Thanks everyone, for your preorders and for following the book. I hope you’re all well.

It’s 5AM and I’ve been punching words while watching Stranger Things, which is a pretty fantastic show so far. 

It’s particularly good right now, as the bit I’m writing immediately follows the end of the first "act" of Thrum. Everyone’s kind of uprooted and a bunch of them are hurt, so it helps to have something against which I can measure how they’re behaving.

I finished the day with 1250ish words added, which is less than I’d like (I’d like to have hit the full 3100!), but it’s not a bad haul all the same. Another couple days like that and I’ll have the new chapter ready to upload. I have to write a new song for the new chapter, so you’ll get to see the first cut of that, which should be good for a laugh at least!

I was talking to a friend today, and he suggested that I should find a way to turn the book into a movie musical, which, you know, that’d be lovely, but as I told him, I’ll probably want to do an audio book first. I can probably find voices in my local area to do that project justice, and it would be fun to hear a version of these words and songs rendered by some of the wonderful people in my local arts community.

What do you guys think? Would you listen to what you’ve read so far? Can you get a sense of the music woven into the whole thing?

Take care,
mgb

Hello you lovely readers!

One of the few things I enjoy about flying is the ability to write without interruption. It was on just such a very delayed flight two days ago that I was able to pull together this update to let you know what’s going on:

Inkshares and I have finally agreed on a final scene list for The Punch Escrow. I can honestly tell you that getting to this point has been incredibly challenging, but very fulfilling. I was just telling my wife yesterday that I would be frustrated with the editing process, but every single time we do an iteration the story becomes exponentially more clear and exciting. This last round of edits was all about ensuring every beat in the story pops. This picture might give you an idea of the sort of granularity I had to get into when composing this latest iteration of the narrative:

Yep. Our protagonist hears the call of nature, but can’t find a bathroom in order to heed it. Even this seemingly innocuous scene is an important beat in the narrative, otherwise it would not be there. By the time this latest rewrite is done, nearly 80% of the 2nd draft, which itself was 50% different than the 1st, will be entirely rewritten. I would expect there to be less than 10,000 words of commonality between the first draft of the manuscript and this latest one. Crazy, right?

(Yes, crazy)

Incidentally, bathrooms in the 25th are architected to be extremely efficient, absolutely no running water. Waste is dehydrated and recycled, all that remains of what can’t be reclaimed is dust. High pressure air enriched with sanitizing nanos is used to cleanse your nether-regions and hands. Totally sanitary, good for the environment, and unwasteful. We actually have much of the capacity to do this today (okay, not the sanitizing nanos), but bureaucracy inhibits progress. 

In other news, I have submitted to final draft of my short story Morcom is here. for the Too Many Controllers anthology, which will be coming out on the Nerdist imprint, possibly even before The Punch Escrow. It’s a 6,758 word story about a mysterious program developed by Alan Turing, designed for a computer that he knew would not exist for nearly a century after his death. Incidentally, it’s based on a true story! The narrative is told through various press clippings, blog entries, and even Slack chats. I’m very proud, and happy with it.

That’s it for now. Don’t forget to keep up with my twice monthly column on the intersection of science fiction and present reality, The Future Is Now, on Geek & Sundry.

Peas,

Tal