[writing] Pleasing progress on several fronts
An unexpected foreign rights check in the mail this week, as well as an expected-but-no-idea-when contract and a hoped-for-but-unexpected contract. This business is so weird. I made more writing money in three days than I've made in months. In order, Mainspring earned out in Germany in its first reporting period (or first year, I'm actually not completely clear on this) and paid a decent royalty besides, I got the METAtropolis: Green Space contract, and the Green novelette I just wrote, "A Stranger Comes to Kalimpura", was accepted. I'll formally announce the market for that acceptance when the editor blesses me to do so.
Pleased writer is pleased.
Speaking of METAtropolis: Green Space, yesterday I wrote 2,800 more words on "Rock of Ages" yesterday, to 14,000 words. I'd originally estimated this at 15-18,000 words, but the shape of the plot is heading more to 20-24,000 words. It's unusual for me to be this uncertain of length, but some of my best work has come out this way, so I'm not going to complain.
I'm glad to have been writing. Chemo will shut me down today, and I won't write again for at least a week, maybe longer. I really hope to finish this novella in my next cycle, because I'm not too far from the long-term dissolution of my writing brain as a chemo side effect. Once that grinds to a halt, based on prior experience, I won't lay down new wordage until May or June of next year.
Some WIP:
He wound up seated - with a strap to keep him there against microgravity - in a semicircle of chairs facing a large virteo monitor in a small and otherwise featureless room. The woman who’d met him was there, along with a hard-bitten, whipcord thin Asian man who could almost have been Bashar’s age, and a much younger and doughier man with pink eyes and brittle hair who seemed to be suffering from a metabolic disorder.
“I’m Cherie,” said his host. “That’s Lu,” she pointed at the Asian man, “and Bibendum.”
“I’m Credence,” Bashar said. It was the name he’d used to get into Schaadt’s Shack, and thus - at least in a sense - was a verifiable identity. These people might be strangely naïve about physical security, but he’d bet every Euro he’d ever had that they were at the razor’s edge on data security.
“Where’s Feeney?”
“Dead.” His voice freighted with the conviction of a truly bald-faced lie, Bashar went on. “Killed in a dope grower’s cross-fire two days ago. I knew he had the meet up at Schaadt’s Shack, and so I went to keep it.”
“Hmm.” She glanced at Lu and Bibendum, then back at Bashar. “You got the maps?”
“Depends. Which maps do you need?”
“We can handle the blast distribution and hydrological calculations. We need the locations.”
Pleased writer is pleased.
Speaking of METAtropolis: Green Space, yesterday I wrote 2,800 more words on "Rock of Ages" yesterday, to 14,000 words. I'd originally estimated this at 15-18,000 words, but the shape of the plot is heading more to 20-24,000 words. It's unusual for me to be this uncertain of length, but some of my best work has come out this way, so I'm not going to complain.
I'm glad to have been writing. Chemo will shut me down today, and I won't write again for at least a week, maybe longer. I really hope to finish this novella in my next cycle, because I'm not too far from the long-term dissolution of my writing brain as a chemo side effect. Once that grinds to a halt, based on prior experience, I won't lay down new wordage until May or June of next year.
Some WIP:
He wound up seated - with a strap to keep him there against microgravity - in a semicircle of chairs facing a large virteo monitor in a small and otherwise featureless room. The woman who’d met him was there, along with a hard-bitten, whipcord thin Asian man who could almost have been Bashar’s age, and a much younger and doughier man with pink eyes and brittle hair who seemed to be suffering from a metabolic disorder.
“I’m Cherie,” said his host. “That’s Lu,” she pointed at the Asian man, “and Bibendum.”
“I’m Credence,” Bashar said. It was the name he’d used to get into Schaadt’s Shack, and thus - at least in a sense - was a verifiable identity. These people might be strangely naïve about physical security, but he’d bet every Euro he’d ever had that they were at the razor’s edge on data security.
“Where’s Feeney?”
“Dead.” His voice freighted with the conviction of a truly bald-faced lie, Bashar went on. “Killed in a dope grower’s cross-fire two days ago. I knew he had the meet up at Schaadt’s Shack, and so I went to keep it.”
“Hmm.” She glanced at Lu and Bibendum, then back at Bashar. “You got the maps?”
“Depends. Which maps do you need?”
“We can handle the blast distribution and hydrological calculations. We need the locations.”