Month: September 2013

Lazy Weekend; Games and Cloud Atlas and stuff

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I haven’t done anything constructive all weekend. It’s been great.

Friday night we went out for a belated birthday celebration (steak at Outback, which was disappointing; the rib-eye was tough and over-seasoned), and bought a bunch of birthday goodies—some games, a Steam gift card, and some TV shows and movies on DVD and blu-ray.

Saturday: I had to re-install my Steam client (it wouldn’t connect), then I bought a couple of games with the card: Alice: Madness Returns—the sequel to the original American McGee’s Alice—is ready to play, but I haven’t started it yet; Syberia and Syberia II were 75% off so I got those, too.

I played Syberia when it came out, but that was a long time ago, so—especially since it only cost about $2.50—I went ahead an bought it. And spent most of Saturday playing it. I hadn’t intended to—I was going to play Alice—but I started it off, just to remind myself how it looked, and got kinda hooked. Interesting game, and very Steampunk.

Sunday: started into some of the DVDs. First up was Cloud Atlas, and it’s been haunting my thoughts since. For the first half hour I didn’t know quite what to make of it, and I wasn’t sure how the bits connected, but things started to come together by about halfway through, and by the end I was enthralled. I can’t get certain scenes out of my head. I’m going to have to watch that again soon.

Next, Star Trek: Into Darkness. Damned good. I will say no more.

Rounded off by watching a few episodes of Castle, season 5. I love that show.

So: it’s Monday morning, 6:45am, and almost time for me to fire up the work laptop and get into day-job stuff. I feel rested and ready to go, so without further ado, I’d better get on with it. Until next time . . .

Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia Release: October 12, 2013

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The title says it all; I’d mentioned here, a couple of posts back, that the date was October 13. That was incorrect (the 13th is a Sunday). It’s actually happening the day before. Next, I’d better fix my Twitter header . . .

Psst… Wanna Read My Book?

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. . . Well, you can! Advance Reader Copies of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia are available as PDFs for a short time, and you can have one in return for an honest review posted on Amazon, Goodreads, or your own blog. Xchyler Publishing might want to quote you, too. Interested? Click the Contact tab above, fill in the form (make sure to include a contact email address that I can pass on to the marketing director at Xchyler, who will be sending the ARCs out) and submit it. I’ll take it from there.

While I’m blogging, let’s have an update. Last week was a nightmare—flooded roads Monday, family member in hospital Tuesday and Wednesday, then water in the basement Friday; laid over that was a slew of day-job technical problems that had to be fixed. Despite all of which I managed to finish proofreading Gunn & Bohemia. What a week.

Today, working at home while waiting for guys to come and dry out the basement carpet. They didn’t show up until 2:30pm, but when they did they got on with the job.

On the writing front: I’ve been working up a short story for Xchyler’s next Steampunk anthology contest, which opens for submissions at the end of October. I have the whole story in my head; next step, write it out scene-by-scene.

But that can wait a bit. Today’s been busy and I feel the need to wind down. Time for dinner and telly; I have an urge to watch The Dresden Files if it’s still listed on Netflix.

Until next time . . .

Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia Cover and Release Date Revealed!

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Earlier today Xchyler Publishing announced the release date of Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia:

October 13, 2013

As you can imagine, I’m hyped. But wait, there’s more! Here’s the cover picture:

MrGunnDrBohemia_Cover_Final_hi-res-vignetteI’ll post more news as it happens.

 

Floods and Book Progress

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First of all . . .

To those who asked about how the floods affected us, thank you! We’re lucky, in that our place is on ground that’s a little higher. As such, although there were some problems on the roads, and it looks like the wet got into the electrics in the garage and took the fridge down (fixed by running an extension from another room), we got off lightly. Please spare a thought, though, for those not so fortunate, and make a donation if you can. Right now we have blue sky, but the forecast is saying there’s more rain on the way, and we’re still getting flood warnings on the telly. It’s not over yet.

Book Progress

The last couple of weeks has seen a big burst of stuff going on with Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia, in that a whole herd of different jobs all came to a close at roughly the same time. As I mentioned in an earlier post, we now have cover artwork, back-cover blurb, bio, acknowledgements, and dedication all done. Yesterday we finished the proofreading of the individual chapters—another milestone! The next step, I think, is for those chapters to be compiled into a single mock-up, which will go off to various people for a semi-final reading to spot remaining problems. That should be happening just about now, in fact, if I understand things correctly. I should be getting my copy pretty soon. On the publicity front, I’m expecting the official release date and the cover artwork to be revealed sometime in the next week or two, and there’ll almost certainly be a Facebook release party announced for the big day.

Loose Ends

Which means, by the way, that right at this moment I’m at a bit of a loose end. It’s a bit after 2pm Saturday, and just for once I’m not writing, or editing, or proofreading. After months of spending weekends and evenings on G & B, it seems weird and alien. So, I’m doing what any writer with time on their hands would do: I’m thinking about the next writing project. To be a little more accurate, I’m thinking about five writing projects, and deciding which of them is going to be next. Two of them are definitely not in the running for now. At this moment it’s a three-way toss-up between:

  • a steampunk short story for Xchyler Publishing‘s next anthology;
  • Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia II: The British Empire Strikes Back*;
  • getting back to work on Smoke & Mirrors, the full-length story I put to one side six or seven months ago.

There’s plenty of time to decide; whatever I do, I won’t be starting in earnest until G & B is wrapped up and ready for release.

On that note, I think I’ll whiz out to the store and grab a chicken for dinner. Until next time . . .

* Chance that there will be a sequel to Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia: 99.99%. Chance that it will have that title: 0.00%, even though I’m a big Star Wars fan.

Release Party on Facebook NOW

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J. M. Salyards’ book Shadow of the Last Men is released today, and there’s a Facebook party going as I write this. Come and join in the fun!

Expect Big Things

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The last couple of weeks have been completely, absolutely insane. At work, the seeds of this were planted a few weeks ago, when one more senior developer decided to move on (for unusual reasons, too: he passed his bar exam, and he’s gone off to be a lawyer). With him gone, that left just one SD in the place: me. And as problems came up on one system or another, I’ve been drafted in to fix said problems. A few weeks ago I worked exclusively on one system; today I’m consulting on two systems, fixing problems on a third, developing a fourth from the ground up, single-handed, and I’m expected to spend half my time on a fifth project starting next Monday.

At the same time, on the Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia editing front, I’ve been spending every evening and weekend working on that. Hence the lack of posts here, since if I had time to blog then I had time to edit, and the editing had to come first.

And it’s all been worth the effort. Sunday I finished a major edit of one scene that my editor-in-chief had pointed out as having serious issues, and then yesterday I finished the last two chapters. So, all I’m waiting on now is (1) feedback from those changes, and (2) proofreading. On top of all this, the editor-in-chief had her own problems—car, phone, and Internet all pfft! gone at much the same time, just when things were getting heavy. Frankly, I’m amazed that everything is still pretty much under control, and—at least from where I’m sitting—apparently on track to meet our deadlines and get the book out the door on the scheduled release date.

Other essential bits are all done, too: the back cover blurb is finalised, as is my Bio page and the acknowledgements. And . . . we have a cover! Yes, the artwork is done. Things are happening; all is finally coming together, and I’ll be reporting developments here.

In other words, Watch This Space and Expect Big Things. Over the next couple of weeks I should be announcing the cover reveal and the official publication date, and I hope to be posting a bit more often in the run-up to the release. Exciting times indeed.

Until next time, gentle reader . . .