Just when you thought the editting was just about done...

You ever tried writing? Cause this is what you can expect. You've been editting and editting and editting for months and then you realise you have to re-engineer large slabs of the story and then you re-edit and re-edit and then you walk away and think 'you know what? I think I'm close to finishing this section off'.

A month later you walk back to your manuscript to do one final pass and this happens:

 

And trust me, this isn't one of the bad pages.

Page after page of this stuff.

<Sigh>

 

Stupid dumb compulsion to write stuff that doesn't exist anywhere except in my stupid dumb imagination... grumble grumble grumble...

Writer's Update - Oh so many apologies.

Apologies go out to anyone who has been checking in at the Aether Age hangar the last month because the updates have been... well, they haven't been. There just hasn't been any updates.

But I have a good excuse!

You see, four weeks ago I got this thing called a 'proper job'. One that pays consistently, on time and at a level that can fund my existence with food and shelter and other good stuff. It has been a while since such a phenomena has been a regular part of my life and it's been a very welcome change of pace. Very welcome indeed.

The problem was that, unbeknownst to me, the person I was replacing - and who was in charge of training me for the position - was sort of leaving in a hurry. A three day hurry. Three days in which he was sort of more interested in planning his holidays and attending job interviews at other work places. He was a nice bloke, but his mind was very much elsewhere.

Three half days of training later I was cast adrift on a sea of confusion and 'yeah, just work it out for yourself, the best way to learn is to be thrown in the deep end, etcetera etcetera' and the last month has been one big long attempt to stop drowning in confusion and frustration.

But I survived! And here I am, ready to get back to my now long-neglected-yet-highly-involved-hobby-slash-calling, writing strange little pulp stories with funny characters and bizarre sci fi dieselpunkiness.

Big breath in, big exhale out, and a sincere 'It's good to be back.'

So again, apologies to anyone who kept coming back for more pulpy/dieselpunky related stuff but from here on in I hope that everything will be able to get back on track, including some updates on a few short story projects I'm working on, as well as the impending release of my first wave of novels. But I'll keep those details for future updates.

See you soon,

The Author of this weird little blog,

Grant.

Writer's Update - Death of a Writing Nook.

In terms of writing progress it wasn't a very good week and a half I'm afraid. Didn't get much writing done thanks to a whole lot of time spent training for future employment so, while productive in one way, it was completely unproductive in the other. And to make matters worse I'm in the middle of a huge edit where I have to restructure one of my stories to cut it in half, all thanks to a character who selfishly stole the spotlight and made the story all about her (you will meet her one day and see what I mean). This situation has taught me that writing is a bazillion times less satisfying when you're adding words, not just remaking words you thought you had already finished a long time ago. A bazillion times worser!

But that's not the worstest part. The worstest part is that on Friday my favourite cafe for writing shut down!!!

Now, I have to admit, the 'my favourite writing cafe' and 'shutting down' are probably connected. One of the best parts about my favourite cafe was the lack of customers. That and there was also an air-conditioner, comfy chairs, decent music that was either a) too quiet or b) not that annoying, and most importantly, there was plenty of sugar and caffeine on tap made by people who already knew what I wanted. Apparently it wasn't very good coffee but I'm coffee illiterate so as long as there was plenty of sugar and caffeine in said coffee-related beverage then it was fine by me. Which helps when you're looking for a quiet cafe with few customers.

But now it's gone. And I have lost my writer's nook.

: (

In other writing news the Dieselpunk Showcase is quickly approaching 4,000 downloads. We're getting about 80 downloads a week which is pretty awesome. Now I need to get my finger out and write something else as a follow up. Which is a good segue into...

Short stories. Last writer's update I said I'd mention the Tales of the Aether Age collection I'm putting together to release at the same time as the Tommy Thunder books I'm writing. It's going to be an eclectic mix of at least four stories that fleshes out the Aether Age world.

I'm still going to be a bit sketchy on the details but there will be some familiar espionagists, a mad scientist whose secret lair is under attack from one of those annoying cloaked vigilantes, an automobile-equipped gin runner with more than her fair share of moxie, and maybe even an origin story for a most stylish character that will become important later on. All stories laced with as much 'punk as I can possibly distill into my typewriting fingers, not to mention plenty of pulpy fun ('scientifiction' pulpy fun).

