THOUGHTS ON PUBLISHING.

This blog is about whatever the hell I want it to be about. I don’t run a technical or business-based blog detailing the latest industry developments. The woman who inspired my blog, Karen Woodward, does that – and does so well. She often delves into the technical side of things. When not relating horror stories connected to the publishing industry, she relates success stories.

   Plug over.

   So what is this blog about? Time for some tired humour. You were warned. It’s about 1,500 words. Ouch. What is the blog not about? Sex. Politics. Religion. Money. Avoid those four in casual conversation – topics alone or, gulp, together – and your blog will steer clear of the rocks.

   Here’s a word to consider when publishing.

   Wrong.

   Do your best to avoid using the word in talking about how someone else writes. You may know how your story ends before you start writing it. On the other hand, you may only know how your story ends once you reach what you think of as the final scene.

   Different approaches are different approaches. It’s hard to describe much behind writing as wrong. I cling to one exception. Try to avoid blogging in white text on a black background. It’s wrong. For any great length, that is. It’s okay for titles or very short stints.

   Is anything else wrong? Balancing on a seal as you type is likely to lead to the arrest of one of the participants. (Okay. It’s WRONG.)

   I can confirm that no seals were balanced on, or fallen off, during the typing of this entry.

   That word. Wrong. It’s wrong to cheat your readers. How readers might be cheated via storytelling is another topic. It’s wrong to misrepresent the product. Tell potential customers what the word-count is.

   My recent thoughts on publishing took in a few names. Missy Biozarre was a doomed colleague. (Eaten by zombies, I hear.) My jazzy visit to Marjorie Eliot’s was always going to feature in an article. Why not on my blog? And Alistair Cooke served as a major inspiration for blogging itself.

   Does my meandering thought-non-process aid casual readers of this blog? I don’t have time to ponder that as I’m too busy pondering other things. Save your files. Back them up. Preserve your thoughts in type and preserve the files containing those typed thoughts.

   Two melted computers reminded me of that. I was fine. Fuming, but fine.

   We survived the Maya non-apocalypse for this? Hell.

   Quirk of the computing world – I’ve not lost data. And the quirky quirk? Once, hacking and slashing through a file, cutting it to shreds, I regained data. There was a loss of power before I saved my changes – and the autosave routine hadn’t had time to kick in.

   With electricity flowing again, I returned to the file and started over. The jungle had grown back. I regained the data I’d cut. That’s as close as I came to losing a file. Let us hope that’s as close as readers ever come, too.

*

BLOGGERATION.

   Or, if you prefer, BLOGGER RATION. Even though I ration these blogs by unsneakily writing several at once, I think I’ll have to ration posts a bit more. For the blog it is a-changin’. Review.

   What were my options? Kill the blog. Die, you bastard!

   No.

   Put the blog to sleep. That sounds like a euphemism for killing the dog, not the blog.

   No.

   Killing the blog means removing it completely. Deleting all pages. Scrubbing the internet-related bloodstains away. Ghostly fragments linger in cached areas. Sunlight gradually works its magic and the fragments fade.

   Resting the blog means putting up a sign saying that, through semi-seen circumstances, the blog is having a lie down. Feel free to look around anyway. You won’t wake the blog if you tiptoe through.

   Other options.

   Switch to blogging monthly.

   No.

   Not really an option. Blogging quarterly or annually wouldn’t cut it, either. Monthly doesn’t feel right. Forget quarterly. I’d have to put something spectacular out to blog annually.

   So what am I doing? I’m switching the publication rate of the collected editions. It’s been really hard to put those out, as I had far more technical issues than I realised. Every single collection was delayed, conveyor-belt style.

   The idea? To blog eighteen times and bundle the collection with fiction, so the book-version runs to at least 100,000 words. I’ve revised plans. The format will gradually work up to more blogs in the collected editions.

   This is blog fifteen in the current cycle. The end of the next cycle for the fourth volume of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE coincides with Kacey Vanderkarr’s debut. In that next cycle, I want to say a few words about Kacey’s first book. That calls for a celebratory post. After that cycle is done, I’ll blog until the end of the year.

   If my miscalculations are correct, that’ll provide 23 blog posts for collection. Thereafter, a new year starts and I’ll collect blog posts twice a year. If I’m still blogging.

   Right now, the various collected reports are log-jammed and I want to free that jam as conveniently as I can without rushing or botching delivery. So that’s the story. Everything changes, but stays the same. Instead of being on an eighteen-week cycle, I’ll shift to 24.

