December 21, 2021

It's beginning to feel a lot like...

Life in South Australia is topsy-turvy since the border opening and the vaccination and testing regime ramped up. In a world of lockdowns and closures, I am fortunate to have a job that was uninterrupted by the events – and a job that escalated in pressure each time schools moved to online learning. The school year rushed to a frantic conclusion and today I start a holiday break long sought since the 2020 outbreak.
 
So, to the writing.
 
The Girlie manuscript is with a publisher awaiting a decision. I have my fingers well and truly crossed.
 
I am currently editing the two new drafts for The Last Wizard series – Chasses’ Song and Jaysin’s Song – with the aim of making a first approach for the project to a publisher late January. This will require transferring the physical manuscript edits onto the digital copies hopefully by New Year, and then writing three detailed synopses and a cover letter in early January, a task alone that will consume significant hours.
 
Now I am churning through ideas for the fourth The Last Wizard book, Harmi’s Song, which is the dragon’s story as Tam, Chasse, Jaysin and Harmi are called to face the threat of the Kermakk Empire that is determined to hunt and kill the last dragon and wizard. I am unsure as to when I will start this project – although it is already nudging me to begin.
 
I have also completed a draft edit and update of the novel In My Father’s Shadow, written a synopsis for it, pulled it from the Amazon store (it was never promoted and sold maybe five copies to family), will retitle it (the first title is an echo of far too many other works), write a cover letter and see if a publisher will consider publishing it. Recent beta readers have told me it is one of my better works with the exploration of a young man’s coming of age as he unravels a family secret and his father’s terminal illness covering currently important topics around sexuality, faith, identity and love, so I really don’t want it to languish as an unknown and basically inaccessible novel. Like The Last Wizard project, I will make the first approach to a prospective publisher with this novel late January.
 
And I am trying to work out how to reconnect with the writing world in general. I am planning on submitting different short stories to various magazines in 2022. I have about twenty existing short stories to draw on. While Robert Stephenson published five for me in different issues of his Altair magazine, and Paul Collins published two others in anthologies, I have many more that have never been shared, so a new challenge for me is to start submitting stories.
 
That’s the update. I promise to make the next entry in January more informative about techniques and approaches and thinking. I’m pretty excited about where the work over the past four years has gone. This entry is just to say I’m working on stuff. Merry Christmas to anyone who reads this. I hope you are all safe and can spend time with family and loved ones.