Right now, I have no idea where May went, and I'm wracking my brain thinking about it. I was due to fly out to Boston on 26th April for a week and hang with some friends out there - those who I knew way back when I was doing the rounds on Kelley Armstrong's discussion forum. The day before I fly out, I get an acceptance letter/email from Devolution Z magazine, telling me that a story I submitted a week earlier had been accepted for the May 2016 issue.
Given that the acceptance came through while I was baking, packing, and all that good stuff, I figured I could afford to wait until I touched down in Boston before updating the site, social media and such. After all, even if I couldn't find an internet cafe with desktop PCs in Boston, surely the hotel would have WiFi, or a business centre - some way that I could update everything before the May 2016 issue dropped on May 1st. Right?
Wrong. My current site host won't allow me to update the site from a smartphone: currently, it's desktop only. And while there was a business suite in the hotel - and I did use it to update basic content on the site - the hour cost of that privilege turned out to be $33. Ouch. Still, I got the job done. The trip to Boston was cool. I hung with friends, spent a sunny afternoon in and around Boston Common, shaking girls out of trees (thanks to the Queen Bea for humouring me), shot some pool, took in the bird's eye view from on top Customs Tower, feasted on swordfish and rice, courtesy of Legal Sea Food. Oh, and let's not forget knocking back some Downeast Cider at the Bull & Finch - the very same bar that served as the inspiration for the sitcom Cheers. And as for Downeast Cider? Looks like orange juice. Tastes like heaven. Not a clean taste like Koppaberg Pear, but all dirty and divine. I digress. A week spent, and I touch back down in London, remembering that I still had some beta to knock out. As a result, I did so, double-time. Not only did I want to clear my beta schedule and return those works to their rightful owners, but I also wanted to return to writing longer fiction. I also had the good fortune to see the cover art for the debut issue of Turn To Ash magazine:
The artwork is courtesy of Matt Tisdale at www.matttisdale.com - head on over to the site to see more fine work like this.
I actually had the idea for the story for the Turn To Ash debut a few months back, and had bought a weighty bag of goodies from Hotel Chocolat, all in the name of research. Luckily, the blurring of my abs was only temporary. Be warned: Hotel Chocolat have some good shit. Anyhow. I sold "So Dreamy Inside" early this year, with the only story I've sold since (so far) mentioned further up in this entry. If memory serves, I'd spent the remainder of May fleshing out the outline for the new novel/la. Not sure how long the story will be as yet, and there isn't a specific word count I'm aiming for. Just a particular story I had in mind. At this stage, the biggest clue to what the story may be about is the title, "Downwind, Alice." So far, I've written the prologue. That was a week ago. The previous week has been tiring, but now the weekend's here. And so is relative peace and quiet. Anyhow. I've still got a back catalogue of short fiction to shop before I get back to the manuscript. Time to put in work.