   When I do that, I may just run short pieces of fiction for a wee while. Too early to tell. I have regular and irregular books to be getting on with.

*

Let’s talk about losing track of a story. If my mind is still in the right place, the tale that follows in the bundled edition…

   Is a tale recovered from memory. Try as I might, I could not find the original story in my dusty archives. By the time this blog post sees the light of day, I’ll have scoured yellowed paper files once again. I’m looking for two separate pieces of material.

   There’s a reason behind not finding this stuff. Perhaps a piece of cardboard is folded over something that doesn’t resemble the story I’m looking for. There’s a gap a pile of paper slid into. When all the new carpets went in, there was no misplaced material lying pressed flat to the floorboards.

   Where can that story be?

   I found MIRA E. easily enough – and expected my lost story to be in with material from that Jurassic slice of the fossil database. But no. This indicates, to a tired mind, that there’s a solid reason for the misplacing of the file. There’s a gap a pile of paper slid into.

   Not shredding. In all this time, I’ve never once shredded the wrong document. The problem with this missing story is that it was never even typed up. That’s right. It was penned. Scribbled. So I’d know the spiderish manuscript as soon as I saw it. If the tale had been typed up, using the mechanical torturer known as a typewriter, chances are it would later have been typed in.

   But there’s nothing in the electronic record. What to do? The old standby. Recover from memory. The advantage of doing this is that you apply current writing and editing skills to a dusty story clearly created by an individual devoid of said skills back in the day.

   Yes, I get to relive an old story with shiny new words. And I invite the readers to fly along with me. I must invoke Cosmic Law. With the story updated from memory, I am bound to find the original once the reanimated version sees publication. That is inevitable.

*

This blog post was thrown together by periods of disruption. All fiction is.

   The blog faces change with every blog post. This time, the changes to the bundling schedule don’t seem so great. The regular construction of the blog hasn’t altered. I blog a minimum of 1,500 words. Usually, I hit 2,000. Rarely, I’ll open the post with an image. Occasionally, I’ll feature a guest.

   I talk about whatever the hell I want to talk about. That’s a model I use for my fiction. What’s in the literary pipeline? Oh, some more short pieces. Then it’s back to those longer works, with plots and characters and other writerly things spilling out over the edges of the short story into the novel.

   My decision, in self-publishing, was not to clear out all the old material immediately. You get lost in that fiction and find that you aren’t writing anything shiny and new. So I still have a few ancient tales lurking in the vaults.

   New ideas pile up on each other and sometimes merge into newer ideas. Nothing wrong in that. I have many technical issues to overcome – but that’s standard in this line of work. While there’s fun to be had writing, there’s fun to be had writing.

   Though there is drudgery. My computer meltdown led to checking. File after file. You can’t help but create duplicates. Sometimes, those prove very useful. In a near-paperless office, there’s a surprising amount of weeding to be done.

   If that isn’t my cue to leave and see to the weeding of computer files, I don’t know what is. Fire! Martian invasion! Juniper! Any one of those three will usually suffice.

NEXT BLOG: REVISITING AN AUTHOR’S LIBRARY.

ALISTAIR COOKE.

Good evening.

   For years, I’d tune to BBC Radio 4 on a Friday night and listen to Alistair Cooke utter those two words. If I missed a broadcast, there was always the slightly jarring good morning of the Sunday repeat.

   Cooke more or less invented the job of telling worldwide listeners what was going on in America. He may have stolen the idea from H.L. Mencken. Only David Niven seemed more English than Cooke. I hesitate to add other names to that shortlist – readers would just end up Googling the hell out of every paragraph.

   Blogging? Didn’t exist in Cooke’s day. Podcasting? Narrowcasting? Internet? Ah. Broadcasting. Now you’re talking. Cooke gave steam-radio talks and called them letters. With each broadcast running just shy of fifteen minutes, he’d explain aspects of American life on a weekly basis.

   When he wasn’t talking about golf.

   Those familiar with Cooke’s radio broadcasts would see that I paid nodding tribute to him with my obituary of Missy Biozarre. In Cooke’s case, he was talking about the death of Edward Kennedy Ellington – that rare commodity, an American Duke.

   Cooke paraphrased the novelist John O’Hara, and I capered along the same well-worn path.

