Progress Report October ’23
Happy Halloween! Hard to believe we’re almost at the end of 2023. Ooooh, they go faster every year, though, don’t they, things aren’t what they used to be when I were a lad etc.
The WGA strike is at an end, which is great, and even greater, it seems from most reports that the writers… kinda won this round. A qualified win, of course, as such things always are, but some significant progress on many of the areas of concern. The gears of Hollywood grind back into action therefore and writing and other preparatory work on the Best Served Cold film (as well as a few other projects) is underway again, but the actors remain on strike so it’s far from all systems go and there’s no casting that can be done. Can’t say much more about that right now, but my good buddy Tim Miller who’s gonna be directing has been talking a little bit about the project and our epic quest to bring the First Law to the screen, among other things (Best Served Cold stuff later in the interview, around the 29 min mark)…
But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, as they say, and the strike did give me an opportunity to give The Devils my undivided attention for a couple of months. The good news there is that I’ve tackled the editorial notes and my own structural concerns, chopped the end around a bit and looked at all the points of view and arcs in turn, and I’ve now got a second draft I’m pretty happy with. It’s gone off to my editors – Gillian Redfearn in the UK and Lindsey Hall in the US (who I believe just won a Hugo award the other day, so congratulations to her) – for its line edit. That’s when the editors mark the manuscript up in detail, draw attention to specific concerns and make more focussed suggestions. The first discussions about the cover art will be happening in the next month or two as well. After that there’ll probably just be a couple of run throughs from me to consider setting and the detail of the language before it goes to be copy edited at the start of next year and is basically done. In the meantime I’ve started work on planning the next book, and, if you can believe it, I’ve actually written a thousand words of the bastard too. A thousand BAD words, but still.
In other news a couple of special editions have released and should be working their way to those who’ve preordered. Subterranean Press’s lettered edition of The Great Change and Other Lies (which is a novella length collection of four short stories accompanying the Age of Madness) sold out long ago but at the time of writing you can still get the numbered edition with awesome artwork by John Anthony di Giovanni, and there’s an e-book edition too. Meanwhile boutique ultra high end publisher Curious King have started shipping their three sumptuous letterpress editions of The Blade Itself with lashings of beautiful art by Tommy Arnold. Afraid these all sold out within an hour or two of going on sale but if you want to live vicariously you can see Fantasy Book Critic Petrik unboxing his copy on YouTube, and here’s a few photos from my own copies, including the ludicrous leather-bound lettered edition with a binding like a renaissance bible for which 26 lucky punters paid, much to my own personal amazement, over 2 grand a pop. What a time to be alive…
Progress Report August ’23
Time ticks away… The current WGA strike is now well over a hundred days long – longer than the last one – which has of course brought all writing work on any US-based film and tv to a screeching halt. The writers have now been joined on strike by the actors, which really has killed […]
Progress Report June ’23
The big news over the last couple of months is that there’s a film adaptation of Best Served Cold in the works. Not much more I can say at this stage. It’s in the casting and scouting phase and the script has been revised and rewritten about a million times. Doubtless it will need to […]
Progress Report April ’23
A busy bank holiday weekend followed by a rush to get a contract signed has meant that I’m just a couple o’ days late for my April progress report, so here it is at the very start of May… The good news is I’ve finished a draft of the last part of The Devils and […]
Progress Report February ’23
Finally, I actually produce a progress report when I’m supposed to. We’ll have to see whether that continues… I had a discussion with my UK and US editors about the state of The Devils thus far – three quarters of it, that is, and I think we’re all feeling broadly positive, though there’s a lot of work […]
2022 In Review
Another New Year’s Eve rolls around all too soon, and we all know what that means. Happy birthday to me! 48 today and STILL a fresh new voice in this GODDAMN GENRE. This time last year I was crossing my fingers for better times ahead as the pandemic faded in the rear-view mirror. Hasn’t quite […]
Progress Report November ’22
I blink and it’s been 5 months since I did a progress report, god damn it, so HERE IS ONE. I’ve finally finished part 3 of The Devils, and sent it off to my editors. We shall see how they respond. Hated it while I was writing it, which isn’t entirely unusual, but somehow always […]
Progress Report June ’22
I’m conscious that my progress reports have been few and far between lately. I’ve got a lot going on but not that much that I can actually announce or discuss, which makes progress reports every two months a bit of a pointless exercise… The first draft of my next book The Devils is grinding on, […]
2021 in Review
What’s that you say? It’s New Year’s Eve, I must be 47 goddamn years old today, and ANOTHER year passes under the bridge? Those bastards keep coming, don’t they? And this one has, I think it’s fair to say, been particularly hard work on the whole. I don’t think any of us really imagined a […]
Progress Report June ’21
That time again already? Honestly, it’s been a slow couple of months. Lot of tedious administrative stuff to do, and I’ve been grinding away in a rather unsatisfactory manner on the new book, but I’m trying not to worry too much about it and let it take as long as it takes. If there’s one lesson […]
