Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks here at, um… well, I feel like I should call my office Bootlesquith Manor or something now. Anyway, it’s been a busy time, getting a new ebook ready and published and starting to make people aware of it…
Yes, the project formerly known as Bootlesquith Manor is now available, under its proper title, The Ballad of Matthew Smith. This was my 2012 NaNoWriMo novel, tidied up over the last year in between other projects and now released into the wild.
This has been a labour of love for me, just something I wrote as a bit of fun, and not a work of world-changing literature, so where possible I’ve made it free – the exception being amazon, where you are invited to report it as cheaper elsewhere – all the links are on the sidebar.
There’s a lot I could have done with the story, a lot of ideas that got cut, including some philosophical meanderings about the nature of the house, Frank and Matthew’s different worldviews, and there was a whole bit about Matthew being his own grandfather that was both fun and brilliant, but never got expanded upon and was completely cut from the published version. Ged Williams’ storyline never really felt complete, and Bryonetta Bootlesquith too is a much better character in my head than she appears in the story. I could, circumstances allowing, build the existing story into a full novel – a Director’s Cut, if you like – and put some of those ideas back in; however, I suspect it will remain as it is, warts and all. Bryonetta, however… she may well find her way into The Ambivalence Chronicles at some stage.
The Ambivalence Chronicles is among those ‘other projects’, a comic fantasy/sci-fi epic I’m planning as 8 short novellas, the first of which I have been promising to release this autumn. Which is to say, now (ish).
And given that it is now November, this leaves me in something of a dilemma: to NaNo, or not to NaNo? Can I possibly come up with 50,000 new words at the same time as getting Ambivalence Bit#1 ebook ready and holding down a day job?
Well, clearly not, and to attempt it would be crazy. So, my NaNo challenge this month is to get Bit#1 ready and released (an interesting challenge in itself, since it doesn’t even have a title at this point!), and – to make it sufficiently challenging – get Bit#2 to a state of completeness so that only final edits are needed prior to release early in 2016.
Looks like a couple more busy weeks then!