First things first, for those out of the loop: A Glitch in the Continuum and Attack of the Fifty Foot Book are no more. Basically, a mixture of cold feet between the publisher and some authors have caused these anthologies to breathe their last. It's no one's fault, really. Just one of those things. And in working on 'this side of the fence' I've come to understand just how mercurial the small press can be. I'd like to be able to resurrect these anthos in the future (because I think they both had really cool concepts, if I do say so myself) but we'll have to wait and see. In any case, I hope to be able to edit/compile other anthologies, for whichever publisher, but this is something I'm going to concentrate on after I'm all sorted.
"Sorted"? Yes, I'm moving house! What?
Living the highly profitable* lifestyle of a published writer allows me to make my abode in such a place as a damp-riddled maisonette. Every morning, I get a breath of bracing cold air thanks to the highly effective* double-glazing, and feel the invigoration of the same cold temperature once I leave my bed thanks to the equally effective insulation. Sets me up for the day ahead!
But, I can't live in this sort of luxury forever, and so I'm moving, somewhere really downmarket. A semi-detached house, with central heating. How the mighty have fallen! Please, don't cry for my awful circumstances. I get to share them with my platonic wife. She likes to remind me that I need to finish washing her pots. It's a fun thing we do. She also likes to tell me how to pack boxes, because moving house repeatedly over the last few years has not given me this rare and useful life skill. None of these things in any way wind me up and kill any writing buzz I might have had.*
But seriously. I've been struggling to write lately, for these reasons, and because I hate the idea of starting a new story when I have a shitload of unfinished ones stuck on a broken USB stick. I have duplicates of some of these stories, but they're 'unedited' and I can't face re-doing all the changes because I intend to get the USB stick (hopefully) fixed. In the meantime, I'm trying to work on a few stories, including a pulp/horror/superhero piece that is currently stuck somewhere in the Fifties, but I might move to modern times, and a prequel story to yet another story that hasn't been published.
I do like to link a lot of my stories together - and was only really able to do this once I stopped writing things where everybody dies hahaha I'd like to think that, after I've been going for a few more years and picked up more of a readership, constant readers will start to notice references to other stories, or events, or maybe even the inclusion of previously-used characters. I know it's a little obvious to cite Stephen King as an influence, but when I was a teen I read his stuff religiously, a bit like how I am nowadays with Bentley Little. I thought his Dark Tower saga was so good I didn't want to finish reading it. So I stopped halfway through the last book. The way he weaves a multitude of his stories into that world is brilliant, and though I wouldn't want to do something on a similar scale, I do like the idea of there being this 'place' that incorporates elements/characters/what-have-you from existing realities/stories.
And on that non-ending, let's call it a night. Some of us have boxes to badly pack and other people's pots to wash.*
*not really
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