It’s been a busy week. Yesterday I finished my current WIP – a contemporary thriller about a man who discovers the daughter he never knew he had has been kidnapped. He’s a selfish bad ass and decides he’s going to go teach the people who took her a lesson. It helps that he’s immortal but not as much as you’d think in today’s Denver. My initial beta readers have literally been harrassing me for each new chapter as I’ve been writing which is quite the most positive response to anything I’ve ever written. So who knows – this might be a little bit good. Still, there’s a long way to go before it’s ready for the next round of beta readers (I haven’t forgotten you!) because it needs a proper edit and a proper critique. Once that’s done I’ll be sending out people who are interested in reading an advanced draft before I start thinking about sending to agents.
At the same time I have my first collection of short stories out for editing with a superb editor for one of the great sci-fi and fantasy presses at the moment. Looking forward to getting his comments back at the end of the month. This one will be free for signing up to my newsletter (the first proper issue of which has still to come – I’m nothing if not reticent to send out emails without proper content…). No idea about covers yet but we’ll see. I’ll discuss the stories themselves in detail later but just to say about half of them exist in the world of A Family War but none of them are about Helena Woolf. The provisional title will be ‘The sky’s not blue any more’.Then, this evening, I finished applying and considering the edits I received on book 2 of the Oligarchy, which will henceforth be known as ‘A People’s War’. I’m really excited about this book – it was my second full novel and I believe my writing had developed more of what I consider to be my voice as I came to write it. It’s dense sci-fi but fully focussed on how ordinary people live through tumultuous times and how they decide what they’ll do when faced with epic choices. Plus we get to understand more about the real war, how Helena’s family is embroiled in it and what she might be able to do to change the fate of the world. The cover for this one should soon be underway by the awesome Lawrence Mann. 

All in all I’m a bit lost as to what to do next…I have a novella screaming to get out and I should really start the third and final part of the Oligarchy. For now I’m just going to have some sipping whisky and relax.