This is the time of year when you’re more likely to see zombies than normally. I know—I was one yesterday. The cumulative lack of sleep caught up with me. The sleep that gets sacrificed because I get up early in the morning to write before I go to work. I was in a trance. I left the house and forgot to close the garage door, for example, and that was just the first of a number of numb-headed things I did. I decided to skip my morning writing session today and catch an extra 90 minutes of sleep instead. Those batteries need recharging every now and then.
I printed out the third draft of Missing Persons yesterday (94,000 words, 330 pages) and I plan to spend the weekend reading through it to look for places to implement some changes my agent suggested. Then I’ll send the whole deal back to him once that’s done and he can read over the modifications and the final 100 pages of revisions that he hasn’t seen lately. Maybe by the end of November it will be ready to shop around. I hope.
I’m getting eager to start working on the next novel. It’s all I think about in my idle moments these days. Still haven’t come up with a good title for it yet, so I think I’ll just call it West of the Pecos for now, which is where it is set. I’m seriously considering taking a 3-day road trip in later November to review the setting and get some local color. There’s only so much you can do from travel books and internet searches, and it’s been a dozen years since I traveled the road that will be a focal part of the story. If the book takes off on me, I’ll pack up my laptop and do some on-the-ground research, perhaps during Thanksgiving week while trying to meet my 1700 words per day goal for NaNoWriMo.
I received my official invitation to take part in the Signatures event in The Woodlands on November 29th. The organizers are expecting 500-700 people, and the main draw is former first lady Barbara Bush. It’s a daytime event, and I get to sell and sign during a couple of breaks. I may also be doing a chat for Biting Dog Press the evening before that—I’ll have more info about that later once the date and time is confirmed.
Here’s some fun news: Stephen King is producing a Dark Tower graphic novel series with Marvel. Check out the news release and some sample artwork here.
Bev,
You are known in the small press as “that guy who writes about Stephen King,” although you also write fiction of your own. I’ve seen your posts on message boards and seen your website, but I haven’t been able to find out exactly how you met King or how close you are to him. I was wondering if you see your friendship with King as something that will help your own writing career or something that will hinder it? Does knowing King get your stories read or accepted faster, or do editors give you a harder time because they want to make sure you’re not just some guy who happens to know someone famous? I ask only because the small press is a much smaller community than the big press, and it seems like everyone knows each other and it’s always the same names that pop up in ‘zines and anthologies. People are always talking about what an incestuous community it is, and I thought someone in your position might have some interesting thoughts on the subject.
Best of luck with your new novel,
Dave Hamilton
Dave:
Obviously my access to King helped a great deal when it came to working on The Road to the Dark Tower but I haven’t yet seen an instance where it’s had any effect one way or another when it comes to my fiction. Who you are and your previous publishing credits only get you so far when it comes to getting a short story accepted somewhere. The story, ultimately, has to stand on its own. Name recognition might get your story pulled out of the stack and read a little more quickly, but if the story sucks, or if it doesn’t mesh with the theme of the anthology, editors don’t cut you any slack.
Thanks for your comments!
Bev