Don’t believe me? Hmm. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they don’t see how a tablet is anything special, or how it could revolutionise publishing. It’s not like we don’t have all the requisite technology anyway, and the Apple ‘is late’ tag is apt given that there are a lot of tablet computers out there, and a lot of ebook readers out there. Some are successful, some are not. More are coming.

So big deal. Who needs an oversized iPod touch, right?

I think there’s a misunderstanding here. It’s not that this is going to be a whole new form of computing, with new innovations in technology and hardware. It’s the way that Apple will take pre-existing ideas and technology and combine them, creating a characteristic Apple user interface and wrapping it in their award-winning industrial design to create something new.

Before the iPod was released, there were loads of mp3 players available. But the iPod had a new interface and a new design, and it caught on. Likewise the iPhone. There are hundreds, thousands of smartphones available. But the iPhone, for a lot of people, has the best UI and design.

With less than a day to go, here’s my list of things I want the Apple tablet to be and to do. This isn’t a pro-Apple rant. It’s not an anti-not-Apple rant either. These are just things I want to be able to do with an Apple tablet. Some of this should be announced tomorrow. Some of it will take a while – years, maybe – to come to fruition. But the tablet is the first step.

I want to wake up to new content

With an always-on wifi or 3G connection, I want all of my magazine subscriptions auto-synched while I sleep. On Wednesday morning, I wake up, check my emails, and have this week’s pull-list of comics from DC and Dynamite. On Thursday morning, I wake up, check my emails, and have this week’s Radio Times. Every four weeks the new issue of Fortean Times arrives. Same for newspapers, if I read them. They’d arrive every morning.

But there’s more than just replacing magazine print subscriptions with electronic ones. If the tablet can deliver an exemplary reading experience, I want to subscribe to publishing houses. For an annual fee, I’ll take everything from Angry Robot Books, thanks very much, delivered to my tablet on release. If you’re a Warhammer fan, how about a sub to the Black Library? Any publisher – a major house, a small press, a nice imprint – can start delivering content directly and, importantly, in bulk. There’s not a single title from Angry Robot that hasn’t been an excellent read, and I’ll happily take the rest of their output on spec. For larger houses like Pyr – likewise an excellent genre imprint – a full subscription would probably result in a phone call from my bank manager, but what about a random sub? Three books each month? Or how about all new titles released by your three favourite authors? I imagine it would be the same for fans of a particular romance publisher, or crime publisher, or whatever publisher.

There’s no manual control needed, if I choose. My subs are delivered, on time, regularly, without the vagaries of the postal service. With the full-colour, almost full-size screen, I can read all of my magazines at my leisure. I don’t need to receive paper copies of anything ever again. With good eReader software, I can become a patron of a publisher or author at the tap of a button.

I want to use it everywhere

I travel a lot, and the dilemma of book selection for a plane journey is one that should be familiar to a lot of people. If you leave tomorrow and there are still 50 pages to go, do you take that, knowing that you’ll have it finished quickly and will have to lug a redundant brick of paper around for the rest of your trip? Or do you pick a new book? Or if you’re a fast reader, do you take two, or three? Pretty soon you’ve filled your hand luggage and most likely your overstuffed suitcase for the return.

For travel I now take my iPod touch. Using Stanza, or any one of a number of stand-alone eBook providers, I can take hundreds of books with me everywhere. Reading off the screen is no issue, as most readers have a variety of options to improve the experience, such as white text on a black background, and variable text size. Sure, it takes a bit of getting used to, but it’s not a problem.

If the screen was bigger, it would be better. If I could approximate the real size of a trade paperback page, I’d probably read a lot more eBooks. This is what the Kindle, the Sony Reader, the Nook, et al, aim to achieve – more or less real-life dimensions of a print book, and with their eInk screens, an easy reading experience.

But more important than the odd plane trip, I want to use it everywhere, every day. I don’t want to lug my laptop to bed. I don’t want to flip open a netbook on the couch, no matter how petite it is. I don’t want to sit at my desktop computer for hours reading comics or books. And, perhaps most importantly for me, I don’t want to battle with the internet on my tiny iPod touch. If I’m watching TV and I want to look something up on the internet, I want to pick up the tablet from the coffee table and do it. No laptop, no keyboard, no tiny iPod touch screen that requires constant pinching and scrolling. The iPod touch and iPhone are fine for tools like Twitter or Facebook, because the interface of apps for these are designed for the small screen. But the full-blown internet experience in Safari isn’t.

eInk doesn’t matter

And this is why I don’t want a Kindle or other eInk-based device. They’re fine for straight text. They’d also be fine for newspaper content. But full-colour, glossy magazines? Nope. Browsing the web? Nope. Playing games? Nope. Checking emails maybe, but integrating with Twitter, Facebook? Nope. The Kindle and its ilk are single-use devices, and the eInk screen is no good for anything by reading text anyway.

