It’s strange, the places life takes you. Today I find myself in a ‘conference centre’ – a kind of up-market motel designed to take people out of the real world for a few days. How did I get here? Well, by surprise and blind luck, mostly.
Those who know me, know I’m a compulsive writer. Whenever stuff stops happening to me, I reach for a palmtop computer and start scribbling. Part of my ‘early retirement‘ deal with myself is that I get to write for big chunks of time every day – not just in lunch-breaks. In part fulfillment of this deal, I recently finished a novel.
Time and Tyde is about an ordinary guy (Vince) whose life turns to crap when he is visited by a time-travelling jerk from the future (Tony). It was absolutely the best fun to write and I put the last full-stop to it with some regret. (Not too much regret though since it meant I could get back to several other writing projects I’d put on hold.)
Once in my life, I was interested in having my writing published. I used to send things out to publishers and agents and collect the rejection letters as you’re supposed to. It was sort of cool but, in the end, a rather sterile way to pass the time. Eventually, I gave up. The writing I do is for me, really, so why put myself through the hassle of licking stamps and hefting thick wadges of paper to the post-office every few years? Actually, I didn’t give up completely. I’m not immune to vanity (no, really) and the idea of my name on a dust jacket has a certain amount of attraction. So I have yielded to the temptation now and again.
I wasn’t going to bother with Time and Tyde though until someone I was corresponding with told me about the Orbit / Queensland Writers’ Centre retreat. This turned out to be a few days in a conference centre on Bribie Island (which is off the coast of Queensland, Australia) where aspiring new sci-fi and fantasy novelists could get their manuscripts reviewed by a publisher and an editor from Orbit and talk to various other publishing professionals. The only catch was that you had to submit part of your manuscript for judgement and only ten authors from all over Australia would be selected.
Bummer! Still, I gave it a go – mainly because it was a shit-hot opportunity, it was quite reasonably priced, and I was feeling pretty good about my spanking new novel. Anyway, as I’ve already given away to those who were paying attention, I got in. And here I am in the sub-tropical sunshine, head full of flattering comments from Bernadette Foley (publisher and all-round nice person) thinking, for the first time since I was about 16, that I may actually be in with a chance to get some kind of career going in this business. Of course, being older and wiser than your average Airedale puppy, I keep slapping myself across the face and saying, ‘Calm down, you fool, nobody’s promised anything, let alone signed anything.’ But a little voice in the deepest dungeons of my achey, breaky heart keeps whispering, ‘Not yet, but they might one day!’
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So I thought I’d start this blog. Either this is the moment that will kick off my writing career and a string of successful books, or it is the moment that kicks off this blog and nothing else but a chain of disappointments. Either way, it might be interesting to chronicle. The fact is that this is the closest I have ever come to publication. It is the first time that a publisher has actually read a whole manuscript of mine. The second time a publisher has read anything I’ve written (as far as I’m aware). So you can’t blame me for feeling that this is quite a breakthrough.
Anyway, a surprisingly-good conference centre lunch beckons me, so I will leave you for now. But watch this space as the story unfolds. Hell, with a new blog I might even be inspired to talk about all the other writing stuff I’m doing. wouldn’t that be interesting? Ah well, suit yourself.
[...] Here is what I wrote in the initial post, and here is what I wrote last year on this day. [...]