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...