Tag Archives: coffee

Where’s Wally? (Spoiler alert – somewhere warm and sunny!)

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It’s been a while since I did a blogpost, so apologies for the lack of updates. So why have I been missing in action? It’s been a bit of a whirlwind month and I’ve finally begun a nice long writing sabbatical.

Although I released Dirty Little War in 2016, most of last year was taken up with non-fiction work. Although 2017 started out the same way, I did manage to wrap up all those annoying projects in the first quarter so I could put the second quarter of the year to good use.

Specifically, to write the lesbian romances and urban fantasy stories that had to be put aside for far too long. To get myself back in the mood, the wife and I are in Europe, working on books and  taking time out from commuter hell. With the farce that it Brexit, it makes sense to enjoy this before the British politicians ruin this forever.

So, other than sampling lots of delicious wine and tapas, what does this mean…?

Research, right?

Creative – new ideas and first drafts

I’ve started researching a new urban fantasy idea that I suspect will have romantic undertones, but the characters haven’t quite fully formed yet. There is a definite connection between them, so if it turns into something interesting then it might be a 2018 release, which sounds far away right now, but these things roll around quickly!

I’ve also been putting the final touches (helped by all that food and drink ‘research’) to the first draft of my 2017 summer romance. The plan is currently to release before June, barring any last minute hiccups or the complete thumbs down from my editor.

Editing – the slow, tortuous road to publication

Another plan is to release the second book in The Lazarus Hunter series later this year. Full disclosure: I’m not happy with it in it’s current form, so I intend to do a serious edit before handing it over for someone else. It’s been a stumbling block for two years. Given that this is not a lesbian romance, or even with two specifically lesbian main characters, I’m also toying with branding options so people don’t leap from the romances to this expecting the same thing. It’s a tough one and I’ll probably end up reaching out to get opinions on it.

Publishing – and all the other bits that go on behind the scenes

Nothing yet, other than putting marketing plans in place and thinking about book covers. I’ve got a working title for the summer romance but again, it could get canned when my first round of test readers get to it. Instead I intend to enjoy this quiet time to actually reappear online after simply having no time for such things for months.

Planning and dreaming – what’s coming up next week

It will be a ‘more of the same’ kind of week. So I probably won’t do another blogpost and instead focus on getting the first draft truly finished so I can get the edits started on that. It feels strange not to have client meetings taking up so much of my time, so I want to get a few more ideas in the bank. The third quarter of 2017 is still up for grabs, so if non-fiction takes over again for a few months, I’d like to have something to run with in the background.

But for now, more wine, more good company and more romance. Research is the best thing ever.

A mini travel break…

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So, I have added up the numbers and I spent more time outside the country than I did inside it this year. That is quite the achievement. It also means that this year was the first one in a long time where my life has had such a huge impact on my writing, rather than the other way round.

I would love to say I have managed to achieve some kind of balance and that everything has been nice and simple. The reality, no matter what you read or how much you prepare, is that when you are on the road or anywhere outside the predictability of your own environment, then the world will most likely throw you a curveball. People who seem switched on all the time seldom really are. I certainly have never met anyone who is doing it all, all the time.

Now the holiday decorations are up and I have nearly a month of no travel. Even though it is a busy time of year with friends and family, it does mean I will be able – in theory – to establish some kind of routine again. I find myself disproportionately excited about this. I hope it will be a time of consistency and progress; something I sorely need if I am to start 2015 correctly on all fronts. Paying gigs have all been delivered on time and sometimes that has been at the cost of my own work that matters to me most.

This is a time for dreaming. Dream big and start small. I have a day booked for reviewing my business plan, setting my writing goals and looking forward to see how I can make the travel work better for me in 2015. I will lock myself away with a coffee and be brutally honest with how the year has been, its successes and failures. Then the tough work really begins.

After all, if you aren’t happy about something, change it.

NanoWrimo – How did your first few days go?

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It should be no surprise to anyone that a lot of writers will be blogging about NanoWrimo a lot at the moment. It’s pretty much the social highlight of the (aspiring) author calendar, at least for the first week in November. After that, things start to die down a little bit, as those who signed up because it sounded cool but had no real interest in putting in the hard yards to complete the challenge drift by the wayside.

For the rest of us though, we will plough on *determined face*. Remember, coffee is your friend.

November beginning on a Saturday this year has given a lot of people a special push to get going. Hopefully people were able to take advantage of some time off from their day jobs (apologies to those who have to work weekends too) to push out a few extra hundred (or maybe even thousand) words to get them going before the Monday morning blues kicked in. If so – bravo!

But what if you were one of those people who signed up and it didn’t quite go according to plan? Word count still at less than 500? Never fear, there is still time to catch up. That is the beauty of the challenge lasting for a whole month. There are good days and bad days, but in many ways how is that different to life in general? Any published author will tell you there are days when it feels like pulling teeth and they wonder how they got a book deal in the first place. The key: get up, dust yourself off and keep going. The good days will come.

So how did your first few days go?

All Experience Counts

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They say everything that happens to you – good or bad – prepares you for being a writer. Let’s take the case in point: coffee.

In the morning, I need a cup of coffee to get me going. It actually takes about three cups for me to really hit my writing stride. Luckily for me, my first part time job while I was in college had a six hour shift pattern. I was smoking back then (young, cool and stupid) so I had an obligatory 10-15 minutes to have both a smoke and a cup of coffee before I returned to work.

coffee

My body became super conditioned to drinking hot coffee. Really hot coffee from an industrial boiler. I’d watch my fellow part-timers throw away cup after cup of half finished coffee (or tea), lamenting the fact there was never enough time to enjoy a proper drink before heading back out. Not me. I needed that cup otherwise I would be as brutal as if I had missed out on having the smoke. Again kids, do as I say, not as I do. That habit has been kicked for over a decade now and I intend for it to stay that way.

Not the coffee though. I kicked it for a while and went totally caffeine free. By then I’d worked up to about twenty a day, which struck me as replacing one habit for another. So I cut back and went cold turkey over a couple of weeks. I’m sure I was a joy to be with.

Writing life though, tends to be about compromise. Do I want to be able to get in a thousand words before 7am each morning? You bet I do. Does that mean getting a little juice inside me? Of course it does. As I sit down at my desk each morning with my first scalding cup, I know it’ll be gone in less than 10 minutes and 100 words. The next cup will go just as fast, but with more words attached. Three cups in the hour and I’ll have hit my 1000. After that, it’s decaf all the way baby, because I know how easy it is to associate writing with bad habits. Alcohol, smoking, drugs to make your brain more capable of coming up with the ideas that – if you weren’t writing a novel – would make you either a psychopath or a sociopath. Coffee seems a safe alternative in comparison, but I don’t need any gateway drugs, thanks.

Still, the crappiest job in the world prepared me to better embrace the thing I love the most, and for that I am eternally grateful.