So, this last week has mainly been spent doing quite possibly the worst job in existence. No, I’m not talking about working in a mine, or being one of those people that clean corpses out of the Ganges. I’m talking about EDITING! I’ve made no secret about how much I hate this vile practice, but no matter how many times I tell my publisher that my work comes out absolutely perfect first time and doesn’t need any changes, they insist on sending me a raft of ‘suggested edits’ for each book. And by suggested they mean ‘change them, mate, or we’ll send the boys round’.
The current edit is the copy edit for The Fury. It’s already had a structural edit, which is essentially when the great big block of stone that you’ve been sculpting actually starts to look like what you wanted it to – with a rough face, some arms maybe. The copy edit is when the features get chiselled out and people can actually see what it is, largely thanks to Trevor, the awesome chap who has copy edited all my books so far. It will go through another couple of smaller edits, which are just polishing, and then we’re done! It’s a beast of a book at 125,000 words (nearly twice as long as Furnace), which makes the edit even more annoying! But I’m sure all the hard work is worth it…
On a positive note, the cover is almost finished, and here it is! It will need some tweaking, and a proper quote obviously, but I LOVE it!!
Furious!!
I’ll post the final version just as soon as I have it!
As if editing one thing isn’t bad enough, I’ve also been editing the novella I have written for Tor.com. It’s called The Night Children, and tells the story of how Warden Cross first meets Alfred Furnace. It’s hopefully a genuinely terrifying story – it certainly creeped the hell out of me when I wrote it! Below is the blurb and the AWESOME cover illustration. If you look closely, those faces aren’t actually attached to people…
Ew!
It is December 1944 and Europe is still gripped by war. In the densely forested mountains of Belgium one of the conflict’s most brutal battles is raging. Cut off from the front, a ragtag group of young British and American soldiers finds itself being hunted by a patrol of elite German Special Forces, including a newly commissioned officer called Kreuz—a teenage boy who will grow up to become Warden Cross (the fearsome prison director who will one day rule Furnace Penitentiary, the terrifying underground prison specially built for teen offenders). As both sides fight for their lives in the unforgiving terrain, however, they start to realize that there are worse things hiding in the snow than soldiers. There are creatures out there with gas masks and piggy eyes (ancestors of Furnace prison’s “wheezers”)—demonic entities that cannot be killed by guns and grenades, monsters who do not care what uniforms their victims are wearing so long as they bleed, and so long as they scream . . .
Find out how to read it here!
So, other than the evil witchcraft that is editing, not much else has been going on. We went to Waxham on Sunday for a swim in the sea and game of American football on the beach, and we went to see the final Harry Potter, and I’ve been reading more George R. R. Martin, but that’s about it! Next week is very different, though, with my shows at the Edinburgh International Book Festival – I’m so excited about these!! Plus a very cool meeting that I’ll tell you more about in the next update.
That’s about it for now, see you next week!
Oh, wait, I almost forgot about the brand new trailer for Furnace from the US. Metal or what!
You’ll have to watch it on YouTube because I can’t figure out how to upload it!
