in the form of print rights reverting to me soon after the digital release. That, at least, gave me the option of using a POD service to make print copies available, something I learned about while researching self-publishing. However, just before the weekend my publisher contacted me to say that she wanted to try a print run of Keir. Of course, it's very experimental and should it not work out the print version will get pulled--until the print rights revert to me, anyway. To say that I'm thrilled by the news is putting it mildly! I'm honoured at the faith Lyrical Press are showing in me and Keir, and excited that I'll soon be able to hold a print copy in my hand. I love my Kindle and love the ease of downloading digital imprints. Trust me, I'm very at home with digital publishing. But there's still a lot to be said for having a print copy. I've already seen a working version of the cover and a PDF of the interior. It's one of the prettiest things I've ever seen! :) Keir and Hard Core are the two novels heralding the reopening of Lyrical's print line due out in October, and you can read about it here.

Action

In the meantime the race is on to finish the edits on the sequel, find a new name for it and get it subbed to Lyrical Press before the summer holiday starts. I have just six mornings of child-free time to do that. That's just fifteen hours! Feeling the pressure! After that, planning and then writing my camp nanowrimo project will take me to the end of August. By then I'll know if Gethyon has found a home, where Keir has been placed in the Readers Favorite Contest, whether Tethered is a finalist in the Rebecca, and possibly whether Keir is a finalist in the EPIC awards. Unless anything else comes up in the meantime, I'll spend September working on Tethered for submission, and maybe the nanowrimo story When Dark Falls. My youngest starts full-time school then, giving me five glorious days a week to work! Woo hoo!

It's weird looking back to a year ago, when I'd just signed my contract for Keir. Or three years back when I hadn't even started working on Keir, and writing was a long-forgotten hobby that had been taken over by working, and then children. I can't believe how far I've come in that time, and I can only imagine where I've still to go. On those days when it seems I can't get the words down and I stress over not having other titles scheduled for publication, I have to remind myself how much has changed in just two years. Sometimes you need to stop and appreciate the things you have.

Ping Pong

At Donna, Sharon and Laurie - have fun Firebirds!