MORBID THOUGHTS, DOOM, GLOOM, AND THE END OF ALL THINGS.

In my country, I’m classed as an optimist.

   WRITER? MADE A WILL? IT ISN’T ENOUGH. Once more I run over the concept in my head. On the internet, typing in block capitals is considered SHOUTING. Leading me to conclude that using italic type is leaning into the wind, and underlining a word means I’m walking on a tightrope. ^Superscript denotes the use of uppers, _subscript the ingestion of downers. Bold writing…I’m unsure. Perhaps the paint is just thicker there.

   I felt like a SHOUT. Of gloomy intent. I’ve become interconnected, and leaving important documents inside a fireproof safe is no longer enough. Images of actresses adorn the wallpaper on my computer’s desktop, reminding me that I take an interest in things beyond typing stories. I go off and watch stories, too.

   There is a rectangular black hole on that desktop where a photograph of an actress once resided. A flash of yellow invades the darkness. My gloomy beacon, my lighthouse of mortality. It signifies the end of all things.

   The canary colour belongs to a folder icon. In blogging it’s best to avoid using white type against a dark background for the main body text, though this design element works well in limited form – for titles and headers. I use white on black for titles and headers, not the main show. For I am human, have limits, and can only read white-on-black text for so long.

   This large black patch on the desktop is meant to be noticed. The yellow folder, with its white title, is also meant to be noticed – by anyone else. Some random person. Not by me. The great danger in life lies in being more organised than anyone else in your life.

   I am disorganised. With the best will in the world, I hope to avoid criticism of those close to me. Bless them, faults and all. Those faults make those people worth knowing. I am the most organised person out of the whole bunch. And must leave a signpost for chance.

   Chance is a fine and unfine thing. In the week that I published my third e-book, LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I avoided becoming roadkill. Chance, infrequency of traffic, plays its part in that. I continue to avoid becoming roadkill, as that sounds like the best policy to me. Highlight of that week?

   I had a few highlights. The top spot goes to chance. I leave my office and head for the kitchen. Plan. Dump some rubbish. Go! Time spent on the act is short. I face the window for a few seconds. In that thin slice of my life, a massive magpie lands on a post. It gives a shake of the old wings, sorts itself out, then launches into the cold wet day.

   Not an earth-shattering event. I see this by chance. And it makes my whole week. I have that writerly mind, lodging the incident in the rusty memory banks. Might come in handy, one day. I return to the office, with its computer, computer display, desktop, desktop icons, and. My lighthouse of mortality.

   At the time of writing, in the year of the Maya calendar’s last gasp, my published work carries © protection lasting seventy years beyond my demise. Something I must prepare for. We pretend existence goes on for all time, but no one gets out alive.

   If I am killed unexpectedly by some drunk or undrunk driver, my blog will cease. Unless it’s been set to automatically publish while I’m on a holiday that results in my death. If I suddenly stop blogging unannounced, have I gone to join the Choir Invisible? Perhaps.

   Internet contacts will tentatively e-mail, noting that I’ve been quiet of late. How am I doing? Have I given any thought to the latest publishing news? Afraid to open the box, and discover whether or not this particular cat is still alive. Leading to the old joke.

   Is he dead?

   I hope so – they buried him.

   Though in my case, instead of burial, my ashes should be scattered where deranged and non-deranged devotees cannot find me. I long-ago concluded that my fate was to become a cult figure’s cult figure. Not guilty of crimes, war or otherwise, I’ll still be lumped in with those whose last known rest remains determinedly unknown. Barring accident, presumably somewhere in Sunny Scotland.

   (I’ve noted that writing on the internet cleanses my work of irony and filters sarcasm from the end-product. Using Twitter to describe LYGHTNYNG STRYKES as epic porn robbed the statement of all humour, and made the declaration seem as though brought down from a mountain on stone tablets. Which made the whole thing so much funnier – to me, if no one else.)

   If I am the most organised person out of the whole bunch, it falls to me to arrange a trail of breadcrumbs for distraught persons to follow. Dealing with death is not pleasant. Unknown contacts must be located.

   I speak, in general terms, of helping an author on the internet. What does that actually mean, to those I leave behind? Nothing much. That fellow-scribbler could have engaged in minor contact with me. Who to contact, with bad news?

