HELLO-LO-Lo-lo-lo....
Anybody still here?
At some stage my follower count dropped from 3000 to 1500 overnight. WP must have been doing a cull. But my account is still here, so that's something I guess.
Currently doing a re-read and light proof of Sleepers & Devil's Bones after a long hiatus - more to remind myself what the bloody hell they were about than anything else. It's a nice experience to return to a story you've half-forgotten. You feel like you dreamed some scenes - and perhaps you did. But the realisation that "hey, this isn't half bad" is a pleasant one.
Got off the submission train some years back after coming up against 200 brick walls. No exaggeration. I probably have more rejections than that for Sleepers alone, but have no desire to count them. I don't know what's going on in the trad publishing world. Frankly, I don't want to know. The whole thing was making me ill. Seemed the whole biz had become fixated on people's skin colour and/or what they have between their legs. I messed around with a pseudonym for a while, but playing the game of pretending to be a pansexual avocado from Cameroon is a fool's game. If trad publishing has turned a corner, or is going to, I imagine it will be too late. LLMs are probably writing everything that gets published now. And honestly, would you be able to tell the difference? That said I'm curious to hear from anyone in that space - much in the spirit of people who slow down to stare at a car crash.
New work? I've written about 200 pages of my epic Australian fantasy novel... in 2 years. Disgraceful. Planning to dive right back in though. It's still really fresh in my mind, and I like the world and the characters, and think about them a lot. Sleepers Volume III is always on the horizon. Perhaps this revisit will kindle the flame again. I do miss Ward, Carmen, and their crew. Old, old friends.
Hope you're all well. Love my readers, and think about you often. I hope that doesn't sound too weird.
MC