Except here’s the thing: it’s not even needed for that. As I said, I read a lot of text off my iPod touch, with its glass-fronted, full-colour LCD panel. Glare has never been a problem. Reflection has never been a problem. Eyestrain has never been a problem. Okay, it has a small screen, and these issues would be increased with a 10″ display, but really, I’m happy to accept these potential issues for full-colour, full-motion electronic content. I don’t need eInk.

I want to be able to afford it

The tablet might be expensive. The 64GB iPod touch is $399 + tax. Apple’s base Macbook is $999. The tablet must fall somewhere into this gap – it can’t be cheaper, or the same price, as the touch for a significant larger device unless they cut the price of the touch. It can’t be more expensive than the Macbook or they’ll be in for criticism, and the Macbook is a more powerful computer anyway. The tablet isn’t a computer replacement, it’s a whole different device.

The problem is that people are too used to paying $200 for a hunk o’ junk netbook, or $500 for an under-specced, under-powered laptop. Good tech costs, although the “Apple premium” is actually a myth if you compare like-for-like. Apple simply don’t do low-end devices, they do mid- to high-end.

It’s also no use comparing it to the Kindle, or the Nook, or the Sony Reader. The Kindle is $259 (or $489 for the Kindle DX), but these are single-use devices. I know that Amazon have opened the Kindle to app developers now, but there really isn’t much you can do with that eInk screen.

The current rumour is that the tablet will be $1000 stand-alone, or $399-$499 with a 3G contract. Some sources claim the $1000 is way off. Perhaps that’ll be another surprise for tomorrow!

Can Apple deliver?

Will the tablet deliver on any of this? Technology-wise, certainly. There’s nothing new here, we have the know-how and hardware. Apple’s design – which includes software and hardware combined – will be second-to-none. All of this is possible. It might be expensive, at least to start with.

What will be harder to changing the mindset of content providers and gatekeepers, to get them to embrace this digital vision. The technology is there, we just need the will. Unfortunately, some will fight this vision tooth and claw, whether it is out of self-preservation, stubbornness, or lack of understanding.

So that’s what I want (the tablet, not the fighting!). What we’ll get tomorrow might match my requirements very well; then again, they might not. Come back on Thursday and we’ll see how my checklist squares up with the real deal.

But what do you want from a tablet? Will the tablet change the world, or will it flop like the G4 Cube or the Newton? If you don’t want an Apple tablet, what do you want?

Comments are open!

Writing Habits is an ongoing series of mini-interviews in which I talk to creators and writers not about their books, or current works-in-progress, but about what they do to get the job done. I must admit, I’m the kind of person that likes nothing more than sitting down and writing out a really good list, so when it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing – routines, habits, schedules, goals and targets, you name it – I get a real buzz when I talk to professionals about how they do it. Of course, there are no easy answers and quick fixes and magic solutions for those of us working to build a career as a writer, but such insights are valuable, and this topic is often overlooked.

Last year I had the pleasure of speaking to a number of my favourite writers, and you can read about their Writing Habits here. I also spoke to two important novelists – SF-horror-thriller maestro and New York Times Best-seller Scott Sigler, and the new queen of steampunk-romance Gail Carriger – in more detail. You can hear them, and me, here, and on iTunes.

So without further ado, let’s kick off Writing Habits 2010 with a name that will be, I hope, familiar to a lot of you.

Please welcome Michael A. Stackpole!

Michael Stackpole has been in the business of writing since the late 1970s, working first for the gaming industry before moving into game-related novels such as the Battletech series from FASA. Michael is perhaps best well known for his work in the Star Wars universe, as author of the acclaimed X-Wing quadrilogy, I, Jedi, and the New Jedi Order. Outside of Star Wars, Michael has worked in the fantasy genre, most notably with the DragonCrown War and Age of Discovery series. A New York Times best-seller and veteran of the publishing industry from both writing and editorial/production sides, Michael is a staunch advocate of the digital future of publishing, and currently releases serialised short fiction via his website and the iTunes app store, and his views and perspectives on the shifting state of publishing can be often heard on The Dragon Page -  Cover to Cover podcast, which he co-hosts. Michael also teaches writing occassionally, and produces The Secrets, a regular paid-for newsletter detailing writing tips, techniques and exercises to help writers improve their craft.