Now all I've got to do is finish writing the things...

However, it's not all about me. Often... it's about Superman. The following clip is important. If you haven't seen it yet then you should. Because it's important. And awesome. So very very awesome:

Hope you have an awesome pulpy week    : )

Grant: the guy trying to edit old stuff so he can go back to writing new stuff.

My first writer's update.

Hi. My name is Grant. And I'm a writer...

Okay, so I've been avoiding this. Avoiding the need to post a writer's update for a while now. It's not that I have something against writer's updates - far from it, they're the staple of most writer blogs and the reason people show up at writer blogsites - it's just that once I do one update on where I'm up to with my writing then I'm gonna have to keep doing them. For the rest of my writing career.

So the pressure is on.

Actually, I was hoping to delay giving writer updates for a while because I didn't plan on blogging until I had most of my writing ducks in a row ie when I actually had something to write about ie when I had things like book covers etc to show. But then the Dieselpunk Showcase opportunity came along and that wrecked everything. I had to dash out there and set up a blog, and apply for one of those GoodReads author accounts, and sign up to Amazon... A whole lot of work. But it did get me out there in internet writer land and for that I'm grateful. And I have a GoodReads author page now. Which is pretty cool :)

And now there are people googling my name. Which means... the pressure is back on. <disconcerted smiley>

Speaking of the Dieselpunk Showcase: we recently passed 3,500 downloads. Which is pretty good for an indie. It's a free book so a percentage of those downloads will be people who wont get round to reading it (they're called hoarders because they like to download stuff for the sake of downloading stuff - apparently it's a thing) but if even half of those copies are read then the project has been a success for our intrepid little band of authors. And with a steady trickle of downloads still coming via Amazon and more reviews and ratings showing up on GoodReads all the time, etc it can only get more successful.

If you have arrived here after reading the Showcase then, yeah, I'm the bloke who wrote the first story in the anthology, That Sort of World. Hope you enjoyed it. I've only got one more story on the web at the moment, a story posted over at Alternatehistoryweeklyupdate.blogspot.com called The More Things Change. It's another free short story set in the Aether Age universe, this time in a little gambling town called Las Vegas. It was a complicated little story for such a small word limit but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Which brings me to the important stuff. Tommy Thunder and the Aether Age stuff.

If anyone's interested there is plenty of Tommy Thunder and Aether Age writing in the pipeline, all of which should be released some time this year. At the moment I am working on four separate books that I hope to release all at once some time in the next three months. (The schedule is up in the air until I finally do get around to organising covers and braving the gauntlet of paperwork that is the American IRS application form).

Yeah, that's right. Four different books to be released at once. With several more to follow.

Why four? The plan is to release enough story to get people interested in hanging around for the next issues and I figure if people like the first book then they'll want to read the next book but if it isn't released they may wander off and forget about me :( So I'm going to release four books and people who like my writing will be able to buy as many of them as they like and get properly immersed in the series etc.

Of the four books, three will be Tommy Thunder, Scourge of the Skypirate books (#1-#3) and the other will be Tales of the Aether Age volume #1 which is a book full of short stories similar to That Sort of World set in the Aether Age universe but not directly linked to Tommy's Carribean adventures.

And the names of these books (at this minute, which may change before publication)?

Tommy Thunder in: The Black Vixen of Deadman's Island & The Mystery of the Silent Zephyr.
Tommy Thunder in: The Race for the White Fedora.
Tommy Thunder in: The Big Fight at The Crater.

and...

And I'll keep the names of the Aether Age short stories for another post. I'll also have another post soon about how far I am along the path with each individual book etc etc.

So, if you've just wandered in - welcome to my quirky corner of the interwebs. If you've visited a few times then feel free to ask any questions you have or give any feedback on the website or my writing and I hope you stick around to enjoy the bizarre mix of Dieselpunk, pulp, alt history and other vaguely associated things this blog is turning into.

Cheers,

Grant. The bloke who writes the stuff.