This Is Awesome...

Oh, and my publishers would like me to include the Amazon link so you can pre-order this wonderful, wonderful book. Now, normally I hate linking to ANYTHING that has to do with selling my own books... and this is no exception...

(oh, and I also have no idea how these words ended up in the middle of the page like this, but hey...)

This is the link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingdom-Wicked-Skuldugery-Pleasant-Book/dp/0007480229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337938025&sr=8-1

Whether you use it or not is up to you.

PS

The colour for this one is shiny GOLD.

PPS

I think now is the time to applaud one Mister Tom Percival.

Aimless...

Hello there,

It is I, your humble Golden God, here to brighten up your day with another one of my electrifying entries into this accursed Blog-thing. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to write about, however. Ever since I finished the book I've been kind of... aimless.

Not ENTIRELY aimless, of course. I did have things to do once I'd finished- other bits and pieces of writing to finish off. But I've finished those now, and so I'm back to being a little bit lost as to what to do.

I've been visiting a few schools- which is something I don't get to do a whole lot of anymore during my official tours. When you're a writer starting off, school events are ALL you do, because you need to reach as many people as possible and get them interested in your books. But once you reach a certain level of awesomeness, visiting individual schools is not really the best use of your limited time. So bigger school events are planned, where multiple schools come to a theatre or hall, and a lot more public signings are scheduled. By this stage, it's all about meeting the readers, and making it easier for the readers to meet you.

But throughout the year I tend to visit schools in and around Dublin, organised by teachers or librarians or parents. It's all about "this person knows that person who knows my cousin's friend", and that's how they get in touch. I can't do an awful lot of these smaller school visits, because I don't have the time, but for some reason I've been visiting a school a week for the past month or two. Which is, I admit, NOT the best use of my time when I have deadlines as tight as my deadlines have been. But hey.

So, the week before last I was at a school in Lusk. Last week I was at a school in Swords. And this afternoon I was at a school in Sutton. Next week I'll be at a school somewhere in Cork and then- THEN- I'll stop. No more. I need a break. I've got my Australia/NZ tour in August, my Ireland/UK tour in September, and before all that I think I have to pop over to LA for a bit. I need a BREAK! I need to do normal things! I need to stop signing autographs!

Ah, the life of a tortured artist...

Oh, and before I go, something you MAY be interested in. This Friday I will be posting again. Why, you ask? What could I possibly have to post mere days after THIS wonderful entry?

Oh not much. I don't expect there to be much writing involved, actually. Just a single image, perhaps. A single, solitary image appearing on the accursed Blog, sometime on Friday... What could it be? Something to do with the new book? Some kind of image to do with the new book?

It's a mystery, that's what it is. I guess you'll just have to check the Blog on Friday to find out.

UP

Bwahahahahahahahaha!

Mmmmm Violence...

Glory be, glory be, it's done. Finished. Done and dusted. Over. Practically. Almost.

The edits are all done. I have the weekend to go over KOTW one more time and then we send it to the copyeditor. The copyeditor basically makes sure I haven't made any huge mistakes, and corrects all the little ones before it's too late. She'll tweak and suggest and cut and replace, and then she'll send the manuscript back to me and I'll make my final adjustments, and that'll be it. Boom. Over.

Right now, the book clocks in at 134,729 words. Considering that Death Bringer was marginally over 118,000 words, that's quite a substantial increase. Golly gee, it's gonna be a big book! We're going to have to reduce the font size again to cram as many words onto the page as possible, but our font size is typically big anyway, so at least we have room to play with.

This is the first book where I've had serious discussions with my editor about the level of violence. (Well, I say serious... he was TRYING to be serious and I was making jokes, but you know...)

It's a weird thing, to write a series, because the readers get older as the books are released. Valkyrie gets older, the situations she finds herself in become more grown-up, and the themes get darker and darker as the end approaches. What all this means is that occasionally I fall into the trap of assuming that the Skulduggery readership is able to handle whatever I throw at them. And for the most part, they are.

But there will ALWAYS be new readers. There will ALWAYS be a nine year old who picks up the books for the first time and reads them in a few weeks. And it's unfair to expect that nine year old to be able to deal with content that is more suited to teenagers and adults. So where does that leave me?

In a weird place, that's where. On one hand, I've NEVER viewed this series as strictly children's books, and that view just keeps getting stronger and stronger as Valkyrie gets older. But on the other hand, I have a responsibility to the younger readers to not give them anything they can't handle.

And all of this makes me ever-so-thankful that we have such a thing as editors. I wrote this book in two and a half months of sheer WORK. There was no time to doubt myself and no time for second guesses. Whatever I put down on the page stayed on the page. When you have a more relaxed timetable you can afford to wonder about what you've just written but when the deadline is rushing towards you like a screaming train you just WRITE. With that in mind, I'm not surprised at all that I went too far in some areas. And it was so much FUN.