It’s no exaggeration to say that it was Michael Stackpole that really got me into writing. I’ve written all my life, and had worked on a variety of short stories which were sometimes good, sometimes bad, with seemingly far-off dreams of one day writing a full-length novel. After a few pitch rejections, I discovered The Secrets (via the now-defunct podcast), which completely transformed the way I looked at writing. Writing went from being just a hobby on the side to what I do, something which I now take seriously and, dare I say it, professionally. Without The Secrets, I wouldn’t be working on my third novel, Empire State, I wouldn’t have this website and be typing this blog entry, and I wouldn’t be introducing an author with such personal importance to me as Michael Stackpole.

Mike, I owe you one!

Name
Michael A. Stackpole

Location
Scottsdale, Arizona (just outside Phoenix)

What do you write?
For the most part I write science fiction and fantasy. I’ve written over 40 novels, and more short stories than I care to count. I have also written games, computer games, screenplays, graphic novels, articles, reviews, and pretty much anything that someone will pay me to write. I don’t really have a preference for novels over short stories, I tend to like all of these things. They present different challenges, which I enjoy, and by doing a mix of things I avoid being bored. I am very enthused that digital publishing is going to allow writers to be doing a lot more and different stuff. By being able to go direct to our audience, we can avoid some of the difficulties of the distribution bottleneck.

One of the things that I’ve been experimenting with on my webpage has been serial storytelling. This is writing a story specifically to be serialized, by breaking it down into thousand word chunks and delivering them over a month or month and a half for free to my readers. The advantage here is that if I have an idea for a story — especially a story based on timely news bits — I can have it out and up while it is still relevant. In terms of making money, when you have a serial story which is one of several stories dealing with a particular character, the older stories go for sale while the newer stories are being run for free. Readers who really like what you’re doing will go ahead and buy all the back story for that character. Since this process cuts out the middleman, authors can afford to sell their work for less and actually make more than they do now through traditional publishing routes.

What are your writing habits?
My writing habits are not as stringent or efficient as having churned out a lot of words might indicate. I tend to work from outlines, but I maintain flexibility so the story doesn’t get stagnant or stiff. If the characters are beginning to balk at what I thought I wanted them to do, I generally figure out what’s best for the story which means what’s best for the characters really, and let the story moves in that direction. One thing I always try to make sure happens in any story, is that at least one character grows.

In terms of my work schedule, I tend to be fairly fast. When I’m on deadline I will have two writing sessions per day. One will be in the morning, then I’ll take a break for lunch and errands, and have a second in the afternoon. I usually can grind out a chapter in each of those sittings, which for me means turning out 2500 words at a time. That would mean 5000 words a day, which would let me finish 100,000 word novel in roughly 3 weeks. I have written novels that quickly. I prefer not to. But I’m comfortable with that pace when I have to hit it. The most words I have ever done in a day is 10,000 and those were days when I was wrapping up a novel and had a lot of information crowding my skull.

I tend to spend a lot of time developing ideas for new stories and new worlds. I use standard wire bound notebooks for jotting down ideas, drawing maps, making lists and charts: all the little development work necessary. Those same notebooks serve when I’m writing as the place where I jot down notes on each chapter about characters, incidents, things I have to remember and even the stray phone number from phone calls I take while writing. I even use them for jotting down notes when I’m in the editing process especially concerning things I have to remember to put into the next story for the next novel.

What software or tools do you use?
I work on a Macintosh so a lot of the tools I have will be familiar to folks on the Mac but perhaps not on the PC. For word processing I use OpenOffice. I used to use Microsoft Word, but for some reason it stopped working for me recently. OpenOffice seems to do everything it did pretty well. I also use a program called NoteBook for the Mac which helps me organize some basic data for a story. One great advantage to this piece of software is that it automatically indexes things. While I have not yet used it on any long projects, I anticipate being able to transfer material from my paper notebooks into it and then just print the contents out and put them in a binder complete with an index. This ability to index will be invaluable especially in a long series.

I’ve also just started using MacSpeech Dictate, which is the equivalent of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the PC. This software allows me to dictate and have the computer translate my voice into written words. The difficulty of writing fantasy and science fiction using the software, is that made-up words do not translate very well. This is especially true for words which are compound words, made up of two common words or words for which you wish to have a special spelling. ‘Wurmwright’ is the current bugaboo in the novel I’m writing now. The software constantly renders it as ‘worm right’. There are ways around that, I need to work with the software more to get more proficient in that regard. But for correspondence (and interviews) the dictation software speeds things up a great deal. I anticipate being able to dictate some stories which are set in a more contemporary world and are written in first person. It looks like that would pick my speed up by about 50%.