   Multiple e-mail accounts and social networking appearances are phantom shapes in the misty terrain of my life. I must determine a list of business contacts worth bludgeoning with the grim knowledge. And I must place that list inside the fireproof safe.

   The list is of no immediate use there. It is useful to the one who has instructions to retrieve the fireproof safe from my abode, on being informed of my departure. So, for reasons of immediacy, the list of contacts must go inside an envelope left sitting prominently on an actual desktop.

   That information is repeated inside the electronic file folder glowering in the black space where an actress used to linger on my computer’s digital desktop. And the folder is marked IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH. Same as the envelope, sitting on the black desk behind me.

   E-mail addresses, and what to say to those who should be informed. Not precisely. Loosely. I can’t very well be asked to note the nature of my own passing in advance. Not without ploughing a very deep furrow of morbid humour.

   Here lies RLL, telling lies about a demise that happened before or after sunrise. It was quick/slow, quick, quick, slow. Painless. Sudden. Agonising. Drawn-out. Delete as inapplicable. Died a hero. Wasn’t missed. Endured death by a thousand (and three point five) cuts. Didn’t feel a thing. Victim of a tragic sequence of outré events, considered funny under other circumstances.

   The legacy? Championed the words arcane, outré, #unhashtagging, and whom. Will be remembered for writing EPIC porn. Had no sense of internet humour, though was marginally funny in unreal life. Believed the best villains had a V or K lurking in their names. Remained hostile to the Net Book Agreement. Like Nelle Lee, praised the repeal of the Corn Laws. Until the last, held an irrational fear of irrational fear.

   The reality is that my death will be late in getting to those who should be told. It’ll run perfunctorily, with a slot in the subject line taken up by SAD NEWS. You were one of RLL’s business contacts, and it falls to me to note…

   Wisely, unwisely, I hold an empty view of my literary legacy. I consider my writing disposable. It is supposed to earn money to pay bills. If someone somewhere in the world gains a degree of entertainment from my writing, I’d say that’s good. Well, I would. Wouldn’t I?

   Will my writing change the world? No. Inspire other authors? Too soon to tell. I hold stern views on SOURCES OF INSPIRATION. If I inspire other authors, it’ll be nice of me to take the blame. I don’t think in terms of literary legacy. All writing is experiment, to me. I haven’t the time to plan a monument to myself. You’ll find me in the lab, not in a studio carving narcissism in marble.

   In the meantime, I’ll continue to dodge large white vans that appear from virtually nowhere. Recently, I tried one

Tried one what? I have no idea. The Man from Porlock haunts this blog. I speak of Sam Coleridge, composing poetry. (The blog entry on FREEFALL opened with a reference to Coleridge. Must be something in the air.)

   In Xanadu did Coleridge write. Until his epic poem was interrupted by a knock at the door. Enter Porlock Man, who engaged Coleridge in banter that has gone missing from the history books. The poem Kubla Khan ends with the milk of Paradise because Porlock Man broke Coleridge’s chain of thought.

   My blogging was interrupted by a telephone call from the Red Queen. She almost appears in Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords. If I’m not hit by a white van, she’ll feature in other stories. Though SOURCES OF INSPIRATION ARE MEANINGLESS, that particular source of inspiration is meaningful. I’m unexpectedly forced to blog about the Red Queen.

   Next time. For now, I am left wondering what I recently tried. I know I tried one. Something tells me I didn’t try two. Maybe I did. Who knows? Damn the Man from Porlock. Robbing us of the rest of that poem. Damn the Red Queen? Never. My writing has no lasting literary worth, and whatever I was about to say is lost, shot to hell, without a scrap of thought for its importance.

   The Red Queen works her magic, and all is right with the world. For the first time in my life, I speak about the unspeakable topic that I consider unleashing on my blog. She thinks everything will be fine. It’s a vote of confidence that tips the balance in favour of open discussion. Stay tuned.

   To end, I’d just like to add this. Recently, I tried one. Good job I wasn’t killed after writing that, as I haven’t left instructions for dealing with the rest of the sentence. I wonder what it was I tried. Can’t have been important. Unless it was.

NEXT BLOG: WON’T BE ABOUT TRYING ONE.

#UNHASHTAGGING.

