Quite a lot of self-published books are, y’know, cool. They’re set in post-apocalyptic Singapore, or their selling point is ‘Steampunk is sexually transmitted!’ [1] or they have their finger on the blue throb of the zeitgeist’s pulse in some other way. I admire that.
The thing is, mine aren’t. The best I can really do in the way of coolness is ‘a bit retro’. I’m writing about people on other planets, which goes all the way back to the beginning of the genre. The only way mentioning these books will get me points at parties is if I’ve met someone who likes exactly the same kind of books as me.
But I’m OK with that. If I’m going to spend this much time and energy writing these books, I’m going to write the kind of thing I want to read, and while I do enjoy reading the very cool books and admire their creativity and playfulness, what I, personally, really want is a world to call home. For the time being, Requite is that. I’m not saying I’ll never write in another universe – the likelihood is very good indeed that I will, because for one thing I have a set of characters who live somewhere that very definitely isn’t Requite percolating in my head, and for another, I want to play with creating a magic system.
Okay, so they’re not precisely the kind of thing I’d write if I was writing solely for myself. I’ve spared you a lot of description of exactly how people did their hair.
In other news, I want to babble at you about the cast of Heavy Ice, but you don’t know any of these characters from (a) Adam, (b) Eve, or (c) a temporally misplaced tyrannosaur and the book won’t be finished until goodness knows when, so it seems a little solipsistic. I will, however, leave you with this comic from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Kallisty Hawkwood: living the dream, down to the hat.
Also, there are now two pairs of Tzenni socks being knitted, which is possibly the awesomest thing ever. My books may not be cool, but they inspire coolness in other people. Which is ace.
[1] I would not be at all surprised if steampunk were sexually transmitted. I know goth quite often is.
Image © NASA, taken from here
Ankaret Wells 
Perhaps you could post the descriptions of how people did their hair here? Those are the sorts of things I like to know about. Also do your characters wear nice clothes?
Yes, they do. There is a ball scene in the first one where the clothes get described extensively, while the hero and heroine have an argument on the dancefloor. And a scene in the second one where the damn book stuck for about three months, whose only saving grace is that the heroine’s sister manages to completely ruin a wedding dress that never suited her anyway.
I will save up the cut-out bits about hair for you. How is your sheikh book going?
…cut-out bits about hair, you say?
Mostly I just restrain myself from writing them in the first place. But I will see if there are any descriptions of how people do their hair in the offcuts file. I found a conversation between Latinus and Ligeia that I’d totally forgotten writing in there the other day.
I did notice that there was a lot more description of how people did their hair than in the average novel, despite your restraint (this is not a criticism! I just noticed it because it is something that descriptions generally lack, and yours don’t).
True story: on Stargazing Live when they were hooked up to the ISS and talking to the astronauts, all I could think was that I wanted to see the back of the astronaut doctor’s zero-gee ponytail.
Right now, the sheikh book is not going anywhere because I have been making myself finish the revisions on the racing book, just in case I get a request for the rest of the manuscript. But I am very fond of my sheikh and I am looking forward to helping him get through his angst about being a sheikh instead of a nice marine biologist which is what he really wants to be.
Oh, I hadn’t realised the racing book was that advanced! I hope they ask for more of it, I would if I were them.
Yes, I have just got part of the last chapter to write and then revisions to do on the whole thing. I sent in a chapter and synopsis for the So You Think You Can Write event at Harlequin, which promises a response by Jan 31st. Which is why I want to have it ready by then, just in case they ask for it. I’m not terribly hopeful, because it didn’t get anywhere in the New Voices competition, but the promise of a guaranteed quick response was too good to pass up.
I thought of Requite when I read that comic yesterday! Also, I am much amused by the comment about sparing us hair details, I can just imagine you waxing lyrical and then editing frantically 🙂
‘Frantic’ is a good way of describing my editing process, whether preceded by lyricism or not. 🙂
They ride dinosaurs. In what world is that not cool?