In terms of everyday walking around, I always have my iPod touch with me and it has a notebook, so I can make notes on it. On long trips I tend to bring one or more notebooks and will use them to jot more extensive ideas down. For me it’s kind of a process of trying to find the perfect interface between practicality, portability, and be able to make the gadget geek inside rather happy.

____

Michael Stackpole, thank-you very much indeed!

Michael’s website is stormwolf.com, where you can find his blog, The Secrets newsletter, and his ongoing serialised fiction projects. The Dragon Page – Cover to Cover is an essential podcast for any writers and readers of science fiction and fantasy, featuring views, opinion, reviews, interviews and discussion of new release. Episodes come out once or twice a week, and can be found at dragonpage.com or on iTunes.

For fiction in print, check out Amazon and any good bookstore. Michael’s Legends eBooks for the iPhone and iPod touch can be found at the iTunes store.

Meanwhile, Cherie Priest, the author what wrote that damned fine book Boneshaker that I harped on about earlier, seemed pretty pleased that she rubbed shoulders with Stephen King on the pages of this blog. Thanks for the link, Cherie!

And this I dig, a lot. Reader ediFanoB, whom I randomly bumped into on Twitter due to our shared love of steampunk, has a few words to say about my novella, The Devil in Chains, on his website. Now, The Devil in Chains isn’t a new release, and one of great mysteries of the publishing world is how books are all hot news on the week of release, then everyone forgets about them. I mean, Coke advertise several times a day on TV, and you can go to the store and buy a can. But I can also go to my local bookstore and buy, say, Salem’s Lot, but you don’t see Salem’s Lot advertised anywhere. Although writing is an art and a craft, publishing is about building name and brand. With that in mind, I’m pretty chuffed that ediFanoB enjoyed The Devil in Chains enough to not only blog about it, but demand I get on with the rest of the series and get Dark Heart (the first novel in the series, for which The Devil in Chains is a stand-alone prequel) edited and, heck, published even!

Well, that’s why I do it. I write stuff that I hope people enjoy. And if they do, that’s my job done. Thanks, edi!

Reading

There are a zillion blogs posting their ‘best of’ lists of books for 2009. Some are top tens, some are top one hundreds. Some bloggers claim to have read 280 novels last year, which just tells me that they are just looking at printed pages very quickly and are not actually reading. I guess it can be easy to confuse reading with looking (??).

I’m not a slow reader, but I enjoy reading and I like to think about it, so I average about one book a month, but I’m not going to post a list of what I read in 2009. Look me up on Goodreads if you want. I’m going to focus on my two favourite books of last year. These were Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and Under the Dome, by Stephen King.

I talked about Stephen King a few days ago, and he already makes an appearance on my 2009 awesome list, but Under The Dome is really a remarkable book. It’s not horror, but is quite horrifying. It’s not science fiction, except for the nature of the invisible, impenetrable, indestructible dome that descends on the town of Chester’s Mill one October morning. It’s a story of people, and what happens to them under extraordinary circumstances. It’s an extraordinary book, and while I haven’t read any other King novels, it is being touted as his best. I can believe it.

I read the US “copper” edition (now to track down the regular “white” edition) although I did start the UK hardcover first. However, the UK hardcover suffers from poor internal typography, presumably to condense the 1100 pages of the US edition down to the 800 of the UK edition. As soon as my US edition arrived I switched, as I was already getting tired of the walls of text printed in the UK version. It’s a real shame, as UK readers also miss out on the US cover. If you’re a fan, or a collector, grab the US one – copper or white!

A comparison between Under the Dome and Boneshaker is both pointless and impossible, so they take the joint number one spot. Boneshaker is a steampunk adventure set in an alternative Seattle, where a mining machine ran amok and destroyed most of the city. The ruins are now walled and filled with blight gas which has turned those left behind into zombies.

Zombies and steampunk isn’t necessarily new – indeed, they’re an integral part of my own steampunk series – but the Pacific Northwest setting is. What makes Boneshaker stand head and shoulders over nearly every other steampunk novel is not just the setting, but the fact that it’s really only steampunk at a push. There are airships, and various bit of high-tech Victoriana – including some which are steam-powered – but they are very much at the periphery. Aside from the airships, there are none of the steampunk cliches or tropes here. Boneshaker is like a breath of fresh air.

