So. My novel Dog Country’s done.
Or, more accurately, it’s as done as I feel like I can reasonably make it in the time available to me. In theory it’s the second draft, or at least that’s what I’ve got it numbered as, practically it’s kind of a third/fourth pass. At some level I would like to try and keep working on it until I feel like it is amazing and perfect? But if I do that, honestly, I am not going to get anything else done at all this year, which would suck. So, got it as good as I could get it by the end of July, and now it’s off hunting agents. Thankfully, for my ego’s sake, there’s been a little bit of positive response, but nothing like an offer of representation yet. (Yet.)
As it happens, there is a reason I picked the end of July, and that’s because I’ve started work on my next project, which I can’t say too much about yet, but you will hopefully be hearing plenty about it early next year. What I can say right now is that it’s pulpy fun goodness, and it involves the extinction of all life on this planet. (Fictionally. Not for realsies. I abandoned mad scientist school in favour of being a writer.)
So. This month, in addition to The New Thing, I’m going to be attending a bunch of conventions. Namely LonCon 3 and Eurofurence 20. At LonCon 3 you will find me in the Furry Fandom panel at Six PM on Saturday, in the Capital Suite, and I will also be wandering around the rest of the convention like a stunned lemming. Assuming the Excel Centre doesn’t mysteriously kill my phone, which it has been known to do, you will be able to contact me throughout via yelling at my twitter handle, @foozzzball. Ditto Eurofurence, although there you’ll probably find me attending most of Kyell Gold’s panels. (Kyell will be glad to point me out to you.)
Other interesting events in the past month include me hitting one million words written since I started taking daily wordcounts in 2009, the first issue of my mailing list google group thing going out ( https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/malcolm-cross-updates/oRQPskjGVoI for a little bit of release news not covered here ), my short story ‘Pavlov’s House’ appeared translated in the Polish magazine Fantastyka Wydanie Specjalne 03/14 as ‘Dom Pawłowa’, which feels all kinds of special, and, having seen Guardians of the Galaxy today, let me just say, wow, Rocket Raccoon is my spirit animal.
