The Four Baristas: Double Shot

And You Thought the Last Note Was Short

Right. The Four Baristas of the Apocalypse has been published. It has been pitched to TV and movie producers, two of whom have requested the full manuscript (just to make me sweat that little bit longer before the 'No, thanks' arrives). A revised, expanded and middle-graded version of The Blade has been sent off to its potential publisher for the final yay or nay. I've chopped and edited and sliced and diced Fearless and Section F/The F-Files until they're both more or less in shape (and been rejected at least once each).

Which means, at long last, it must be time (barring mullet-related side-excursions) to get back to writing Double Shot. Huzzah?

Well, no.

See, I've been writing Double Shot for a long time. A long, long time. Ages. Eras. Eons. Epochs, even.  Eternity? Nah, but it kind of feels like it. And the thing about the passage of time is that while it's passing, stuff happens in it. Stuff which, in my case, included writing a couple of other books, and the aforementioned editing, pitching, submitting and being rejected things.

And you can't do all that stuff without learning a bit about writing along the way. Without picking up a few tricks, scoring a few tips and ditching a few bad habits. Without (hopefully) getting a little better. Well, I guess you could if you were (a) already the best writer ever, or (b) so bad you couldn't even spell 'beter', but I'm certainly not (a) and hope I'm not (b).

So, the point is, since writing the first chapters of Double Shot, my idea of what constitutes acceptable writing has moved on a bit. Specifically, it's moved beyond the way those chapters were written. And what that means is, before I start writing new chapters, I'm gonna have to get started on fixing the existing ones.

So, I have. Well, I did. I started. But then, not long after I started, the afore-aforementioned rejections for Fearless and The F-Files arrived. Now, clearly rejections are a bad thing. Nobody likes a rejection. Boo, rejections, boo. But, strange as it might sound, these rejections were kind of good rejections. In fact, they were the best kind of rejections. Because they were the kind that told me why they were rejections. Rejections that pointed out what they liked, but more importantly, what they didn't.

And the thing about the stuff they didn't like was that they were right not to like it. That stuff wasn't very good. And I can see that, now it's been pointed out to me.

So, people, can we guess what that means?

Yep. I have to fix Fearless and The F-Files, before I get around to fixing the existing chapters of Double Shot, before I write some new chapters of Double Shot. Well, I don't have to. I could just abandon those rejected suckers, chuck 'em in the bottom drawer and accept they just couldn't cut it out there in the big, bad publishing world.

But I don't want to do that. I'm quite fond of both those stories. They make up 50% of all the books I've ever written. I'm even a little bit proud of them. So, if they're a tad sucky as is, well then, that needs sorting.

The upshot of which is that Double Shot updates remain a little way down my to-do list. But they are still very much on the list. This book will be completed, eventually.

Honest.