   When it came time to start blogging, I thought of Alistair Cooke. In particular, I thought of his repetitive manner down the years. He was bound to repeat himself – and did in a way his listeners forgave him for.

   After all, every decade or so he would find himself having to explain the finer points of American politics to new generations and half-generations of listeners. He decoded the Electoral College. Someone had to.

   I decided to repeat myself deliberately. Maybe Cooke did, too. My advice to writers won’t change much with time. Read. Write. Have a think. Write some more. Experience things beyond writing and apply them to writing.

   Never give up.

   Tedious, I know. And saying tedious, I know is tedious…

   I know.

   Good pause night. The clock swung around to 9.00 o’clock and Alistair faded from the airwaves for another week. He was a fixture whose illusory permanency ended only with that fatal move – retirement.

   I used Cooke’s weekly broadcast as a writing exercise, summarising his latest theme as best I could. Over fifteen minutes I’d dash down around 600 words retelling his tale. From this ritual’s archival footprint I know that I stopped the exercise by Friday the 8^th of September, 2000.

Decided it’s time to let Alistair Cooke go. I’ll keep listening in until he really is gone, but, as the weeks go by and the probability increases, it seems morbid to copy out the gist of what he says in his letters from America. Good night.

   Who the hell was I writing for when I wrote that down? Well, who the hell am I writing for now? I always write for myself. If I don’t like writing, who will care for reading? Everything you do as a writer leads to everything you do as a writer.

   Why terminate the outlining of Cooke’s broadcasts? His voice was going. Slowing. Gaining in breathy tones. Showing that tremulous weakness of great age. Cooke was born in 1908, and had what was known as a good run. I wanted to listen to what he had to say, rather than type my impression of it. So I gave the man more of my attention.

   By 2004, he missed a few transmissions. A fall forced him to skip a recording. He was grateful to his loyal listeners for the barrage of letters he received. People the world over wished him well. The show went on without him – repeats were easy to come by. There was no question of asking anyone to fill in for him during a break. David Niven was long-gone.

   I’d suspected (for three-and-a-half years) that Cooke wouldn’t continue the show much longer. Speaking sounded burdensome to him – except when he laughed.

   Flashback.

   Now 8.45 is coming around again, in the week when Cooke announces his retirement. He’s spoken on this before. Never retire – you drop dead as soon as you do. I figured he’d drop dead in the job, going out mid-week, but no. He doesn’t end with good night. Cooke says thank you for your loyalty, and goodbye. Loyalty, for some listeners, that lasted 58 years.

   We had him on air for a few weeks after he said goodbye. Vintage selection of broadcasts. Quite sad. But not that sad. He had more than a good run – the longest talk-based show on radio. Goodbye, Alistair Cooke.

   By Tuesday the 30^th of March, 2004, Cooke’s belief that you should never retire – it leads almost immediately to demise – was proved with the announcement of his death. He was 95.

   “If you retire, you keel over.”

   The BBC repeats generated artificial acceleration of frailty in his voice toward the end. Those repeats were from various decades, aiming to display certain themes, and revealed a strong voice quite a long way in. His regular show still had that intellectual strength to it, but he was obviously struggling uphill at times near the finish. Cooke recorded 2,869 shows, and had very little time off.

   Argue all you like over whether he was prim. Was Alistair Cooke a proper journalist? Very. He certainly disliked the notion of a journalist’s becoming the story, and downplayed his part in observing the events surrounding Senator Robert Kennedy’s shooting in the Ambassador Hotel. Journalists tend to cover the trial, rather than the commission of the crime. For once, Cooke was in the right wrong place at the historic moment.

   I really liked Letter from America – even if the narrator did spend too much time discussing golf. To my mind, any amount of time spent discussing golf is too much time. Better that, though, than no Cooke at all.

   The pale watered-down excuses for journalists who parade around now…just don’t compare. Comparison is difficult. Cooke’s origins were not of the Digital Age, though he lived long enough to puzzle his way through it.

   There must have been something extraordinary about a man who was supposed to stay on air for a mere thirteen weeks, and who ended up doing the job for over half a century.

   Cooke became the story again with the tale of the theft of his bones in a scandal that he’d have labelled scandal from the off. In fairness, he didn’t have much say over the journalist’s becoming the story by that point.

   Journalism would be a step down for me – I’d have to start dealing in fact.

   For a writer of fiction, that sort of factual nonsense will never do. My authorly advice is not to approach the factual. You may catch a disease. Journalitis. Possibly Journalismus. If you must turn to journalism, never become the story.