What do I mean by that title? Perhaps it’s my way of simply cutting loose. Looking back at the first phase of my mad science experiment in self-publishing on Amazon Kindle, and pondering the distance I’ve covered. Did I achieve much? Pardon my bias. The answer is YES.

   I published three books, as planned. That’s 600,000 words of material, stacked on my electronic bookshelf. My approach was simple. Do it. I did. No great secret. I made formatting mistakes down in the lab, so that I wouldn’t make them in the marketplace.

   For the most part, my writing was of the written-and-rejected variety. I added a few thousand words here, and some publishing notes there. Pre-publication blogs were scribbled down, and boosted the word-count. I even made the time to write short stories – unfinished business – over the weekend leading to the launch of my short story collection.

   Yes, I embraced the immediacy of self-publishing on Amazon. Rejected Book One went on sale. I had six weeks to give my short story collection the fiction factory treatment. A second Deployment-Day came and went, and I had six more weeks to give a massive book the eyeball before pushing it out of the aeroplane. There it goes, floating on the breeze.

   I could have written books from scratch within that same timeframe, and published them. A brutal schedule, if I’d aimed for the same word-count at the end of the period. But possible, at the rate of a knee-weakening 15,000 words per day every single day. Rain or shine. Rabid activity.

   Wouldn’t give much for the quality of that material, without editing time thrown in. Or the state of my sanity, come to that – especially given the state of my sanity to start with. Stories must have time to breathe. Some distance is required, to deflect the contempt thrown up by familiarity and over-familiarity with the text.

   Not too much time to breathe. The artist lets the paint dry, and the painting is sold. Apply that rule of business to the publication of fiction. The cake was made, and had to be eaten before it went bad. A poor choice of image – digital stories on the electronic bookshelf have a long life. Still, you seem to be absorbing the general idea.

   So the first phase of the plan is done. Do I resort to burnout, and throw material up for grabs every six weeks from now until I keel over? No. To tackle slim*thriller, I must spend time training. Deciding how I want to handle the visual elements in that story, then learning how to prepare the piece for Kindle.

   Other considerations knock at my door, tug at my elbow, and seek my divided attention. In the closing phase of editing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I was plagued by industrial levels of static electricity. I’d have found this ironic, but for the inconvenience. My sense of humour clicked off.

   In my last blog entry, I spoke of traffic. The single greatest consideration in being published was not quantity of material written. Quality of material didn’t come into it either. Style. Editing. Pricing. Availability. No.

   My single greatest consideration, with roadworks all over the place, was traffic. Before publishing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I avoided a car that came out of nowhere. My avoidance was massive. After publishing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I made a critical error glancing back at an obstructive road sign.

   An optical delusion almost turned me into a pancake. Somehow I paid attention, and avoided being painlessly steamrollered by a van. I recall telling myself, caustically, that throwing my flimsy frame in front of a van just AFTER publication would be as bad a career-move as doing so just BEFORE. Everyone’s a critic.

   Battling streets, I was in a post-publishing daze. I struggled to reconcile my view of reality with actual reality. Through treacle, my brain operated. Pointing out the car. For weeks I’d worried that I’d be hit on my way to publish a book. Foolishly, on that third publication day, I gave less thought to returning from publishing. The van and the car missed me by miles. Well, shorter distances.

   This sort of nonsense is the stuff Twitter seems to have been invented for. The Twitter, the Facebook, the Google+. Not forgetting the E-post. The Blogger. I don’t quite sing about bodies, electric or otherwise. People who can’t sing shouldn’t.

   In thinking over social and anti-social networking, I catch sight of a long-lost pal. Paper. It’s strange that I recycle so much paper, at a time when my use of paper has declined. As an author, why don’t I care about seeing my books on my own shelves?

   I just don’t. E-publishing is the route to market. Not a paper deal. LYGHTNYNG STRYKES doesn’t contain any Nin quotes. The book does contain handy page-references for the quotes I wasn’t granted permission to use. How the hell could I get away with that, through a paper publisher? I’d be informed that this was a jolly bad show. Not par for the course. Underhand. Let me pause to take the matter up with my publisher.

DARTH SINISTER: What is it?

MOFF LARKIN: Lord Sinister, the Nin estate has refused permission to quote breathless prose.

DARTH SINISTER: Set the DEATH STAR on course for Louveciennes.