Story and setting aside, what struck me about this book was the writing itself. The prose is mature, detailed, complex, and beautiful. The pacing and rhythm are almost poetic, and the whole thing is tinged with the sadness and melancholy of Briar and her situation. Cherie Priest is not a new author, and I think this actually shows in this book. Boneshaker is assured and confident, which comes, I suspect, from the assurance and confidence of the author, having honed her craft with her earlier works. Which, I might add, are now firmly on my reading list for 2010.

Boneshaker was kindly supplied to be as an ARC from Tor. Which, pretty as it is with its simple white cover, means I missed out on the jaw-dropping cover. Tor have made high-res images of the cover painting available on their site. The cover is so eye-catching, so wonderful, that I’ll be picking up the book as-published just so I can have it on my shelf.

Scrivener

As I mentioned in part 2, 2009 was the year I started taking writing seriously, and this wouldn’t have been possible without Scrivener. I’ve talked about Scrivener many times before, and was using it prior to 2009, but last year was when I fully got to grips with all it can offer. So far I’ve written two and a half full-length novels in it, so I know full-well what it is capable of and how it has helped my writing.

For the uninitiated, Scrivener is a Mac-only writing app that allows unparalleled flexibility. I’ve turned a few people on to Scrivener, and more and more authors – big names and small – are now using it. To say Scrivener transformed the way I write is an understatement. It’s a night-and-day difference, the BSE (Before Scrivener Era) and ASE (you get the drift). The best thing you can do is check out the video demonstrations on their website, and then (if you have a Mac), buy it instantly.

SomaFM

I class SomaFM as another writing tool, although perhaps not an obvious one. SomaFM is a commercial-free, listener-sponsored internet radio station based in San Francisco that offers a multitude of channels to suit a multitude of tastes. My personal pick is Indie Pop Rocks.

When I write, I need music to block out the outside world. Listening to my own music doesn’t work, as I am familiar with it and I find it too distracting. The beauty of Indie Pop Rocks is that I recognise hardly any of it, yet their gigantic playlist is more or less brilliant. In fact, writing aside, I’ve discovered many new bands that have now become firm favourites thanks to SomaFM.

SomaFM is an essential writing tool for me, just as Scrivener is.

Meeting Your Heroes

Two of them in person, one via the interwebs. Did I ever think I’d meet Nathan Fillion and Leonard Nimoy? Or spend an hour talking to Scott Sigler about his plans for world domination? Nope. But I did, and they were some of the highlights of 2009 for me.

San Francisco

I travel a fair bit. In 2009 I made it to San Francisco, and within a few days it became my favourite US city. I’ve been to a lot, and while San Diego has held my affection for eight years, there is something about SF that just pips it. Maybe because it’s the home – more or less – of Apple, MC Hammer, Borderlands bookstore, SomaFM, NaNoWriMo, Scott Sigler, Gail Carriger, Pier 39, The Maltese Falcon. Maybe it’s because – perhaps more than San Diego – it reminds me of my home city, Auckland, with its harbour and bay and famous bridges. Maybe it was because, on my very first day, the lady at the local 7-11 was the nicest person I’d ever met. Whatever. San Francisco was an amazing week.

This website

I’m a perfectionist, and a fussy one at that. Is that tautology? Perhaps. But after a lot of looking and a lot of hacking and a lot of teaching myself CSS by trial and error, I got myself a website. This website, to be precise. People seem to like the design. I’m pleased to have a proper home on the internet, and that happened at last in 2009.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some books to write. A week into the new year and I’m already behind schedule!

Writing

I don’t have a competition running against Jennifer Williams, but we do egg each other on a bit. In 2009, she wrote 120,000 words, and if her novels (one completed, two in progress) are anything like her short stories, she’s going to snap up an agent and deal in next to no time. At which point I will be very jealous, and may have to take up some form of Black Magic to make her laptop battery die at inopportune moments. Jen has christened 2010 the “Year of Writing Dangerously”. I like it.

For me, 2009 has been the “Year of Writing Seriously”. It started with me completing my first full-length novel, Dark Heart. I had started this in 2008, or even earlier, but after a year of faffing had reached 30,000 words or so. In 2009, I Took It Seriously, and churned out the next 70,000 words in just two months. Taking It Seriously seemed to work. Dark Heart (first draft) came in at 118,743 words. I even got the manuscript printed up as a trade paperback via Lulu, providing myself with a bound, portable manuscript that I could edit wherever and whenever I wanted.

Taking It Seriously worked so well that I applied the same general technique (sitting down and writing) to my second novel, Seven Wonders (originally called New Gods, but so harassed was I by Jack Kirby fans – and rightly so, and myself included actually – that I changed it). I didn’t keep a track of time on Seven Wonders, but the first draft of this, my second novel, was done at the end of August and came in at 111,073 words.

