Friday 28 October 2011

Stepping up a gear


I've been working my ass off this week (sorry, should have looked for a picture of an ass, shouldn't I?). I've subbed a short story, plus done all the edits on Heart of Flame (cover to be revealed SOON, I promise!), and today I've got backcover copy to do for, ahem, "another novel," which I can't tell you about YET but I'm expecting the edits for that to land on my desk any day too. And hopefully there will then be a big announcement with balloons and champagne and everything, as a whole new imprint is born...

Thank the gods for Change Manager. The days of covering galley prints with post-it notes and scrawl in different coloured inks have gone forever.

It rather looks like I'm going to have to keep this up, though. I've got one more short story to sub by December, but thankfully that's already written. The big task is, I promised Named and Shamed to a publisher by the end of the year and I'm only halfway through. It's going well, but holidays and various friends (you know who you are!) have been leading me astray down the primrose path and I've fallen behind schedule.

40K in two months? Eeeeeeek.

So if I'm not around commenting on your blogs or answering mail it's because I'm trying to work. Sorry! And if I am around, give me a smack and send me back to my laptop :-)

5 comments:

Jo said...

Good luck! And, get extensions :)

Janine Ashbless said...

Heh. I've not got a contracted deadline, Jo, so that's okay. I just hate letting people down.

Fulani said...

Hope it works out. 40K words in two months is only 5K a week - should be easy!

Sekrit Shoppa said...

You'll do it, nay probs, lass. And I'm looking forward to the balloons and champagne.

Janine Ashbless said...

Thanks for the support, you guys!

I know, I know, it should be easy, Fulani. But I'm really not a fast writer. I don't know why that is. I think it's that I have to have a clear run - I can't snatch an hour here or there as others do, because I have to get into such a specific obsessive headspace. And I can't do it when there are other people around - writing in a cafe seems insane to me, though I know Shanna Germain, for example, does it all the time.

I'm really going to have to cut down on the social life, if only for a while!