Global Warming Book Project

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My publisher, Adventure Books of Seattle, has launched an interesting project that will recount 1,000 personal experiences of Global Warming. If you have an experience or a memory that shows how weather patterns / wildlife, local or international, have changed then email your name, location, (they can be as specific or as general as you wish) and the memory / observation / views / opinions / anecdote to: absubmissions@comcast.net Put Global Warming in the Subject header.

You can read about Adventure Books and their selection of novels here

The 'process' of writing

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Many people say they have a book in them and promise they'll write it 'one weekend' but paradoxically the writing part of the process is both the easiest and the hardest part. Why do I say that?

It's the hardest part because writing, while fun, demands your whole attention. It demands rewrites, edits, and more rewrites. It means labouring over each line and paragraph, assessing whether the right word / tone / mood is used.

But when you finish the book, you realise it was actually the easiest part of the process because you now have to pitch it at agents and publishers. You have to read rejection slip after facsimilied rejection slip. You have to submit to another rewrite of your precious 'baby' only to have more rejection. You have to dodge vanity press and all the scams that are waiting to ensnare you.

Finally, you get an acceptance. But does it end there? No. It goes to the publisher's editor, who rips it apart and suggests a rewrite. You do the rewrite, read the proofs, edit the proofs, ad infinitum, until finally the book is approved on all sides and the manuscript is sent to the printer.

I'm still proofing the edited version, so I have a little more to go. But the book I loved, has been read and re-read so many times (50 times at least), I can honestly say it makes me physically sick to pick it up. Writing can be a pleasurable hobby but if you're really serious it should be a heartless Dominatrix, cracking its whip, and forcing you to crawl on your knees for your 'art.'

God, I love writing.

Here's a link to Big Bang, my first to-be published novel.