   My thoughts on publishing are not always thoughts on publishing fiction. For those writers considering journalism, research the name Stephen Glass. Watch the movie Shattered Glass. Stephen thought it good form to invent stories.

   There’s nothing wrong in that. Unless you attempt to pass fictional adventures as news. In the pages of a newspaper. While you draw pay as a journalist. Stephen Glass became the story. Ouch.

   The theft of Cooke’s bones for sale as transplant grafts knocked a few years off his age and transformed his cause of death. I marvel at that. A man so famous in his field suddenly has two widely-differing ages upon death.

   That’s a phenomenon Cooke would cheerfully have ascribed to most actresses. I can hear his chuckle as he says the words I’ve placed in his mouth. There was a hint of Scheherazade to Cooke, as he broke off each weekly tale of Americana. He’d always return to explain Federalism to us, or the First Amendment.

   Presidents were favoured items considered worthy of explanation, or, upon death, of reappraisal. I found his political talks interesting. His golf chatter left me cold.

   Cooke’s radio show was a blog before blogs existed. Somewhere in his mind he may have thought of his show as a Letter from an American – for he took on American citizenship with the zeal of the convert. A convert who did his best to retain that accent. I am afraid I must use a cliché.

   That urbane accent.

   I did my best to make it through a post about Alistair Cooke without describing the man as urbane. Cosmic Law insists upon the label. Ah, I was so close to the tape.

   Cooke was an English-sounding speaker of English throughout his life, though accepted the rubber-stamp of Yankeedom after what would prove to be just about the first third of his time on the planet. I say Yankeedom, for he could never be labelled a Southerner.

   With that accent, it’s still hard to label him American. Can you imagine David Niven as an American? (I find it difficult to imagine David Niven as a Scotsman. Is the Encyclopaedia Britannica still peddling that lie?)

   Why talk about Alistair Cooke? Karen Woodward told me to blog. Alistair Cooke showed me how.

   Good night.

NEXT BLOG: THOUGHTS ON PUBLISHING.

AN AUTHOR’S LIBRARY.

Here’s an advance on a theme. The theme appeared in my blog. Sources of inspiration are meaningless. Now for the advance on that view. You can’t tell a damned thing worth knowing about an author from books stacked in that author’s library.

   Why not?

   You don’t know, and can’t say for sure…

   Which of the books on the shelves were gifts…

   Or which of the books on the shelves were borrowed and await return…

   Which of the books are there by mistake…

   Or which of the books were read…

   Which of the books were enjoyed…

   Or which of the books were useful…

   I could go on. Instead, I turn to stare at the books on my shelves and I think…

   It’s a bloody shame I bought so many at once in that sale, for there’s little worse than an instant backlog. An entire shelf groans under the mass of free books. My free shelf. Free books sitting on my free shelf.

   Yes, through a quirk at the factory, I ended up being sent a free shelf to make up for a minor omission in the number of small metal fixings.

   They could only send out the missing metal bolt with an entire shelf thrown in free. Along with enough fixings for the extra shelf.

   My free shelf of free books.

   Other shelves carry cut-price books. I am a Kindle author, but I read off the paper storage system. There’s a lot of paper to chew through. Sales skewed my view of my own library. I now see shelves I must clear.

   There’s no pattern to this. The clearest shelf is read. Below that shelf, there are seven unread tomes. And below that shelf, lie two untackled books. I just see shelves. My plan is to clear those. So I’ll tackle the shelf with two unread books on it.

   Then I’ll have cleared a shelf. Trumpets may sound. In that slice of the library, just over a tenth of the books remain unread. Lately I haven’t been reading books. I’ve been reading articles for research. Oh, I’d pick up a book and race through the thing. But then I’d not follow the pattern in reading more.

   Now I’ve forced myself to blog about the foolishness of buying too many books at once. It is my fate to be found under a collapsed bookshelf so heavily-burdened that it is in danger of generating its own gravitational field.

   I won’t be found. Fingertips, perhaps.

   Space is important. When the last batch of books came in, I spent over an hour working my way through tomes of different dimensions. There is a pattern to this. I don’t stack books alphabetically. Books are slotted where they’ll fit.

   After the last reorganisation, and the addition of a piece of furniture to take some of the strain, I gained two empty shelves. Unheard-of. I’m down to 1.5 as I type. Something must be done about the biggest lie.

