I am exhausted!

I’m really, really sorry I haven’t posted much in the last couple of months. Normal services will be resumed shortly – around October – when my daughter is 1 and my new non-fiction book is all done. (I hope.)

In the words of Mr Monk: “here’s what happened“…

I finished Angelmaker. That’s my second novel, which had been in a kind of limbo holding pattern of editorial call and response, like a five hundred page Cab Calloway number. It is done. Done, I tell you! Done, done, done, done DONE!

Are we clear that it’s done?

Okay. So while I was in call-and-response land, I managed to write a third novel. Yes, really. It is shorter, arguably set in the real world-ish, and sad and odd. It is provisionally titled (and I say ‘provisionally’ although I am going to fight very, very, very hard to retain this name) Tigerman Make Famous Victory, Full Of Win.

Yeah, I know. But also: yeah! I know! :)

It needs a big edit, which is fine; I’ll come back to it when I’ve done my next project, which is The Blind Giant.

What is this giant of the blindness, I hear you ask? It is, I reply, a moment of genius or insanity on the part of the old respected house of John Murray. I was asked to put my brain where my mouth is (always a worry) and do a non-fiction project on the impact of digitisation on society and the individual. Because I talk about this stuff all the time – arguably too much – and they are in the zone with this kind of thing. So I said ‘yes’ to producing this tome in double quick time and in consequence I am slaving like a slave over a hot keyboard and when I’m not doing that I’m either watching the first season of Babylon 5 (which I never saw and which everyone keeps telling me was awesome) or playing with my kid (who is infinitely more awesome, I gotta tell you).

Regarding the Booker: I have no opinions at all. I can only say that since the very superb Susan Hill is on this year’s panel, at least some degree of sanity will be in evidence. I note that the books appear by and large readable, and that there is some controversy over the shortness of one of them. I find these things… of interest. But by and large I have no opinions because my brain at the end of each day resembles hashed codfish, and if there is any structure left in it at all I burn that on sociology, political economics, or histories of Google because that is what my job is until October. Thus the list exists in a parallel world where the contentious shortness of The Sense of an Ending is more important than sourcing a quote from Eric Schmidt or chasing down a study in depression, learning problems and Omega 3 oils.

(For what it’s worth: the Omega 3 oil thing is fascinating. DHA ftw.)

Meanwhile:

Angelmaker will come out in 2012. This makes me sad, because I desperately wanted it to come out this year. Sorry. On the other hand, I now have a better handle on the regular flows of publishing, and I propose to be more prolific in future. We’ll see how that goes. I have a lot of things I want to write about.

And now I have to go write 2500 words on the human condition in the age of connectivity. kthanxbai :)