As the summer rolls on…I thought I would do a quick update of where we are and what’s going on.
I just reviewed the copy edits for the book formerly titled BAD LAND, that is now called THE FAR EMPTY (and I think it’s safe to say, this is the final title. Everyone seems to like it, and it’s a line in the book, so that’s always great). Copy editing includes fact checking, grammar, etc., and some initial design work for how the chapters, titles, and sub-titles will look. The group over at Penguin Random House / Putnam are unbelievable, and they’re turning my awkward prose into something infinitely more polished and refined. Also, we’ve sent early copies of the book out to other authors for blurbs and quotes, and we’ll be getting those back in over the next couple of months. Then it’s on to cover design, etc. Slowly but surely the book is coming together for the planned Summer 2016 release.
The first draft of the sequel is done, and I’ll be editing that over the next few months. I’m using the working title HIGH WHITE SUN, and it picks up the baton from THE FAR EMPTY and keeps on running. It’s a bigger book, with more characters, more plot, more everything. Is that a good thing? I’m still not sure. And although I’m eager to dig back into it, it’s important to let that first draft set for a few weeks (at least) to get some perspective on it. I’m very happy with how it’s turned out, but I am looking forward to taking that second and third pass at it. I plan to have a readable version to my agent and my editor in the fall.
In between all of this, I’ve been able to get away to San Diego and the Big Bend (West Texas). I’m headed to Kentucky in a week, and then I have one more small trip planned at the end of July.
Not to mention work, and summer stuff with the girls.
In the summer of 1989, I was between my Junior and Senior years in college, and instead of going home for summer break, I stayed around William & Mary and worked room service at one of the big resorts in Colonial Williamsburg. I lived in an off-campus apartment, worked from about 3:00 p.m in the afternoon until to 11:30 or so at night, and then spent the last hours of the day/night (and some of my hard-earned cash) at one of the many local watering holes. My mornings and early afternoons were filled with writing, lots of writing, and when I wasn’t doing that, I was going to movies or playing paintball with friends. I survived on ramen noodles and hotdogs, and it was a typical humid, Virginia summer, where each day was punctuated by a late afternoon thunderstorm. During those couple of months I felt like I was “really an adult” (even though I now know how wrong I was), and from a writing standpoint, it was incredibly productive.
I had two other brief writing “periods,” one right after undergrad while living in a tiny little apartment just outside of Washington DC, and then again when I lived in Haiti, but neither felt as sustained or serious or “real” as that final summer and last year of college. I had all the creative energy in the world and writing seemed to mean everything to me then, and I couldn’t imagine not writing for the rest of my life.
And yet, some how, some way, I let nearly two decades go by, until 2011, when I decided once and for all to put all those stories in my head down on paper. Now, four years later, I’ve completed four books, have another half done, and have two more lined up to go.
It took me a long time to get to this point, but it just goes to show that it’s never too late to start…again.
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