   No more books.

   How can an author say that and believe it? There’s always the floor. I have over half a dozen books on the floor right now. They were removed from shelves so I could read them. You have to take action. This blog post is part of that action.

   I have a book sitting atop my printer. Which shows how rarely I use my printer these days. Four books lie on the floor in my old office. Only four? Must be having an off-day. I indulge in the perilous pastime of stacking books atop bookshelves as well as in them. (Where possible. And sometimes where unfeasible.)

   Just now I was eyeing up a few bookends, with a view to getting more use out of them. How do you squeeze more use out of bookends? You redeploy books that are so thick they’ll act as bookends themselves, freeing you to make more use of bookends.

   Idly, I wonder which book will kill me. It must fall while I am crouched checking another book lying on the floor. This rules out anything below the top shelves. Unfortunately, shelf layout gives the greatest space to the top shelf. There, the tallest books reside.

   Some of the widest, too.

   Had I a death-wish going, when I stacked chunky books so high? Of course I’m not going to be killed by a falling book. The house will explode in flames if ever there’s a fire. They’ll trace the conflagration to that Ray Bradbury volume.

   What do these books weigh? Not very much, on Kindle. What would I do if I replaced these books digitally? I mean, what would I do with the space? Put more books on empty bookshelves, out of habit. I’m in a digital world now. Moving house would be so easy with a Kindle library packed and ready to go.

   One box, and you’re away.

   Near-paperless office. Paper-packed library. My Kindle sits above hardback books. I suppose the electronic device is a hardback, too. It demanded feeding the other day. Paper books don’t request electricity. Strange sigils appeared on the screen, informing me that the digital wonder’s charge was low.

   Annoying. Though I’ve yet to receive a cut from turning a Kindle page.

*

After a break to shuffle some books around, I realised there was a mini-shelf to my left with one unread book on it. Though that book is a chunky one. Where to start? Read all the thin ones first? You can’t tell which book makes for easiest reading, based on girth.

   I stare at the shelves and note a straightforward book I found hellish-going. If I can’t get into the story, I’ll keep on. Things may pick up. The Call of the Wild meant nothing to me in chapter one. I really liked chapter two. Just my mood, on cracking the book open. I knew it wasn’t a bad book. Jack London knew what he was about, in the fashioning of the beast.

   London’s book wasn’t the hellish one. Sometimes, classics can take a bit of getting used to. The Red Badge of Courage left me flat, but I went from one end to the other anyway. I suspect I’ll have to go back in and reappraise the work. Let’s say at the distance of a few years, when I’m in a mood to appreciate the effort Stephen Crane made.

   Casual racism in Edwardian children’s fiction slows me right down. You have to grit your teeth with “family favourites” now and again. Fun for all the family – provided you’re a white middle-class family with plummy English accents and at least half a butler.

   Wow. I’ve really veered off. What was I supposed to say? I’d stopped to look over my bookshelves, and started commenting on what was there. I thought The Power and the Glory would be Graham Greene’s most depressing book, but it wasn’t. Books surprise you.

   An author’s library should surprise you. You can’t tell a damned thing worth knowing about an author from books stacked in that author’s library. How many were stolen? (In my library, not one. And no, not more than one. You’re a suspicious lot, out there in the blogosphere. What do you mean, I’m a fugitive…)

   Would I ever remove books from my library? Oh, I’ve done so. Sometimes duplicates come your way. In this new office of mine, most of the books are hardback. A few paperbacks reside here, hidden away.

   The old office contains overspill from the hardback library. Most of the paperbacks are through there. The only system I have is one of stacking. On the floor, on shelves, above shelves, on desks, in cupboards…

   I really must see to those bookends. If I squeeze the juice out of the system, I can make room for another twenty books at least. Twenty books not-yet-purchased. Don’t ask me what they’ll be about. Fiction and non-fiction sit shoulder-to-shoulder in my collection.

   If there’s a single subject running through my library then my library has failed in its purpose. All writers should read. Scandalously, some don’t. That’s their business. My business is to sigh and tell myself that there’ll be no more books.

   Something rather obvious tells me I’ll fill my 1.5 clear shelves before the year is out. And I’ll have those bookends reclaiming land from the sea to make room for another twenty tomes before long. When all else fails, build up. I could improvise a new miniature bookcase atop a sturdy unit.

