Yesterday was one of the worst days in quite a long time; so much so that it was a blessing to see midnight roll by. We heard that the wife of a good friend had been diagnosed with Stage 4 metastasised breast cancer - a return of the beast she'd licked once already. The message came at 3 am... and set the tone for the day.
It was also the day Elemental came out in the US. The message behind Elemental is a simple one, great SF/F for a worthy cause. Reviews have already started appearing - and all bar one has been fantastic. I can live with that average.
Today was better, even at 3am. I finished A Map of You, the second part of Temple's ongoing serial for Apex Digest and slept the first decent night's sleep in I don't know how long. At lunch time there was a knock at the door - FedEx delivering two boxes of Elemental. My contractual copies. I hadn't seen the book, but by god, opening that first box and seeing just how lovely Michael Whelan's cover truly is was a treat I won't forget in a long time. I did the author thing, piled them up on the table, arranged and rearranged them, then stroked them, looked at them, rearranged them, started thumbing through them. Reread Sir Arthur C. Clarke's introduction, chuckled at the sudden relocation of my mate Stel Pavlou from Rochester, Kent, to Rochester, New York, and wondered how the hell we'd missed that one in about 8 passes.
Then the normal mail came - containing two Dr Who anthologies to tie in with the new one I am editing for Big Finish/BBC, Destination Prague, and my care package from Games Workshop with the second Horus Heresy novel False Gods by Graham McNeill (you hate me now don't you) and Mike Lee's third Darkblade novel with a gorgeous cover by Clint Langley. If that wasn't enough Nathan Long's Tainted Blood, a Gotrek and Felix omnibus AND Ravenor Returned by Dan Abnett. I could have filled a normal bookcase with the number of goodies that arrived today.
This afternoon I started revising the outline for Retribution. The first draft was a good vampire novel, but not a great one, and I am a fussy bugger. This is the conclusion of the trilogy. Retribution needs to be the vampire book to end all vampire books as it will be my final say on the subject. I want to say EVERYTHING I have to say about the undead in this bad boy... not recreate some wet Ricean simpering undead count but a real dynamic evil. So it is a case of today and tomorrow stripping down the bones of version 1.0 and doing a six million dollar man on it - rebuilding it better than it was before.
I work like this a lot. Hammer out a vision then revise it. It's a great way of working the kinks out and developing a story that truly is the best it can be.
Final passing comment: Elemental is currently #3 in the Fantasy Anthology Best Sellers list at Amazon and #4 in the SF Anthology Best Sellers list, which is bloody marvellous - only Neil Gaiman and David Eddings are above us - and one is a graphic novel, the other a collection of best selling fantasies. Let's see if we can't topple 'em eh?