The battle still isn't over, by the way. Nick, my editor, still thinks I could be a little less bloodthirsty, while I think I'm just bloodthirsty enough. Some serious things happen in this book, and I reckon I needed to be as brutal and uncompromising as possible in order to achieve what I needed to achieve. But we have another week or so of him trying to be serious and me making jokes before I have to make the final decision.

And now a picture!

This Is Not A Blog Post

Be right back, my dog is barking...

Okay then, I'm back. Sorry about that. Sometimes Mable likes to bark at walls. All very understandable, considering she has a brain the size of a pea. Before I continue I must warn you, as it says in the title, this is not a Blog post. This is me, wasting time.

Writers love wasting time. Oh we love it so much. We sit at our desks, stare at our screens, contemplate the plot points and issues we have to tackle, and then we go and make ourselves a nice cup of coffee. 

(Well, other writers do. I don't drink coffee. Instead of making myself coffee, I check on my dogs instead. The end result is the same. Time wasted, I mean. Not a cup of coffee.)

Why am I wasting time? Because I need a break from editing the book and I can't justify actually stopping work- so instead I delay work. It's all very scientific. 

For those of you paying attention, I finished the first draft of KOTW last week. My editor loves it. He reckons it's the best book so far. So now I'm doing the rewrite, which isn't so much a rewrite as an edit-

- hold on, cat needs to let in-

Right, where was I? The edit

-sorry, second cat popped up on the windowsill, and then the third, and then I had to feed them, so I've done that, and I'm back-

is going well and it's going smoothly, primarily because there are no real structural changes that need to be made to the story. I might have to get rid of a tiny little subplot here or there, but mostly it's plain sailing. Really, most of the work stems from the bits I missed out in the first place, such as descriptions and the beginnings and endings of chapters. The plan is to have this edited by Tuesday, then work on it some more the following week, and eventually hand it over, ready to be printed, by the second week of May. Ooooh deadlines... they're so funny...

But I haven't JUST been working. Oh no. I found some time to relax and have some fun, too. Last Saturday night I went to dinner with a very pretty lady (who hates when I use her name in this Blog so I won't use it) and then on Monday we drove up to Cork and visited a school that was composed primarily of insane children. It was all very odd, but a lot of fun. 

Since then, though, I've been back at work, doing my very best to ignore everything going on around me. There are so many things I have to do when this book is finished that I literally don't know where to start. For example, remember those competition winners I have to send out signed copies of Death Bringer to? Yeah, haven't sent them yet. They've been sitting on my kitchen table for MONTHS. The fact is, at this point I'm thinking why bother send them off at all? Since I've waited this long to do anything about it, why don't I wait a teensy bit longer? At some stage over the summer I'll be getting my box of brand new Kingdom of the Wicked books, so I may as well include a signed copy of THAT as well. 

So congratulations, competition winners, you'll probably be getting TWO signed books AND The End Of The World. Yay!

Sigh... I can't put it off any longer. Must get back to work. The dogs aren't barking and all the cats are in and fed. There is nothing left to waste my time with.

I think I might have to start drinking coffee...

FINISHED!

I don't dance around kitchens. But if I did, I'd be dancing around my kitchen right now.

I'm finished the book.

It's only the first draft, granted. And I've finished it twelve days after I expected to be finished, also granted. And with the schedule so horrendously packed, I'm gonna have to start the edit by Sunday. But none of that takes away from the fact that I have finished Kingdom of the Wicked, and I am one happy writer-bunny.

My editor called this afternoon. He'd read most of it, and was just calling to give me the thumbs up. This, I have to say, was a relief. I've never written a book as quickly as I did this one, so I was worried that the quality might slip. Apparently it hasn't. This makes me happy. It's also LONGER than any of the others. Please keep in mind that the finished product might be significantly shorter, but at the moment this one is clocking in at 130,000 words- that's about 12,000 words longer than Death Bringer.

I am so, so drained. I need to play video games. I need to watch movies. I need to spend more than an hour away from my computer. But despite how drained I feel, I am buzzing with that wonderful, wonderful feeling of accomplishment that I always get when I finish a book. I am truly great.

LOLkitten

This is what we call a Guilty Blog Post.

Why do I feel guilty? Because it's been well over a week since the last time I posted anything. Also, this post is far too short to be considered a worthy way to spend your time. But I have an excuse. Writing. I'm writing. That's always a good excuse, right?

Deadlines deadlines deadlines. Onrushing. Oncrushing. Is oncrushing a word? No it isn't. But it should be.

I'm days away from finishing Kingdom of the Wicked. Days! I might even have had it finished tonight, but I spent yesterday at the Oxford Literature Festival (which was a lot of fun) so that set me back a little. But I'm close. So close. That wonderful feeling is starting up, that excitement that tells me I've almost finished another book. It's a fantastic feeling. Every writer knows it. That sense of accomplishment that floods over you despite any and all insecurities, despite knowing that you have weeks or months of edits and rewrites ahead of you... None of that matters, not when you're about to finish your first draft.

Days. Mere days. My editor is waiting for it.

I have to get back to work.