Book manuscript is submitted to UK and Oz publishers, awaiting the rejection or acceptance… so what’s next?

Well, firstly, there’s the clean-up-house project. A month away in Australia in March-April, preceded by several months of frantic manuscript rearrangement and polishing, plus writing a final work project paper, meant that the house has been neglected. [I share house with a lovely man … but one who has not quite managed, in spite of my propaganda campaign waged over many years of marriage, to divest himself of the Asian idea that major house chores of the spring cleaning variety are a woman’s domain…]

This kind of house neglect might not mean much in a temperate climate. In the tropics it’s an invitation for every kind of wildlife and plant form to take up residence, thank you very much.

So I have decided a major war on intruding flora and fauna and dust is in order to clear the way for the coming frontal assault on the next book, plus the next work project, all of which will be accompanied by another period of neglect.

No idea when the work project will start, but it could be very soon. And I am nervous about writing book 2 of a trilogy without a contract; I’ve never done that before because it is such a gamble. Writing one book and failing is all very well – just a year down the tubes – but writing a second book to follow it into oblivion is rather sticking one’s neck out. Better to try something else, one would think.

However, I have in fact already done quite a bit of Book 2, so I will continue and keep all fingers crossed (when I am not actually typing) that someone somewhere will love the story of a rogue rainlord who steals rain and thus mucks up a whole nation and begins a war – and that’s just for starters…

So here’s a look at the picometer status of Book 2 – which I am very provisionally calling Stormshifter.