I took a break after that, and started to edit Dark Heart, but after hacking at the first third of the book I realised it was still too soon. The text was too fresh, and I remembered nearly every comma, which made it hard to judge whether something – a scene, a chapter, a character, a plot point – was actually working. So I shelved that Lulu paperback and moved on to book three.

Book three is my current work-in-progress, Empire State. I was going to write the second in the Dark Heart steampunk series (I have books two through five plotted), but I felt I needed to stretch my writing muscles and write in different styles and genres. And if I spent another three months writing book two, only to never be able to sell book one, I’d kinda be stuck. It wouldn’t have been a waste of time, far from it, but as a new writer it made more sense to have written three books and be able to pitch each of them, rather than having written three books and be able to pitch only two of them.

Empire State, then, is a SF detective noir fantasy thing. Hmm, I think I need to work on the elevator pitch… the draft stalled in November/December for a variety of reasons that I have posted about before, but the file will be cracked open tomorrow as part of my New Year’s Resolution. Empire State stands at 35,387 words. The target is, again, 100,000 words, which leaves me about 65,000 to go. It started as a NaNoWriMo project, but November is where it all went wrong, so I didn’t even crack the required 50,000 words that month. Eh. What can you do?

Aside from these three full-length novels, I wrote a short story – The Unpopular Opinion of Reverend Tobias Thackery. This Lovecraftian horror was written in June 2009, and is 7,143 words long. It was rejected by Weird Tales, and is currently with another publisher, but if there is no luck there I’ll put it up here for free, and also as another Legends iTunes eBook alongside The Devil in Chains. Short stories are not my thing – I find them too hard to write and I rarely read them either.

That’s my writing for 2009. A total of 272,346 words written. Two complete novels and one complete short story written, and one novel at the 33% mark. The Year of Taking It Seriously seemed to have paid off.

For 2010, I have just one New Year’s Resolution (I’m not sure if that is supposed to be capitalised or not… I’m assuming it should, because that makes it Important, and Important is a Good Thing). If 2009 is my Year of Taking It Seriously, 2010 is my Year of Taking It Professionally. Okay, that grammar isn’t the best, but in 2010 I will have more time to devote to writing, which means I can think and act like a Writer.

My goal therefore is 1 million words in 2010. I think I got the idea from something Scott Sigler said, that he was going to write 1,000,000 words in 2009. I’m not sure whether he hit it or not, but Stephen King also said that you need to write 1 million words before you get to the good stuff. He might be right, and it looks like I’m 25% of the way there already. One million words is 2,740 words for each and every day, which is actually quite achievable considering on a good day I can get to 5,000 words at a push. So those one million words will be, more or less, the last two-thirds of Empire State, plus seven more novels, plus revisions on two novels.

That’s the plan anyway. And it all starts tomorrow. All I need is my ass, a chair, and my computer. And tea. Lots of tea.

More of my awesome and radical things of 2009 tomorrow. Happy New Year everyone! See you in the Amazingly Utterly Awesome 2010. See, capital letters, 2010 is Important.

Twitter

Twitter changed my life. Okay, compared to other social media and networking tools, it’s still not used by a lot of people if you compare it to say Facebook. Apparently most people who do sign up never come back after a few days. It gets a lot of stick – why do I want to know what you had for dinner? That’s a common jibe. And that’s fine. If you don’t get that Twitter is about communication – the limitless possibilities of real-time conversation and interaction with people – then no problem. But for those of us who do get it, and who use properly (i.e., you don’t tweet about what you had for dinner, because that’s amazingly boring), it’s a tremendous asset.

The number of people I have met and become friends with, the number of old friends I’ve reconnected with, the number of acquaintances and contacts I’ve encountered and had meaningful discussions with, has been immense. Writers, agents, publishers, big names and small names. And because Twitter is about conversation, you don’t have that clinical, “once-removed” feeling of Facebook. Where else can you discuss Dinobots with A. Lee Martinez? Or have Kevin J. Anderson butt into a conversation to recommend a book? Or swap computer game tips with Felicia Day?

Not that is is about schmoozing with the famous or pretending to be best friends with celebrities. As a writer and a reader, it’s been an invaluable resource. I’ve met agents and editors, I’ve learnt about the publishing business, I’ve met writers and we’ve talked about methods and habits and tactics and strategies. I’ve met publishers and talked about publishing and have, over the year, acquired an entire shelf of books either through recommendations, free copies, ARCs or competitions. I’ve met bloggers and reviewers, and readers and fans. I joined in February 2009, and because of Twitter, this year has been like no other.

