Busy busy

I’ve once again fallen behind on blathering here, because I am slightly busy. Between revising The Digital Plague and submitting it to my Corporate Masters and beginning the earliest draft of the third, as-yet-not-officially-titled Avery Cates book, I’ve been doing some promotion (i.e., interviews) and resisting summary dismissal at my day job, which is always a near thing considering how often I’ve exploded into incoherent expletives at staff meetings. And then my agent sent me a note asking me to look over the last draft of Chum and revise as I see fit. Chum, for those of you who can’t read my mind, is actually the manuscript that my agent signed me on. It’s not Sci Fi, it’s more of a black comedy with murder thrown in. My agent took it on years ago, but it got back-burnered when the sale of The Electric Church sort of came out of nowhere. She closed her note by saying “that working for a living is totally over rated, right?”

Ha! Who has time for all this? Plus, I’m working on writing the next issue of The Inner Swine. A little personal zine might not seem like much, but when each issue is about 20,000 words and you put it out 4 times a year, it does eat into your time. I’m frickin’ booked.

So, there have been a few interviews to point you towards: First off, Mike Collins interviewed me for Your Mom’s Basement:

11. Your book was chosen as one of the launch titles for Orbit in the US. What’s that been like?

Well, it’s interesting to have so much publishing muscle behind you. My last book was published by the tiniest of tiny publishers and the marketing team was me, my wife, and my Mom. Things went about as well as you can imagine.

Everyone is so excited about Orbit entering the US market–I’ve literally have people go from Listening Politely to Rabidly Interested in my book just because they hear that Orbit’s publishing it. To have that kind of clout behind you is intoxicating, and I’ve started walking about with a crown and a T-shirt that says KING OF ALL SPEC FIC. Is that wrong?

You can read the whole thing here.

Then, our friends over at Chud.com interviewed me after reviewing TEC the other day:

Was being a writer always your goal?

Then, heartbreakingly, I realized one day when I was 27 or so that becoming a brain surgeon would require lots of school, hard work, and a basic understanding of math. So I decided to write.

Whew! Is it any wonder I drink? I mean, this kind of pace is killer. I actually had to wake up before noon the other day. It was traumatic.