Book of Lost Nights

Today there was a nibble.

I was not on hand to attend to the nibble, which happened at 3ish, as I was out eating a rather nice Byron’s burger with Melanie and Kathy in Guildford. Kathy paid with her earnings from writing, which is pretty awesome.

After that we knitted in the garden for a bit and then Kathy and I went to see “Star Trek” in Crawley (her hubby didn’t fancy it for some reason), which was my second time and her first.  I think I liked it better this time to be honest. We had the Popcorn combo which involved a vat of Diet Coke and a bag of salted popcorn that could have fit both our heads in. We munched and slurped and cheered on the crew of the Enterprise, and then I drove her back to Guildford. I was tired but happy when I turned up at the flat at one am.

And then I switched on the laptop, and there was the Nibble. It was one of the agents, who’d started reading Mephistophela and was finding it interesting (hopefully not in a “may you live in interesting times” kind of a way), but before she went on, she wanted to know if I’d been signed yet.

I said “No”.

JJ’s coming up tomorrow to spend a couple of days holiday, and I think I’m going to turn out to be a very erratic hostess…

5 Comments | In: Food, Movies, Writing | tags: agents, knitting, reviews, star trek. | #

An agent rejected Mephistophela today.

She wasn’t one of those that requested the MS, and I feel oddly okay about it. She’s the first to reject this draft and I feel like I’m back in territory I understand, the territory of form letters and recyclable pages.

It is, at least, movement.

Okay, enough philosophizing. I’m off to clean the bathroom. And swear at it while doing so.

7 Comments | In: Writing | tags: agents. | #

So things are moving and shaking in Agentville. Well, it’s all good, I guess – it’s just that I don’t handle suspense well, so waiting for word from agents is killing me by slow degrees. I don’t really do delayed gratification, full stop. I know the fact that I find it uncomfortable won’t make it happen any faster, too. I know nothing can be done. But it makes me want to SCREAM.

I also keep having to remind myself that this is the best it might ever get. This is also rather chastening.

I’m finding it very hard to concentrate, but I’m glad I finished the latest story, Sex and the Single Hive Mind. It’s up for crit at the T Party tomorrow in workshop, don’t know how it will be received. I had a laugh writing it though, in its grisly, gallows-humour way. I also suspect it was really good for me to work on something small (5K) and fast and funny rather than the Herculean novels which take infinitely more effort.

But I now have no excuse for not getting back to Sleepwalker. And the thing is, I’d done a fuck-ton of work on Sleepwalker before I got distracted by Mephistophela‘s fabulously hopeful albeit bewildering reception, and then writing the story for the T Party. About 70,000 words worth of work, in bits and pieces. What it means is that there is just so much jumbled raw material that I am totally intimidated by picking it up again. I don’t know how it fits together. I don’t know whether it’s crap or not.

Baby steps is the way, I know. I have some Green and Black chocolate, and I shall put the kettle on, and at least attempt to make it show some kind of coherence…

No Comments | In: Writing | tags: agents, short fiction, t party, workshop. | #