Stephen King

I have to admit, I’ve underestimated Stephen King. I also must admit that, until Under the Dome, his mammoth 1100-page novel that came out in November, I hadn’t actually read any King. Ever. Oh dear. Perhaps I had equated his success and high output with a lack of substance – and in general, there is an inverse relationship between popularity and quality. Just pick up any bestseller next time you’re in a bookstore and read the first page. But his name is frequently mentioned, and perhaps there was something there worth investigating, so on a whim I picked up his audiobook reading of On Writing, his autobiographical writing guide. It was brilliant, and taught me a thing or two. Whatever you thought of his books, said I, King knew his onions. This is perhaps the biggest understatement of the year, of course, but I had to start my journey with something!

I’d known about Under the Dome since the beginning of the year, but it wasn’t until the publication date drew closer that the chatter about it started. And thanks again to Twitter, I not only snagged the US edition (with it’s wonderful cover) for $9 (thanks to a price war between Wall-Mart and Amazon), but I entered and was a runner up in the Under the Dome hidden text competition. My prize? A copy of the UK hardcover (not such a good cover) and a limited, numbered ARC. I got 10/200, and have hidden it away safely in a dark cupboard.

And the book? It’s wonderful. In fact, it’s the best book I’ve read in many years. I’d given that accolade earlier to the remarkable Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest, and really a comparison between the two books is pointless as they are so different, so they both get the prize.

And the best thing about discovering Stephen King is that I’ve got another 39 novels still to read. I’ve already had some warnings about a few of them, but coming to them with a fresh eye (and I’ll start with his 1974 debut, Carrie), we shall see! But I remember something that Gail Carriger said when I interviewed her in October about her steampunk debut, Soulless. She talked about a book having some indefinable “commerciality” that made you want to read it and keep reading it. This is why Stephen King is successful. He tells great stories very well, but his prose also has that magical X-factor. For such a doorstop of a book, Under the Dome had me hooked from the first page to the last. I wanted to turn each page. I even, rarely for me, stayed up late reading it. I’m lazy and fall asleep easily, so take that as the best recommendation I can give. Under the Dome is terrific.

Tomorrow – writing and reading and trips to California…

Well, two and a half weeks. First I needed to rescue our large bookcases from damp, and strip and repaint a wall. But it was nice and relaxing and quite therapeutic after the hellish November, and I continued to work on Empire State in my head at least. The book would be finished by the end of the year.

And then… I got sick. Really sick. Actually the wife got it first, and I was knocked out a couple of days later. It was the flu, right and proper, and resulted in 1.5 weeks in bed and another week walking around feeling awful. I still feel sick now, and still have a cough that feels like I’m being stabbed in the stomach.

The result? The blog didn’t get updated much. I did some writing – about 3000 words all up – before the computer screen began swimming in front of my eyes.

It really brought home the saying about “the best laid plans”. I was aiming for something like 5000 words a day, but my tracking spreadsheet has a huge column of zeros entered into it. It’s disheartening and disappointing, and it makes it more difficult to get back into it because once you get out of the habit, you really need to work to get back into it.

But this is Christmas week. I’m up and about, and we’ve had the heaviest snowfall in the three years we’ve been living in the UK. If you’re from a place where it doesn’t snow, like I am, this is AWESOME and RADICAL, and it makes me feel better.

So between the coughing and spluttering and eating M&S mince pies (which are as awesome and radical as the snow), the writing will start up this week I think, along with blog updates. There’s no point at all in rushing Empire State, so my self-imposed deadline for completion has been extended into mid-January. More on my 2010 goals next time!

Merry Christmas!

I didn’t make it. I lost NaNoWriMo. Not that it’s a competition, not that I was out to achieve anything other than writing 50,000 in 30 days. But Empire State stalled at 32,000 about halfway through November. It was going well too – I was ahead of schedule and averaging 2000 words a day. All well and good.

Until… well, like many writers, both published and unpublished and best-selling and unsuccessful, I have to keep a “day gig” to pay for bills, food, rent, heating, power, petrol, etc, all the things that allow me to work on my fiction. My fiction is what I consider my job. That is what I do. The day gig is an inconvenient thing I have to involve myself with for eight hours a day, five days a week.

And as I said, a lot of writers maintain the day gig well into their writing careers. So I’m not alone and my circumstances are not unusual. However, what is possibly rarer is that in the middle of November, my day gig became seriously hard work. It’s a hard job anyway, but last month it turned me into a zombie. Evenings of writing were out as I was braindead by 5pm. Mornings of writing were out as I was too worried about the day gig ahead.