   Or, gasp, I could return to stashing bookcases in the kitchen. That was a woeful period, when I still had all the old small storage units. They were abandoned in favour of bigger and sturdier paper containers. The kitchen overspill left me uneasy. I risked encouraging mildew in a steamy kitchen. Inadvertent experiments in biochemical warfare loomed.

   With some tricky manoeuvring, a new tall thin bookcase could be wedged into position behind the door. Yes, I’ve considered removing doors to allow small bookcases to take up the space occupied by a swinging piece of wood. But that’s a step too far, even for me.

   I’ll find a way to get by. And by that, I don’t mean squeezing past another bookcase. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I say no more books. Something must be done about the biggest lie. But I remember that reading is part of the trade. Writing depends on it. The remedy is to sigh as I lie to myself. And to lie to myself when I say that’s a remedy.

NEXT BLOG: ALISTAIR COOKE.

KACEY VANDERKARR.

Fitt the First.

I entered your hall, unbidden, as the Green Knight, and put my neck to your sword so that you might chop off my head. That ordeal, I survived. I will return to your hall in a year and a day, Sir Gawain. And if you have learned nothing from your quest in that time, I may chop your head off.

Fitt the Second.

We all settle down to watch the TV movie-of-the-week. A disaster flick. The story opens with a massive storm scouring its way across the Atlantic, heading for America. Specifically, for the Top Secret Research Base containing the Zombie Virus.

   Audience members nod sagely. This doesn’t bode well.

Fitt the Third.

“Paging Doctor Vanderkarr to Lab Zee. Doctor Vanderkarr to Lab Zee.”

   “Holy Eff. OMG. What could they possibly want now? I was just about to head home and soak in a tub of chocolate ice cream. That dulls the pain. Damn it – it’s a cliché to say damn it, but, damn it!”

Fitt the Fourth.

I was in my own Top Secret Volcano Base, hatching plans. For months, reports filtered in. There were people out in the dark vastness, writing stories. Writing them wasn’t enough. Those people wanted to send the stories off for publication. And yet…

   They were afraid. The work would never be ready to show to anyone. Ever.

   The reports I received were not fresh. Those who said they felt this way declared the sickness cured. They all once felt that way. No more. Edmund Burke tapped me on the shoulder with thoughts of trying to avoid indicting a whole nation.

   However, I couldn’t help but think. This strange writing sickness must be an American thing.

   Only in America is a phrase that could only be invented in America for export worldwide. When I say worldwide, I mean possibly intergalactically.

Fitt the Fifth.

Winter came on with a vengeance. How winter avenges itself, I have no idea. Perhaps it bursts through the door with a chainsaw. In the dark wintry hall, I gathered my stores, my stories, and saw the cold night through. Come morning, I’d been sent a message.

   In those far-off days if you followed me on Twitter and declared yourself a writer, I’d check out your blog. The latest writer to drop through the digital letterbox advertised herself using a Sheriff’s arrest photo. Or so I thought.

   I wasn’t one to judge her on that basis. No. I’d look at the writing. So I went to her blog and quickly threw on a pair of sunglasses to avoid the glare of white text on a lava background. I still have that version in my archives. Reviewing a few days ago, I reached for the shades yet again.

   Kacey Vanderkarr was scared to publish her work. It wouldn’t be ready for anyone to read. Ever. In a million years? Not even then. Holy Eff. This was one of those people. Yes, THOSE people. I’d never encountered one of them.

   Reading the tales of the repentant didn’t come close. This was the real deal. And, yes, she was American. Must be an American thing. Her work just wasn’t ready. And wouldn’t be ready. She’d written four books.

   Depressing.

Fitt the Sixth.

I kept reading. Mrs Vanderkarr’s life unspooled before me, and the life was an inspirational one. The inspirational mood she carried everywhere was dumped by the wayside when she considered her writing. I read fiction on her blog, and came to a decision.

Fitt the Seventh.

In the drive to self-publish, I’d contacted authors and shared a few tips. But I’d never given major advice on writing because I’d never given major advice on anything. That was a big no-no. Until I read Kacey’s fiction excerpts on her blog.

   She could write. And she inspired people in other areas of her life. So what’s wrong with this picture? To change her views, I’d have to change mine. And actually give major advice. On writing. To a stranger.

   If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know the story. I repeat elements of it here as this blog post goes out, by coincidence, a year and a day after I first wrote to Kacey Vanderkarr.

Fitt the Eighth.