MOFF LARKIN: Is that…wise?

DARTH SINISTER: Perhaps I could blow something else up.

MOFF LARKIN: You propose another target? A literary target?

DARTH SINISTER: I was more concerned with parking, if I’m honest. Well, we can always skip the quotes and just list the page-numbers. Leave us.

MOFF LARKIN: As you wish, my Lord.

DARTH SINISTER: Moff Larkin…

MOFF LARKIN: Er…

DARTH SINISTER: Check the hull integrity.

MOFF LARKIN: There’s precious little integrity in Hull. And I should bloody know.

   The digital world surrounds us. Social networking is no use to me if it serves to note my collision with a van. Paper is something I scribble notes on. I become a publisher of my own fiction, and take out the rubbish as well. It’s just me, at the keyboard…

   As far as storytelling goes.

   Oh, there are ghosts at my elbow. Literary figures. Influences. Sources of, ahem, inspiration. But I am alone with my thoughts and the sound of my speech as I go into Silly Voice Mode. Writing is not a team-sport.

   Yet the digital world surrounds us. Self-publishing involves a crowd of writerly contacts spread across the globe. People ask for help, receive help, or just float through in a neutral way – observing. In some cases, old-fashioned paper letters are sent out. Then there’s the Twitter, and the Facebook, and the body electric. Walt Whitman was an internet fan. He just died before he could realise that.

   I see a great round wonder rolling through space,

   I see the shaded part on one side where the sleepers are sleeping,

   And the sunlit part on the other side,

   I see the cities of the earth and make myself at random a part of them…

   Hell, I’ve done that from a mobile phone. Cheers, Walt. I’d used belaboured comedy to note that this blog would have no set text. This week’s ramble feels disjointed, but I don’t care. If someone, somewhere, shaded or sunlit, gains the merest scrap from the blog...good.

   Writing is solitary. Self-publishing need not be. The writerly community is all over the text-based internet. It’s a story-thing. A business item. There’s no uphill or downhill online. You are free to learn anything from anyone.

   If you are far ahead, along the road, it’s still possible to look back and learn from those nowhere near as far-travelled, or bloody world-weary, as yourself. Give advice, gain advice in the giving. Ponder, then act. Don’t forget to act.

   The obvious upshot of that image is that there will be people ahead of you, toiling away in the distance. It can be a struggle to reach them, but you can help those writers too. These lonesome roads don’t all have fiends lurking way behind you. There’s no pride to swallow, if someone further back helps you with directions.

   I’m staring at books of poetry. You may want to check these people out. Simon Armitage. W.H. Auden. Ted Hughes. T.S. Eliot. Wendy Cope. Philip Larkin. Sylvia Plath. Seamus Heaney. Siegfried Sassoon. Let’s add Walt Whitman to that list.

   All plucked from bookshelves. Paper. The world that informed my writing, though my writing exists in cyberspace. Paperless. Unyellowing. Scent-free. Perpetually new and old. I type the body electric. Throw images down in a storm of ethereal impulses. I kidnap Philip Larkin and dress him as an Imperial Lackey. Well, if the digital shoe fits…

   I cast off fear – the fear of making obscure references. Google it all, to your heart’s content. Then you’ll know who Darth Bezos is. I’m Darth Sinister, of course. Scouring the universe in my DEATH STAR. With another DEATH STAR in reserve. Well, you never know.

   It seems, looking back over this blog post (itself looking back over my publishing plans), that I felt like waffling nonsense today. That’s how stories start. Everything is a potential plot, setting, character, or an excuse to throw down an unusual turn of phrase.

   Getting my money’s worth out of #unhashtagging may take some doing.

NEXT BLOG: BLEAK, MOODY, DOOM-LADEN THOUGHTS.

FREEFALL.

Glancing back along that lonesome road at some frightful fiend, I feel it’s time to review. Three dates set for publication. All passed, successfully. Three books on sale for the Amazon Kindle. The twelve-week fuse sparked down and the publishing bomb went off in a series of pops. With the odd hitch.

   I thought it a good thing to place the opening chapter of my first book on my blog as a pre-publication sample. That had to go when I signed the KDP exclusivity deal with Amazon. I remember a lot of fear in the air at the end of 2011, when Kindle Direct Publishing Select reared its electronic head.

