Works in Progress

Added on 07 October 2010

The increase in output from Long Midnight Publishing - with the long-term goal of becoming the biggest independent publishing house in Europe, prior to being bought out by one of the industry behemoths in a $270M deal – continues. 21 Years On The Back of Dixie Klondyke’s Spanish Guitar is more or less in the bag, a proof-read away from being sent to the printers, and remaining on schedule for its release in early December.

Work has now switched to preparing The Haunting of Barney Thomson for publication on Amazon Kindle, something which should happen within the next week. Popularly known as ‘the Scooby Doo one’, this is Book Six in the series. The paperback has been known on occasion to break into the Amazon Top 100 Horror/Thriller chart; not entirely sure if that’s an apt description, but it certainly is intended as the creepiest of the novels, and quite a change from the more gentle strangeness and comedy of The Last Fish Supper.

Once that’s in the bag, then it’s onto The Final Cut and then the entire series will be digitally active. Only then will the future of Britain’s economy be secure, only then will we all be able to sleep soundly in our beds.

The next project after that will be readying A Room With No Natural Light for publication sometime next year; possibly putting together a collection of all the other Barney Thomson stories, into a kind of Barney Thomson & The Face of Death and Other Stories kind of thing; and then get to work on a new crime novel project, giving myself a long lead-in, so that there’s plenty of time to get it ready. Looking at spring 2012 for that. I have the feel for it, the basic idea of what I want to do, the lead character, the crime, just putting ideas together in my head at the moment. No title as yet.

In the meantime I’ll continue to work on the Twitter/Facebook/blog side of things. Haven’t done Facebook yet, not quite in the zone with Twitter. Not sure what it’s for and how to make it work. Can’t imagine being one of these fellows that updates every fifteen minutes on what they’re doing. Just listened to Turin Brakes or Sitting on toilet for too long, need to eat more prunes or Off to supermarket to buy milk… Or does one comment on World affairs and general stuff? Good thing Randy Moss has left the Patriots or I wish those bloody people wouldn’t chant at the Ryder Cup, they’re turning it into football and they’re only encouraging the Americans to be even worse in two years time. OK, that last one would be too long.

Perhaps I could write 140 character novels, as many are already doing. Join the rush.

Outside, a wind blew, the dark engulfed him. Lost and alone, when the skeletal hand grabbed him, crushing his skull, it was almost a relief.

That might be the way forward. Think I might put that on Twitter right now, then sit back and wait for the film rights offers to come.

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