It is sunny in Algiers, the trees are in blossom and the sea is sprightly. Lockdown restrictions have jsut eased here a little (10pm-5am curfew still in place) as COVID-19 cases have reduced in number, so hopefully more of a chance to move around soon- got my eye on some roman ruins to the south near the canyon city of Constantine, famed for its bridges and cliffs. Fingers crossed for some expeditions soon.
What is going on?
THE GAUNTLET AND THE FIST BENEATH launches in about 5 months! The cover art is almost finalised, and the full swing of marketing and promotion is coming in to play. This is all new to me so looking forward to learning as much as I can. Hopefully this means some varied content will be appearing over the next few months to try and build some excitement for the launch. Copy-edits are locked in and I’m excited to get to share this with you all after so long of it only being in my head.
BOOK 2 is well underway and I’m enjoying the experience of writing it a lot. It is a strangely different rejoining these characters rather than starting from whole-cloth, but I know them so well at this point that there is an element of ease in putting them in a situation and seeing how they react (except for the new characters where I get to start from the start). I have a draft title, but who knows where it’ll end up so for now we will stick with ‘Book 2’. Outlook: sunny. The first book is a frenetic chase, so keeping up that pace for book 2 has been the main challenge but I think it is coming together with an appropriately break-neck pace- we will see what the alpha-readers think! Being in the scrappy early stage of one book whilst simultaneously polishing an almost shelf-ready other book is a bit strange, but I’ve been digging into Tolkien’s draft maps (see an example from The Silmarillion below) to remind myself that everyones drafts look crazy!
FUN STUFF been digging into a lot of research recently, enjoying work from the artist Hokusai, old book covers, rune drawings from historical research documents- all of it gets added to the well, and the choice parts make their influence felt. I’ve been doing an introductory drawing class with South African artist Rebecca Haysom for the last month to try and improve my rough sketches which has been very satisfying. In a year so dedicated to screens and words, sitting down with a pencil and paper and really focusing has been a wonderful experience, and her classes on line/tone/texture and so on offer up an introduction to a lot of these concepts for someone like me who hasn’t studied art for a long time! Perhaps some more of my sketches to come…
