Dec 1, 2015

Greetings, my small following!

I'll keep this short and sweet. I made a critical error in attempting to publish the work when I did; I was in the midst of a difficult production of The Tempest, and my personal life was hardly ideal. Will we make the funding goal in thirty days? Maybe, if I power hauled it and took the Quill imprint. Will I do that? Probably not, but I choose to see this as a learning experience. Thomas Edison was asked upon completion of the light bulb how it felt to have failed a thousand times; he replied  by saying that he didn't fail, he just discovered a thousand ways how not to make a light bulb.

So what does this mean? Basically, I'm going to take this work you've all taken at least some interest in, and shelve it if I can't pull off a Quill in the next thirty days. I'll give it the proper attention it deserves, then release it by myself on Amazon or something for $1.99 (pulling a figure out of my arse). In the meantime, I'm going to focus on a much older project that is going to get the respect and adoration it deserves. 

What is this project, you ask, and how will I give it this respect? Full disclosure: I have spent the better part of the last four years of my writing career as a playwright, and have indeed had some moderate success (in my local area, for reference). In the summer of 2013 I wrote and produced a short play simply titled "Mortimer"- it was never properly finished, nor was the production without errors, and I've learned a lot about script writing and stage work since then. However, the story I attempted to tell and the many drafts and ideas that I left unfinished never quite left my mind, and I had always wanted to return to it. Therefore, I am proud to announce that I'll be entering the new Sword & Laser Collection Contest with the newly redrafted, reformatted Mortimer, as a work of straight prose.

So, what's the point of all of this? Firstly, to thank you all for your patience, and to reassure you that one way or another, the story that you have apparently taken at least a modicum of interest in will be published in some format one way or the other. Also, to ask for your help: I certainly don't expect you to pre-order Mortimer (I mean, I won't stop you), but some creative help, feedback and promotion would be superb.

I would finally again like to thank you all for finding my work interesting, and letting this old codger know that published authorship is an attainable dream after all.

Still not that famous music critic, R. Hughes