What’s on my slate

Let’s skip all the stuff about how Shakespeare wrote King Lear whilst in lockdown, shall we? He didn’t have the internet, probably for the best, as he would never have written a damned thing. I’ve been at this a while, and of late, there has been a massive upswing in my production.

So, at the moment, I split my attention between a few projects:

1. Editing Nothing Keeps Me Anywhere. I am publishing this under the Dahlia Bliss pen name, for the sexual content and the dramatic element. If you’ve read any of the excerpts here, I would love to know what you think about it and if it compelled to read further?
2. Lawful Evil – this is with my reader, who takes my work and does an autopsy of it, because none of this is by divine inspiration, even less so as experience and process become involved. So, once he’s completed his read-through, then I go to work, much as I did with Nothing Keeps Me Anywhere and Laughing Boy.
3. Laughing Boy – paperback. I use ebooks for convenience and ease, but physical books are important to me. The Dahlia Bliss material will stay electronic for now, but the same amount of work goes into every book written.
4. Fiction and poetry. I’m considering entering and submitting more of the former for anthologies and competitions. It raises my profile and also, brief stories are a tremendous way to work on my craft in the micro. Where I feel I’ve improved, has come from the testing ground of a story.
5. The quality problem is I am prolific and also time poor. My girlfriend has said that if someone funded me for a year, I could make a lot of material available.
6. Craft. I value this as part of my practice. I love reading books about writing and find an impressive deal of insights and tools applicable to my writing. A recent and recommended purchase was Chuck Palahniuk’s Consider This. I’ve started or continued to develop the things he recommends and discarded the parts which don’t apply to me. I am a nerd for story structure and archetypes, but also there’s a working-class element to me which sees the production of actual writing a better outcome than the perfect literary piece which languishes in your head. There’s a massive amount of instruction out there, but it can be a means to procrastinate. Get it down and get it out. You’ll suffer pangs of guilt and shame at the mistakes, but you’ll learn from them. Write and finish things. Put them out. Repeat the cycle. I don’t do everything as a self-publisher, but as time goes on, I have taken on more responsibility.

So, there are things in the pipeline, but the aim is at least a book a year and to treat this with the same intention as a business. Sure, it’s art books are dead as a cultural art form according to some very smart and learned people but what matters is what you do and show up with.

If you’ve questions, please comment below or get in touch.