Yes. I changed. The writer who never gives major advice was about to give major advice to the writer who never takes advice. Atlantic storm. Zombie lab.

Fitt the Ninth.

What great crime was committed? I told an author who could write that she had to publish. She was free to ignore what I said. I wanted her to self-publish or seek a deal. She’d have a year and a day in which to do one or the other. After that, I’d chop her head off if she’d done nothing.

Fitt the Tenth.

Now I want you all to know that I spend the bulk of my time as a curmudgeon, with added grumpiness. I don’t do favours, or go out of my way to help people. There’s a vast blasted plain. My home. I live there under a trapdoor. Spiderishly.

   If you hear viscous rumours to the contrary, mop them up with a sponge. Viscosity. Great word.

Fitt the Eleventh.

I write fiction. Kacey does, too. My electronic message urging her to publish was, according to the lady herself, life-changing. I’d hope that was in a positive sense.

   Kacey didn’t make plans. She changed non-plans. Altered her outlook. I gave her a slight nudge – out of the aeroplane. She went in search of a deal.

Fitt the Twelfth.

Far and wide she travelled. Wide and far she went. Come the midst of the year, she’d signed her deal and the head-chopping was off – not the head itself. Kacey Vanderkarr moved more swiftly over the landscape than Sir Gawain. She had the internet. He was on a horse named Gringolet. Sounds like internet. Eventually. If you squint.

Fitt the Thirteenth.

And so, I mark the passing of a day on which I could have written a story concerning the beheading. There’ll be no beheading. I’m sure Kacey felt the axe upon her neck as she sat with her husband by her side. Pressing the SEND button was some strange nuclear affair that required the presence of at least two people.

   He urged her on to seek that deal. Inspirational fellow. Though he has been known to utter the line no more books. This is a lie I certainly live by, and I expect Kacey to live that lie as she stares at her own bookshelves. I’m veering off. Wouldn’t be like me.

Fitt the Fourteenth.

Must find room for a moral. Perhaps that’s the moral.

Fitt the Fifteenth.

Kacey didn’t have to follow me on Twitter and I didn’t have to give her any advice. She certainly needn’t have listened. Listening isn’t acting. Acting won’t necessarily garner results. Doing nothing does that no-result thing all by itself.

   So. If you are one of those people. You know. There’s a desire to be a published writer, but a sense that the work will never be ready. If you are like that, cook a meal. Nothing fancy. Beans on toast, without the toast.

   You have to eat. So the meal will be ready.

Fitt the Sixteenth.

Did I just sneak some kind of message in there?

Fitt the Seventeenth.

Do as Kacey did. She listened. And do what Kacey did next. She acted. With material sitting there doing nothing, she did something with the material. I don’t have the time to go around threatening to chop heads off. So I’ll speak to all of you in this blog, for quickness.

   If you want to write, then write. And if you have no desire to be published, THAT’S FINE.

   However…

   Let’s say you want to write and you want to publish. Accept, today, that you must act at some point. You have to take those beans off the stove. I don’t care if your writing is ready or not. In your haste, you may remove the beans from the heat before those beans are cooked.

   Hell, that’s no crime.

   It really doesn’t matter if your writing isn’t ready. Acting anyway may let you see that. There are people out there who were published, just the same. They carved out whole careers and reputations based on writing that would never be ready. What’s stopping you?

   I hesitate to say that to Americans. It still feels like an American thing. So I’ll say it to readers the world over, and to aliens reading the intergalactic archive millions of years on. Stop thinking that your work will NEVER be ready. For NEVER is a long time.

Fitt the Eighteenth.

As this goes out, Kacey is gearing up for publication in the summer of 2013. I’m sure she wants to hide under a rock. Well, she can’t. Mustn’t. You put your name to a book cover, and you have to cling to what you’ve written.

   Years from now she may ache at the sight of her first book. Writers just have to get on. By then, she’ll have changed as a scribbler. She must, to keep going. Only the static author suffers. The rest of us look back at earlier work and we are gladdened that we’re still in the writing game.

Fitt the Nineteenth.

At the distance of a twelvemonth, I’m glad that I helped another author. Yes, I’ll bore my audience by regurgitating a well-worn favourite. There are no rivals in writing. Other writers are colleagues, with their own marvellous views and wonderful skewed perspectives.

Fitt the Twentieth.

That’s all you need to know about the writer Kacey Vanderkarr.

NEXT BLOG: AN AUTHOR’S LIBRARY.