   What did it mean? You couldn’t even TALK about your book if you entered into the satanic pact with Darth Bezos and his minions? Nonsense. If in doubt, clarify. (Though not with butter. Whoops. Galloping Gourmet reference.)

   I asked Amazon a few questions. Could I quote other works and not fall foul of the exclusivity clause? Certainly I could, whether the quotes were in the public domain or © to other creators. No problem. Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords opens with quotes from Winston Churchill and John Buchan. The sky did not fall in when I published.

   Readers who wonder whether or not I gained © permission to quote A. Nin, wonder no more. I couldn’t secure permission. As a self-publisher, I chose to deal with that problem in my own imitable fashion.

   Then there was the matter of pricing. I planned to charge £3.50 for the first two books and around £7 for LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. The exchange rate scuppered that plan, and I was forced to discount my third book to £6.29 to keep within Amazon’s dollar limits for the 70% royalty rate. What a hardship.

   I sacrificed small vegetables on the midnight altar to foretell that the VAT on e-books would drop. Not holding my breath, I was surprised when the VAT fell like a clichéd stone. Wonders do cease. Then they start wondering again.

   These minor points aside, I achieved my objectives. Publish, publish, publish. Now my blog is no longer tied to pre-publication posts. I am in freefall, staring at the ground rushing to greet me. Wondering if I have a parachute or rucksack on my back.

   The future holds out the prospect of guest blog posts. I’ve decided to free up the blog and my publishing plans too. It’s time to embrace the fluid nature of e-scribbling. I experimented with the immediacy of the industry when I released INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS.

   Yes. I had unfinished business there. Dating back…well, dating back. From my schooldays, I developed a rabid dislike of the idea of multiple narrators telling tales in the first person. Having one character start with the word I was a misfortune. To have two doing it seemed like carelessness. Or three. More. Gasp. Someone, stop the madness!

   My resolve crumbled this year, and I tackled the unfinished business of a story called The Stain Curse. I knew that this sequel to The Maltese Walnut called for the opening character to speak to the audience – I did this, I did that. But the male character had to make way for the female voice of another person using the dreaded I.

   I didn’t ditch my long-held view that THIS WAS WRONG! Well, I locked the notion in a temporary jail while the story was dashed out. I reached for that old standby, the flashback. The story within a story. Any reservations I had about the multiple first person narrative lay wrapped within a cocoon of rampant flashbackery.

   Immediacy was important to me. I rattled off stories and notes at the last minute, and published. Proving to myself that, as long as I kept a handle on the editing, I could be IMMEDIATE. Even if I had to undertake a major task – overcoming the revulsion at writing in a particular style.

   This was good. Where do I go from here? Into the land of the immediate. I see a large book looming on the horizon. Much editing and formatting there. But wait a bit. Why not be spontaneous, and get away from older slices of unpublished material for a stretch?

   Neon Gods gained a few thousand words in the telling. INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS picked up two new stories and a load of blog entries along the way. LYGHTNYNG STRYKES lost wayward typos that were staring me in the face.

   Where’s the new stuff? I can expand my digital bookshelf by looking at the past. But it’s hardly recharging the writing batteries. Preparing LYGHTNYNG STRYKES was wearing, even for an editing bod like me. Ludicrously, I took time from editing to assist other authors. With a deadline thundering across the horizon. Sitting here, typing away, I still find it hard to believe I did that.

   As much as I helped people, I gained assistance. That recharged the writing batteries. I’m in freefall, wondering where to land. Where do I steer this…ah…it’s a parachute. Rucksacks are slightly harder to manage.

   Yes, where do I land? I have a collection of short stories in mind. And new novels. Perhaps some articles on publishing might fall into the same e-tome, if I can set the fiction factory to churn ideas out. For nothing? Yes, I could arrange a permanently free book. Just to see how I feel about it.

   Hollow, is the immediate answer. For that’s how I feel when I publish books on Amazon. Here’s D-Day, for LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, in miniature…

   I soon regret the use of the letter Y in the title every bloody time I have to type it up in a blog post. Two days before publishing, I spy three i placements where the plot demands y instead. That was a bytch to write, and harked back to some of the stories from INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS.

