New Book - old passion

Just watching Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan inspecting their first catch. What a movie, what a story - the hell, what a soup of stories and messages. A fantastic platform to think about new book titles. Wait, no worries, I am not trying to write another Forrest Gump story here, it's just some kind of epiphany or something - I guess.

Anyway, I am now pulling together branches for a new fiery novel but this time around the dough for it will need to be kneaded, the recipe followed to the dot. It's interesting, I got an inspiration last year and my first novel poured out of my memory - already there, already structured. Yeah, not a perfection but nevertheless. This time, it's fiction in its purest sense - I am not engaging with my past experience and everything in its entirety is made up. I'm fleshing out characters, painting scenes, sewing plots and approaching writing with scientific rigor.

It's a test I guess but I love writing, I really do and even this new, much more systematic approach that the story demands from me is not going to defer me from continuing living my passion - something I dreamed of for so long but never had the fire in me to get past a couple of sentences.

It's a different genre from my first novel but I don't care - as long as my brains entertain my fingers into producing something of decent quality. In the mean time, I am still waiting for the proofreader to get her job done and enjoy every moment with my family. I am blessed and grateful for that every single day of my life.

That's life - wonderful and peculiar

I begin to wonder whether ups and downs in human life are nature's deliberate attempts to either make or break you. I'd much rather stay on the "make" side, thank you. So, what happened? Well, I kind of didn't follow my promise of heavily promoting my new Construction Management book through my social media accounts. I did mention it once or twice but that's not self-promotion in its true sense. So, I decided to do this yesterday using my Twitter account. Mind you, I only sent out one book-related post.

It took Cesar Abeid from Remontech, a Canadian Construction Management company, a minute to respond and ask me whether he could interview me for his really well received podcast. I thought he was joking. You know, one of those automated spam posts or something. No, no, no, he is a real person! I talked to him today and he humbly presented the idea behind his podcasts. It's absolutely fabulous and it only took one (ONE) tweet. He will interview me on Thursday and believe it or not, he was thanking me! Hello, it's me who should be grateful and I am, I totally am.

Anyway, not being used to this I thought that was sensational. But then I read another tweet a couple of minutes later. It was sent by @beas_bloomsbury. Bea basically asked for some help with their kitchen floorplan and offered cakes as a form of payment. Anyone who knows me would understand why I replied to her within a split of a second. Come on, it's CAKES we're talking about!

I checked her website and then realised: Bea is a celebrity patisserie chef who a few years ago turned down the offer to be a head chef at Nobu London. She now owns her own Bea's Bloomsbury on several locations (including Chelsea and Maltby st.). The patisserie has been praised all over the world. Surreal, I'm telling you. I need to survey her main kitchen on Saturday and she offered to treat us at Maltby st. Market. I am thrilled! The update follows but in the mean time, thanks Bea for your kind offer!

Oh yes, and I am still editing my novel. It's getting together really nicely and all these revisions and delays are totally necessary. I guess it will be finished by the end of May and published on Kindle in June. Watch this space!

Delay

I received a very polite e-mail from my copy-editors yesterday explaining that they are willing to give me my money back because they won't be able to deliver within the advertized 21days! Wow, I was thoroughly impressed by their honesty.

OK, they do preach left right and center about their short turnaround times but hey, it's the quality that matters and a couple of weeks up or down - it won't matter in the long run anyway. I've been busy with my day job like mad in the recent weeks - hence the silence on my novel writing front so I was even more understanding as I know pretty damn well how damaging deadlines sometimes can be when you're dealing with all things unpredictable. Trust me, creativity doesn't know project management and you cannot squeeze it into the clamp of time.

Of course, I am eagerly awaiting the results and since this is my first novel, I'm not surprised they need more time than usual. I still believe though the book has got a compelling story and is easy to read. It should be an interesting subject for young adults who will be able to sympathize with Nathan's fears and understand the origins of his demons. Oops! I told you the main character's name... Ah well, it's almost 1am and after half a year of excruciating tempo, even holding a backspace key seems like too difficult.

So, all in all, I'm happy with the progress - despite the delay. I'll get the book back from the copy editors on the 30th March (or thereabout) and that means it will be available on Kindle store towards the end of April. I'm still happy though, it's the second book I wrote within a year!

Waiting game

I've recently signed up with Goodreads and almost instantaneously got more than 20 friends! Yeah, you might think that's not much but let me tell you something, I am thrilled. Even Amanda Hocking is my friend now on Goodreads and that makes me even more thrilled! Don't laugh, let me enjoy the moment.

It gave me an opportunity to revisit my list of books I read and it's not that short but I don't even remember all the books I've ever read... Though, Kindle has made reading now so accessible I will be reading like a passing train so watch my space on Goodreads. ;)

My book is with the copy editors right now... I am awaiting their report and it is a waiting game but my mind is not playing games with me this time and I am really relieved. Yes, I do expect very critical feedback but what the heck, you've got to start somewhere. Everyone is writing about "beta readers" though and I simply can't find any! All my friends are either so busy it would take them a year to get back to me - perfect for actually going mad; or they are not native English speakers. Well, I decided to do extra self-editing and then sent the book directly to my copy-editors. Look, I've got to start somewhere. It's not ideal but it is a start.

I've also started writing another book of mine (better say continued writing). It's a guide for aspiring individuals who wish to pursue PhD/Doctoral studies but I am writing it in a story-telling style to grasp the attention (I hope). Will be fun in the coming weeks as I am also planning to start writing my next novel. I haven't figure out the title yet but something to write about in my next post.