The New Book

(Oops! I wrote this yesterday, got busy and forgot to post it.)

The book I've been writing for the last few months is almost finished! I completed a fourth draft, or pass proof, a few days ago and I've been going through it looking for any last-minute changes. So far I've spotted a couple more spelling errors and, more importantly, fixed a minor inconsistency (one character talks to another about an event that she could not possibly know about at that point in time).

I've also come up with a title. It's quite possibly not final but at this point I think it's the best I can come up with. Unless I think of something better between now and Sunday night, it's probably going to stand.

Why Sunday? Because on Monday Harper Voyager (Harper Collins' science fiction imprint) is doing something very interesting - for two weeks they'll be taking manuscript submissions direct from writers. It seems that they want to move more into the eBook market and in addition to moving many of their existing titles over they want to add in new titles by new authors.

If I was superstitious I'd have to say that this would be some kind of omen; that they happen to be doing this at precisely the time that my manuscript is going to be ready seems like incredibly good luck.

My plan is therefore to submit the 'script to them first thing Monday then wait for a bit. If they accept it there are some pretty huge benefits, so keep your fingers crossed for me, gentle reader.

After Monday, though, I'm planning on stepping back from the writing for a while. I have some writing ideas that I want to think about, but I'm not intending to put much effort into that right away. I have some other things that I want to focus on for a bit; in particular Kate bought me teach-yourself-piano kit consisting of an electronic piano and lessons in the form of software (by teachers at Juilliard, no less). It's brilliant and I was working my way through the lessons a while ago before the book started taking all my free time. I definitely want to get through the entire course (something like 300 lessons if I remember right) before I come back to writing. I'd like to be able to say "I can play piano" before too much longer.

By this time next week the book should be at Harpers and I should be back to piano lessons. But you know what they say about plans...