Back in Circulation

Ah, time off... how I love you so... At least, I love the IDEA of you. I love the MENTION of you, the PROMISE of you. But I never quite GET you, do I?

Such is the reality of life as a writer— there IS no time off.

Other people leave the office and go off on holidays, but that's not the case with writers. Oh sure, we can easily walk away from the writing desk, but it's not so easy to flick the switch in our heads that makes us stop thinking of the next thing to write. We're stuck in that headspace. A writer's brain will continue to churn, even when we want to think about other things. It's not a BAD problem to have. It's not as bad as, say, being born without a head or waking up one morning to find your house is made of cheese. But it can get annoying. It means that you can never really relax...

I've had a few days off ever since sending in my first draft of LSODM. The last time I spoke with Nick, my editor, he was halfway through and loving it. Apparently. So that's good. I think. I'm not sure what my feelings are towards this new book. At the moment I'm too close to it, I don't know if it's good or great (or, yikes, bad) so I'm at that stage where uncertainty is tainting everything and I'm just waiting for Nick to finish the whole thing and say "Yeaahhhhh it's... fine... BUT..."

So yes, I've had a few days off since then. Two of which were taken up with meetings. But from Thursday on, I haven't even had to answer the phone. So what have I been doing?

Planning.

I have two short stories to write for various things. I want to do a lot more for the Skulduggery short story collection coming out next year. I need to start thinking of Skulduggery Book Nine. And I have to get a handle of what I'm going to write AFTER. What book is going to coming out in 2015? What will the next series be?

So that's what I've been doing over the weekend.

But now that I have the first draft handed in, hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting here on a weekly basis, and being a bit more present on Twitter, and generally getting things back to normal. You've all been very patient while I've had my head down, and I appreciate it. As a reward, here's a thing.