Result? Writing ceased. Actually a lot of things ceased (updating this blog, for example). It’s not an excuse for not writing, but it is an explanation. I failed NaNoWriMo (not important) and I stopped writing (very important).

Fortunately, there are several different solutions. One is the fact that I have nearly all of December off. Another is that I’ll be taking more control of the day gig next year. Overall, things are looking much better. I’ll have more time, and importantly, I’ll have more energy.

So here’s to December and to 2010 and to getting back into Empire State and to forging a career in fiction. Because writing is my job.

This weekend I’m off to the UK’s best comic con, Thought Bubble, held every November in Leeds. Some of my favourite writers and artists will be there, the hotel we’re staying in is right next to the convention centre, and it’s a great chance to take two days off and relax and recuperate and collect sketches and generally have Good Times.

Because November has hammered me a little, I must say.

It started off well. Harper Voyager – the science fiction/fantasy imprint of major publisher Harper Collins – named me “Tweeter of the Month”, which meant not only did I get a wee blurb in their monthly e-newsletter, I got a swag of books from them including some George R. R. Martin and Rad Bradbury.

And then my good friend Mark Nelson (zardoz67) won the Stephen King hidden text competition – and was even interviewed by The Guardian – and, amazingly, I came in second. The prize is a limited, numbered, advance reading copy of King’s new novel Under the Dome, and although that hasn’t arrived yet, they sent me a regular store hardcover in the meantime. I must say I’m completely chuffed to be one of the two runners up, considering more than 5,000 people entered. My hidden text entry is here.

Rad Bradbury: Empire State is also going well – I’m not writing every day, which is a problem, but the book is currently at 30,207 and on track for completion. The reason for not writing every day, and indeed not updating this blog, is because suddenly the day gig went mental. And not in a good way either, which means it has been a significant drain on not only time but energy, which for a writer who needs to write out of office hours, is really bloody annoying.

However, here’s the plan. Two days off enjoying Thought Bubble, plus I have Monday off for some writing catch-up. Then just two weeks of the day gig and I’m on holiday for a month, and then after that (fingers-crossed) I’ll be my own boss.

Roll on 2010. See you Monday!

Not, I’m pleased to say, on the writing. On the blog. But there is no point worrying about some so trivial as not being able to update it yesterday. That’s life.

But tonight is a different story. Tonight I had a bath and read some more of Red Claw (which is excellent), then I drank a rather too-strong strawberry milk, and I brought today’s wordcount to 2,008 words. Today was a good day.

Yesterday was not so good. Writing wise, I hit 1,735 words, but it was hard work after a particularly difficult day. Hence no blog update. But my new axiom (I’ve always wanted to use that word, but never have until now!) is: words must flow. It doesn’t matter how bad the day is. I have to get some words down.

Rad Bradbury is proceeding according to plan as well. Chapters 1 and 2 are about 2,500 words each, by accident rather than intent. Chapter 3 comes in at 1,500, but I suspect the following chapter will be a long one (currently at 2,008 words and only about half done), so it’ll even out.

NaNo report, days 2-3 (Tuesday 3rd – Wednesday 4th November 2009)
Words written Tuesday: 1,735
Words written Wednesday: 2,008
Total wordcount: 8,908 (18% of NaNoWriMo, 8.9% of entire novel)
Words to go: 41,092 (NaNoWriMo), 91,092 (entire novel)
What I wrote: Rad Bradbury: Empire State, chapter 3, first draft, half of chapter 4, first draft.
Status: My average daily wordcount is still well above the Nano requirement at 2,227. Okay, okay, enough with the maths! But I need to fit this in around other stuff, and I need a routine, and I need a schedule. So maths it is.

I’m okay with chapter 3, but it’s more of an interlude, although it’s fairly important. It’s one of those ones that will live or die in the second draft, as it’s quite possible the information could be imparted in a different way somewhere else. But that’s for another time.

Chapter 4 is going well. It’s the whole private detective, Raymond Chandler thing, and while I’m not attempting to emulate (nor could I, or should I) and can’t get anything like the poetry of his work, I’m having fun playing with sentences and descriptions, and the rhythm of the scene. There is a damsel in distress, and she’s wearing a red dress and a black hat. Rad spends the entire scene in his socks.

Am I happy with Rad Bradbury: Empire State? Y’know, I think I might be. Early days, early days. Luckily my desk is made of wood and my wrists rest on it as I type, so I can say daring things like that.