Engine Punk

Well, there's nothing on my playlists anymore. During the production of The Horsepower Whisperer and The Wormton Lamb , I developed a playlist of music that inspired me for each book. Either that or I could imagine certain songs contributing to the sound track to the film of the book. A new playlist is currently emerging as the soundtrack for The Grey Ones , which will be the third part of the Soul Trader Trilogy. This is very exciting - I love this process! I don't know what song or scene will happen next and the plot is evolving nicely. The social networking site Imeem enabled me to put these songs onto the net and share them - my idea was that readers could experience a multi-media event by reading the book and/or listening to the tunes. Imeem appeared to have the licensing arrangements all sussed but then it began to unravel. Instead of playing the whole samples, Imeem began to only offer samples. Often they were from the middle of the song so my playlist sounded bloody aw...

I am currently re-drafting the beginning of my next book and it has occurred to me how much of this self-publishing lark has nothing to do with the simple act of getting your thoughts down on paper. Or a screen. Or a digital dictaphone. Assembling these often random ideas into a coherent story also takes a lot of time but I quite enjoy doing that - drafting and re-drafting until the story has a direction that and sense of purpose that makes it almost write itself. Once I have that all important orientation in the narrative, the story assumes a kind of critical mass and I get carried away by it until it's finished. It always needs more polishing once I've reached The End but by then I can see the whole story, something no amount of planning can bring out. So that's the writing part, the easy bit. The self-publishing manuals are also telling me to do a whole lot of other things. Some of them I find easy, others I don't. And if I am to be a writer who actua...