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Editing is not my strong suit…

When I was a kid, I read Maggie Prince’s Memoirs of a Dangerous Alien three times straight because I couldn’t bear to leave the world it was set in. Later, I found my sister’s hardback copy of The Time Traveller’s Wife, read it and immediately set out to find a signed paperback copy and read it all again, in all its sharp, painful beauty.

Unfortunately, it turns out that reading your own book – in the name of editing, of course – four times in a row is a sure-fire way to fall out of love with it. And maybe I’ve pushed it too hard.

I was supposed to go away with some friends at the weekend, but after a long, hard week, decided that I needed some self-care. And again, of course, that’s exactly what I didn’t do, finishing a third edit of Small Places and immediately starting on a fourth, only pausing on Sunday afternoon once I’d made the hundred and fifty-eighth change.

(In fairness, there are just over 72,000 words. Messing around with a couple of hundred each time isn’t awful)

But it did occur to me as I switched my brain off to enjoy a Fast and Furious film (guilty pleasure) that it probably isn’t the nicest thing to do to myself. So I’m slowing down a little. I’ve made a list of possible agents to query, but maybe I’ll do another edit first. Perhaps it’s best to wait until I’ve stopped dreaming of line edits and woken up thinking that there’s a massive plot hole somewhere in it.

I’m fairly sure there isn’t a massive plot hole in it.

Who knows – if all the agents say no, then it’s full speed ahead with self-publishing and you could be reading this by summertime.

I think my brain needs to recharge. And I know book blogging is hard for you guys, so please, look after yourselves as well.

I will if you will?

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Introducing Small Places: The Best of Intentions, The Blackest of Magic

I’ve been intrigued by urban fantasy for a long time. As a teenager, I was quite into Shadowrun, the faery cyberpunk series, and later, I picked up Charles de Lint’s wonderful Spiritwalk and inhaled a host of his books, continuing with Moonheart (backwards I know), The Onion Girl, The Blue Girl, Widdershins and more. At the same time, I came across the Merry Gentry faery detective erotica series (it feels unkind calling it paranormal romance) which I also greatly enjoyed, and need to finish at some stage!

It’s something that I sort of explored in Aenigma (apologies – it still needs a bit of a re-write) which is set in a modern world very much like our own, with the simple addition of faery and humans trying to co-exist uneasily.

But I wanted to write something tighter, something closer to a modern faery story, closer to what might be considered a ‘classic’ tale with a modern twist. Partially inspired by a few concepts I’ve come across in a book I’m reading, at the same time (well, sort of) as going walking in the woods, and a host of other pieces of inspiration, I’ve started a draft provisionally entitled Small Places which looks at faery in modern day England.  

It’ll have witches and woodsmen, the seelie and the unseelie, fantastic beasts and weird alchemists, as well as friendship, hope, despair and growth. I’m still working on the structure a bit, but it really seems to be flowing much more easily than Wild Court was. So bear with me, and hopefully I’ll have updates soon.