   Charactersh who shpoke like an actor named Connery. That short of nonshense. I can’t see myself writing like that again. In the short stories, and LYGHTNYNG STRYKES, I was pretty much done with the idea.

   Editing and formatting is finished. Sunday night. I put the book to bed. On Monday I trek to my publishing HQ. It is cold. A spring day in March. Ice lies in patches on the ground. Frost dapples the grass. Clouds part. The sun brings no warmth.

   Even with the brim of a hat pulled low for extra protection, I face the all-encompassing sun as though undefended. Solar energy cuts through the super-dark shades on my face. The day is too bright. I’m a vampire, late to the crypt. A massive wet fountain pours inexplicably from my left eye. I don’t quite burst into flames.

   Final preparations for the book. Ticking boxes, arranging product description text. Loading the file in. And pressing the button. I feel the same as on those other Deployment-Days. Trepidation translates to an upswing in heartbeat and lethargy in brainwaves. One half of existence moves too swiftly. The other, not fast enough.

   Fingers do not fly across the keyboard. They stumble and lurch. My right leg falls asleep. I press the button. The book goes. Hours will pass before the product is available. I host a sale of Neon Gods, to mark the launch of LYGHTNYNG STRYKES.

   Then I walk away, into the light again. Brooding over the lack of elation. Hey, I published a book today. But I don’t feel like celebrating. Trepidation does not give way to elation – it blocks delight. I wander, as though some spectral figure. Invisible. Intangible. Lost to my thoughts. Which are not worth recording.

   Is this how it is to be, every single time? (What happened to third time’s the charm, eh?) I worry over what I put out there, then worry some more once it’s on its way. Oh, I can fix mistakes after the fact. But I don’t want the reputation of someone who does so to excess.

   Have I done a decent job? Is the work professional? Why don’t I run through the streets, screaming of success? For every book published is a success on that level – you did it. I’m caught up in the business, and brood. Amazon will congratulate me by e-mail. A digital pat on the back.

   No, I don’t write for the money. Piles of money. Vaults of money. Fantasy currency. I do write with the hope that I sell enough books to pay my bills. Though I’ve written for years, I’ve only published for weeks. Early, yet. I’m patient, and I’m prepared to hang in there. That’s what I do.

   The vampire in me returns to the crypt, leaves the scalding sun behind, and plots nefarious activity. What now? Return to Neon Gods. Commit to the sequels, knowing I’ve planned the antidote to the typical fantasy series of books. If I start writing book two, I must write three and four simultaneously to keep continuity on a short leash. Or…

   Format my (unslim) thriller into four volumes, accepting the necessity of delving into the technical side of things. Going back over old ground, and giving readers something I think they’d want to try. No new material, there. Or…

   Delve into the vaults. Resurrect Wednesday’s Mind. Just Another Zombie Story. Toylandt. Things like that. I created a cover for the zombie story the night before I published LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. It was a relief to type a title with no need to write Zombye, if nothing else. As for the vampire stuff, the werewolf material, and the time travel nonsense…

   It all seems to have been set down in note form, waiting to be written, by someone who was betting on self-publishing being the future without even knowing e-publishing would become exactly that. On my D-Day travels, I avoided being hit by a van. Then, later, a car.

   How many stories do we manage to publish, before we jolt into sudden unexpected forced retirement? I thought of that as I saw the eerie shape on the lonesome road. A frightful fiend. Really a car, hurtling in my direction. Two steps and I was safe. Though I didn’t feel safe. Much like pressing a button to publish a book. Saving myself from an oncoming vehicle didn’t lead to elation. Merely to belated trepidation.

   This has turned into a very gloomy blog. Or bog. Well, I was trying to capture how I felt when I published a book. Loads of people celebrate wildly. I find that odd, preferring to celebrate mildly. (A luxurious cream cake was the order of the day.) Loads of people will find my lack of celebration odd. I find it hard to escape my national character.

   There’s a man named Craig Ferguson who loves a place called Cumbernauld. Craig was once a stand-up comedian. Went by the label Bing Hitler. I think he missed a trick, and a greater career. Should have called himself Adolf Crosby. Being Scottish practically killed him. A lifetime later he made it in America as a chat-show host.

