Time after time after time after

Thursday evening I was supposed to be "sitting in a chat room" (I just realized how weird that is. I would be in my apartment, but simultaneously in a chat...) talking to readers and others about my fourth release, Where Shadows Lie: Campaign Trails. I was not, but not because I missed it, or was conscientiously objecting. I was not because the chat didn't happen, because the release didn't happen. I post from the publisher's email to the authors:

"It's not any one thing but a cascade of problems with multiple people this time that have backed up everything. I feel I owe it to you to do this release right."

The CEO did not go onto to say what those problems were, or who those people were, or even how we could help, but I am happy to say there hasn't been a lot of public speculation on it, either. And I feel pretty sure it wasn't me. The edits were done for my book a month ago, and I have already made my peace with certain changes that will be made that will make the book worse, and me look stupid. Seriously. 

I also dropped off in regards to updating this blog everyday. More sketches are coming. The weird thing is, I wanted to do all the modern-setting sketches at once before I started in on the sci-fi and the fantasy. I didn't want to go back and forth. For some reason that was important. Moreover, I thought I had more sketches from the WSL books. However when I thought about the exposition that I've done, and the slices of exposure that were already in the books to be read, I ended up with less than I thought. I normally include characters' motivations and reasons in there somewhere, to make empathy easier. Only in the case of characters like Maggie and Claus was it more like "through inferences, the reader can tell that these are hunters. They hunt. Moving on." And I suspect it'll be the same for the sci-fi stuff, although here recently I've learned about using ethnography to create believable worlds and societies, so I'll be doing some of that, too.

And the meetup I'm attending today is the place where I learned about all that. I wrote earlier this morning. Chapter six drafted, and pretty pleased with it. So, I won't be attempting to work through thoughts while divining smells and getting comfortable in foreign furniture. I will be trying to read some of the other entries in the western sci-fi contest I entered. It wouldn't be right for me to vote without having gone through all the entries. And hopefully everyone else is of the same mindset. The owner of the site maintains that a new edition is coming out soon, taking into account all the work that's been submitted since July. I have to admit I had much higher hopes earlier than I do now, but it isn't necessarily bad. It's just early, and new. Everything seems to bend back around to patience. 

Every, damn time.

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