A bed of roses

So, the proof copy of Mannerley arrived and it's beautiful.  It does need a couple of tweaks but then it will be ready to send out into the world!  And then I have the e-copy and 'special edition' to tackle...

But it is a real thing!  I've written, edited and published a real live, actual book.  It's... yeah...  It's an actual real, live book...

It's taken almost exactly 5 years.  It began as my Nano novel for 2014.  Since I write in November, I start planning my ideas in the summer.  I can't put an exact date on that, but yeah - certainly at this point in the year I would have been thinking about characters and what order things happened.  I can't really trace the rest of the journey very easily from memory either.  I know I had periods when I was editing and periods when I was focussing on other stuff.  The annual round of Nano definitely interrupted it!  And most of the last year was spent waiting for the cover art, and then fighting with the fucking templates.

But all of the time and energy has paid off.  It is a real, live book that I can hold in my hands.  Other than my kids, it's the biggest project I've ever undertaken and seen to completion.  And you could argue that the kids aren't finished yet - when are people ever 'finished'?

So, next week I'll make the little changes and release it into the wild.  And the week after, I'll take a look at the e-version.  The 'special edition' is almost a separate project, though, because I want to do a print run and I really don't want to pay Lulu.com's prices - even though I get a discount.  But one thing at a time!

And it looks like I'm going to be part of a bona fide writing group for this year's Nano.  Our Rector has, apparently, done Nano before, and I've persuaded my beta reader and a former colleague to join the madness for the first time!  My project (notice how much more important than 'novel' that sounds!) this year will, if all goes well, end up as a five part epic.  Nano will produce a 50k 'treatment', a first pass to see if all the moving parts of the story in my head actually work together.  If they do, then I'll work each part up into a 50k+ novel (Mannerley has actually topped 70k).

So, yeah, I'm all about the writing at the moment!