   He’s Scottish by accident of birth, but American by choice. Fair play to the man, for not dying in the gutter. He walked a hard road. American by choice. Something I could never be. I remain Scottish by choice. Wary of praise. Suspicious of compliment. Dismissive of fame. Rejecting the overpowering need for approval. I write this knowing what comes next, even though I write of wondering what comes next.

   There was a hint of fear, attached to my work. And I thought I could blog about it, in light of the help I’ve given to other authors. Being organised, I decided if I did blog about this topic…I’d blog twice. Once to set the story up, and again to flush it from my system.

   Feeling the same nerves publishing yet another book, I wondered if I could blog about an unbloggable thing. I have concluded that I couldn’t do it in two parts. First, I’d have to construct a cut-off point in this blog post. A position from which I can retreat if I feel I must. Having done that, I’ll see to random blog topics for a short while before I commit to a course of action or inaction.

   To blog, or not to blog. Reminds me, there’s that Hamlet adaptation, too…

NEXT BLOG: THERE’S NO SET TEXT. (THAT WON’T BE THE TITLE.)

PORNOGRAPHY. EROTICA. A STORY FEATURING NAUGHTY BITS.

Posted by RLL for REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. © RLL, 2012.

Brace for impact. This final blog in the series introduces another D-Day. Just before I posted this entry, I published LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. According to the plan. Blog for six weeks and self-publish a book before year’s end in 2011. Gather short stories and put out a second book after six more weeks of blogging. Throw all eighteen blog entries into that collection. Format LYGHTNYNG STRYKES for publication after six more weeks of blogging.

   I thought this possible. Separating Deployment-Days by six weeks gave me time to deal with the unexpected. John Lennon’s famous view. My life was indeed disrupted by life, while I was making other plans. At least those other plans planned for life’s interruptions.

   How much realism can you apply, in a line of work that is mired neck-deep in fantasy? As much as you can. My publishing plan seemed realistic. Here’s a book. Written, rejected, ready to be resurrected. I have to do some work on it, to adapt to the new format. But I won’t be rewriting the plot of the damn thing. That’s not something I do.

   I may have cut a six-line paragraph into two three-line paragraphs here and there. That’s not changing the plot. Just making things a mite easier on the reader. To pave the way for further books in the series, I added a few thousand words. No change in plot.

   Anyway, my goal was practical. The hard work of writing the book was in my past. I did a spot of tidying, and publication was inevitable. Well, it didn’t seem so on the day. I had my finger hovering over the button and spotted one last thing.

   There’s always one last thing. Even after you are done. I managed to press that button before day’s end. Once Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords was published, I had to re-publish immediately. The blurb needed fixing. A two-minute job, but still a job worth spending two minutes on.

   Realism. I published a book. Learned a lot from that first event. Then I kicked a bunch of short stories into shape. This involved real editing – deciding the reading order. (Something the Kindle reader may choose to ignore, clicking story links instead. But I must start with my choice of beginning. I have little choice in that.)

   Editing. Throwing up steel beams, from which to hang my skyscraper. I know it’s really work, but it’s a joy to read, write, and edit if you’re a wordy cove like me. Formatting THE WINDOWLESS WOOD-PANEL ROOM took me up to midnight one winter’s eve. Toil? Yes. Fun. Yes indeed.

   I found curious quirks in the typography. THE MALTESE WALNUT makes use of a decimal point for the calibre of a handgun, as does THE WINDOWLESS WOOD-PANEL ROOM. WALNUT was an earlier story, and the decimal point passed muster when converted to Kindle.

   My WINDOWLESS tale must have been written using a degenerate inbred later and better version of Microsoft Word. (And suffered as a result.) As usual, I cast a wary eye over proceedings and edited the hell out of those expletive deleted whimsical quirks.

   This blog is often about my thoughts on publishing, when I’m not veering off into talk of rain. My thoughts strayed to writing fiction for the blog, and I decided to serialise part of a crime story from long ago, over seven hills, and far away. Now that story has finished appearing in the blog, I’m left wondering what to say about LYGHTNYNG STRYKES.

   For it is D-Day once more. By the time this blog goes out, I’ll have received a reply, yay or nay, to a © request concerning use of quotations from the work of Anaïs Nin. Why would I fill LYGHTNYNG STRYKES with her words?

