Normal late-night backstage frazzle here - I'm in a production of By the Bog of Cats and opening night is tomorrow, so consider this a communique lobbed over the prison walls of exhaustion, Irish accents, and stage blood.

By the Bog of Cats - Publicity Shot - Town & Gown Players - Athens, GA - Matt Hardy -photographer

I finished PHASE I edits tonight and am ready to record my scratch audio book this weekend so I can make my deep dive and get the manuscript ready to submit to Inkshares and beta readers -- fingers crossed so hard that my knuckles crack, I'm hoping I'll be finished with Phase II edits by the time this show closes on August 16th. I have a tiny part in the show, which leaves me a couple of hours every night unspoken for sitting backstage -- I mean tomorrow night doesn't count because it's opening night and I have to focus on the fancy cake and libations that await, but YOU GET THE IDEA.

For my snippet du jour, here's the invocation that will appear at the beginning of the book. All of my other books begin with my invoking the Muse - as is only right and proper. If you are disinterested in Homeric poetry or the Greek pantheon, you can just think of it as a weird bit of poetry to set the mood before the golem fights and psychic dragon hi-jinks begin.

Sing in me, O Muse

of the moment when

of the moment then

her gray fingers

wrapped

and coiled

around my heart,

a circle.

Help me sing of the circle

the circle that cannot break

the center that should not hold

but does.

For now.

Fellow sentient beings, it’s been an exciting week.

There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s get started.

Nerdtacular

I was in Salt Lake City, Utah over the weekend for the Frogpants Podcast Network’s Nerdtacular event. While I won’t bother you with what I do during my vacation time, I think there are a couple of details that might be of interest to you. The best part was meeting the handful of fans (feels weird writing this) that dropped by. I wish I had more time to chat with each of them and I hope I didn’t come off as too standoffish. If I did, I apologize. I’m of a shy nature.

Koalemos, the model

I was finally able to showcase and award the first copy of the Koalemos model I created. This is the first of eight of these models and while it didn’t come out perfectly and was an absolute disaster to transport, I think the end result was worth the effort. I look forward to building the second model and raffling it off to the people who pre-ordered The Life Engineered.

The first model, which is numbered ‘8’ for reasons all my own, was given to Hammond Chamberlain, host of the Beyond the Playlist podcast. Hammond is one of the 13 people who dropped by my table and I entered is name in a drawing for the model. Mr. Chamberlain is local to Salt Lake and I won’t pretend that I’m not relieved Koalemos wouldn’t need to be shipped. I’m honoured that Hammond set up the model in his home with other prized possessions.

The Sword & Laser podcast

Before Nerdtacular, the good people at Inkshares put me in contact with the inimitable Tom Merritt who invited me to sit for a brief moment on the Sword & Laser panel at Nerdtacular. I wish I could say that the brief interview was the highlight of the panel, and make no mistake, it was a lot of fun and I had an awesome time (Tom and Veronica are absolute pros) but the segment that followed was an absolute blast. I knew the hosts of Sword & Laser were good hosts and interviewers but I had not realized they could be such hilarious improvisational actors. The whole panel is amazing and you can watch the raw footage here.

Editing

This morning I sent out my edited manuscript. Only five days late! There are still eight days before the final draft needs to be sent to the copy edit department and with Nerdtacular behind me I’m confident we can hand this off on time. There were a lot of little changes and a few larger ones but all in all, no cataclysmic reworking of the story and narrative. I’m very impressed by how well my editor ‘got it’ and the quality of the work he handed me. It’s humbling when another human being can look at your writing and understand a character so much as to notice when you fail to stay true to it. The changes are subtle, but this is a much better book now. I don’t know how much more editing remains, but I’m confident we’ll have a very decent product for release day.

I’m also eagerly waiting to get the new cover for The Life Engineered and can’t wait to show it off. Judging from the feedback we gave the illustrator (Eric Belisle) and the sketches we’ve seen so far, it’s going to be amazing.

Thanks again for your support.

JF