   Nin’s words match the plot. Thematically. Atmospherically. Readers of LYGHTNYNG STRYKES are faced with the prospect of discovering whether Schrödinger’s Cat or Nin’s Quote survived to see print on opening the book.

   What to say of Nin? A woman whose writing physically and mentally exhausted me. Was there anyone she didn’t bang in France back in the 1930s? (Er, no.) She was portrayed to a rather spooky degree by Maria de Medeiros, in the film Henry & June.

   Nin wrote porn.

   I wrote LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. You can see where this is going. I fear I may have to draw a veil across the subject-matter of my third self-published book, lest genteel readers of this blog blush with the shame of realising that I have written a porno.

   Shy readers, look away now. Tear yourselves from these words, for these words say nothing of what comes next – and this is your chance to steal away. Quietly, in the company of not-yet-upset horses. Don’t fall over those comedically-placed milk bottles. (Someone, somewhere, must still bottle milk.)

   Fear not. For the plot of LYGHTNYNG STRYKES is not revealed here. Dick and Marnie used to be a couple. They spend their time investigating conspiracies. One day, they investigate a genuine conspiracy. This brings them closer, aw, just like the old days.

   Oh, and there are a few scenes in which banging occurs. This is unavoidable, as it features as part of the plot surrounding the conspiracy enveloping the town of LYGHTNYNG STRYKES. That’s as much as you need to know.

   Is it porn? In the strictest Greek sense of writing about prostitutes? No, I can’t really say that it is. Well, is it erotica? All lace bodices, black stockings, and unseen Eros poking his giggling head around a powdered thigh? No, I can’t really say that it is. Well, is LYGHTNYNG STRYKES a story featuring naughty bits?

   Here and there. The book does have a plot, and characters, featured in scenes. Some of those scenes are a bit rude if you feel in the mood to call those scenes rude. I shall place a form of tittering warning at the end of the blurb, for those sensitive types in the audience. The sensitive types, presumably, who haven’t already waded through Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords or INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS.

   Yes, I, too, find it strange that I come across as a vaguely literary-minded type in this blog. Yet I’ve gone and written a porno. Er, erotica. No, a story with naughty bits in there. Somewhere. Deep in the shrubbery. That wasn’t a euphemism. If you laughed at my use of shrubbery, you are the sort to laugh at my use of euphemism.

   Perhaps I should say euphemysm. For the plot of the book dictates that, under certain conditions, the letter i becomes y. That isn’t asking too much of my readers. (What would be asking too much? Could you give me a saliva-based DNA sample? That’s pushing it. I’d be accused of cloning my own army of readers. Some enterprising authors have done this.)

   My plan unfolded realistically. For LYGHTNYNG STRYKES was another book written in the dim and distant. All I had to do was a world of formatting. The book is long. Have you taken in this message, about having realistic publishing plans? I wanted to publish two books I’d written. And I knew I could cobble another book out of short stories, the odd article, some poetry, excerpts from a shattered, fractured, novel, and these blog posts.

   I didn’t set out to write three novels from scratch, over twelve weeks. That would have been less realistic. Could I have done so? Given my current editing ability and potential daily output, yes. I chose to go with the material I’d already written. It was sitting earning nothing, after all.

   Time to say farewell, as I welcome another book into the digital world. This last series of six blogs appeared in my INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED SHORT WORKS before reaching the blog itself. It will interest me to see how much of the plan held together, while life intruded on my vast publishing empire, run from my top secret volcano base – located inside my own tiny mind.

   With the goals and timetable kept simple, I imagine that all objectives were reached. You will know that is the case if you see this text on the blog itself, or view LYGHTNYNG STRYKES for sale on Amazon. There’s a short warped window of opportunity, in which it is possible to publish the blogs inside my second book…

   According to plan, celebrating the completion of the plan.

   With the spectre of bus-related failure hanging over publication of the third book, for a few weeks. It is this shift in time that I find fascinating, as I sit typing words that will appear in a book before they see the light of day on the blog designed to lead up to the actual completion of phase three of the plan.

   Here comes that bus again. If it runs me over, I’ll not be best-pleased. Some dim rays will escape from my vanished star. It should come as no surprise to readers that I have written stories about time travel. I suspect my future self will write more.

NEXT EVENT: BARRYNG GREMLYNS, A THYRD BOOK YS DEPLOYED.