Roderick T. Macdonald's Blog, page 15
June 26, 2022
Reading My SPFBO Cohort #2
June 22, 2022
A Promise Fulfilled – TKATD Worldwide ebook Sale!
Continue reading A Promise Fulfilled – TKATD Worldwide ebook Sale!
June 11, 2022
The Killer & The Dead On Sale
May 24, 2022
SPFBO 8
January 26, 2022
What happens when you deviate from the process: Collector’s edition edition.
Continue reading What happens when you deviate from the process: Collector’s edition edition.
December 13, 2021
Changes in Perspective
In the month since I released my second book I have realised something.
I was afraid of hard work after releasing my first book.
I know why, it was because I read advice online, watched videos that said and repeated the message that a book on its own is nothing, that an author must have a brand, must have multiple novels out under their name before they try to launch a “media barrage” (my term) into the universe.
I’m not saying that’s a crock of shit, but I did buy into it because I’m inherently lazy, and the idea of having to work at selling myself online seemed unseemly to me. It may be a surprise to some who know me personally, but I hate talking about myself publicly, and the idea of selling my work, and by extension myself, was essentially abhorrent to me.
Despite my feelings on the matter I have blogged for a number of years, because it was supposed to help. New research indicates that may not be the case. You may imagine I’d heave a huge sigh of relief. I’m a contradictory soul, so I was sad. I’ve acquired a certain level of comfort with this level of self-exposure. I will continue to blog, but it will stop being the focus of this site. Eventually.
The real change in perspective with The Killer and The Dead’s release is that writing, and the business of writing, has become my second job. I don’t want writing to be a hobby. It has never felt like a hobby, it has always been a necessity, oftentimes neglected to my own detriment. I never wanted it to be a job, because jobs suck, and writing let me soar away from the mundane.
But the new truth is that having two books to manage, to sell and advertise, is a job. I’m not doing a great job at that right now, because I am finally, and reluctantly, learning how to do that better. With one book out I did look like a hobbyist. With two out I have to shed that image, because I want to write three and four and five books more, to release old books with merit, to experiment with short form for mailing lists and potential collections. In short, I want to be what I have always yearned to be. A professional writer.
I’ve always been a writer. Professional is the difference. It has been a long road for me to come to this realisation, to acknowledge that dreams can coexist with hard work. For a long time I just wanted writing to be a first draft. Then I learned about the publishing process. Then I learned about editing a text to death. Now I am learning that writing is only a fraction of what I must do. I’m not a fan of this new (again reluctantly) aquired knowldege, but I cannot ignore it.
So, changes are coming to this site, and to my output. This is now a work in progress. I thank everyone who has stopped in over the years, I will still blog for you, and myself, but changes need to be made, and I need to learn how to make them. I hope to see you down the road.
November 13, 2021
Release Day Is Here! Buy now! (Or later…)
The Killer and The Dead is live on Amazon – go check it out! Paperback and hardback to follow. Though this is officially part of the World Belt series, it is a stand alone novel and can be enjoyed without reading The Thief and The Demon, though if you have you will enjoy some Easter eggs as they arrive. (This book takes place approximately 2 months after the events of TTATD.)
November 7, 2021
The Killer and The Dead eBook Release
Coming to Amazon on Saturday November 13th 2021, paperback and hardback to follow!
I am proud to announce the arrival of The Killer and The Dead eBook.
Check it out!
September 19, 2021
One small step at a time.
It is a hard thing to finish a book. Not the hardest thing in the world by a long chalk, but, if you’ve tried writing a book, and then got feedback, edited, re-edited and then polished beyond editing into obsession, well then maybe you’ve a small idea of how hard it is to finish a book, one you care about, at least.
No apologies for the comma abuse in the above paragraph. I meant them all.
This blog was originally called The Long Road, and as a subtitle those words in that order remain. I think when I first coined the phrase it was a nod to the first line of a book I wrote that has yet to be released, and to the idea of the long road to publication. I think, when you are trying to do a thing that expresses your creativity, and it takes months and years of your life to achieve, that it can truly seem to be a long and lonely road you are traversing, with no hope of a destination, or even of meeting fellow travellers who understand why you are taking those small steps each day, and why you bother to take more each day after that.
All I can say is that I have trod that long and lonely road, one small step at a time. If you persist you can reach an ending, of one idea, one beautiful expression, and it can be a good moment. I had one of those a few years ago. But the road goes on, there are more ideas, more expressions of beauty to share. I think I have reached another moment where I can pause and look back over the terrain I have crossed, and be pleased.
My next book is ready, but for one word I will change. One word. A long road to a destination already made, but one word can change everything for me. Perhaps for my readers, perhaps not. I leave that to them, and that is why I almost left the word untouched. Until I remembered that I am the author, and I am not dead. And that word, that small step, mattered.
The Killer and The Dead is almost here. It is one word away.
May 17, 2021
A walk in the rain.
I walked in the rain this evening. It reminded me of Scotland: a bracing cold, but invigorating, my memory choosing to omit the reality of Scottish rain, pissing relentlessly down, soaking you through when walks in the rain weren’t for pleasure, but a miserable necessity.
I grew up in the rain. I wonder now why the Scots language doesn’t have five hundred words for rain, for the types of it, the size of the drops, the density of them in the air, the amount of wind involved, the stages of getting soaked to the skin, from the first wetness upon your jacket, to that feeling of your coat getting heavier with water, to the telltale touch of cold saturated fabric upon your shoulder that tells you you’re in for a miserable time, with three miles to go until home. There should be Scots words for after-rain: the dream of tea, of soup by a hearth, the peeling off of sodden trousers that pulled on your skin, tightening as you walked. Words for the strange way you can get soaked on one side when the wind throws buckets in one direction, and you realize one leg is cold, and the other still has a not exactly dry covering, but one that feels dry in comparison. And what about a word for the rain that doesn’t feel like rain anymore, when you’ve survived a downpour, the skies have lifted, but, it being Scotland, a little rain persists, just because, but it feels like nothing after what went before? What about words for the way your shoes get waterlogged, the double wet of rain falling, then splashing up off the pavement to soak your feet, ankles, and the clothes that cover them first? Why isn’t there a word for that? And let’s not get started on the ways the rain changes the substance of the ground we walk upon, from yielding to treacherous, from bright green and alive to brown sludge that wants to send you slithering onto your backside if you’re unwary, to be coated in a new and more miserable wetness.
I loved the rain. When I had hair I liked the way rain soaked through it – there would be a word for when your scalp gets wet – and then rainwater gathered to run and drip from the curls around my face, those that weren’t plastered to it already. There should be words there too, for the first feeling of rain upon your dry cheek to the chill slick of a fully coated face, a rain-mask as it were, to slide off and run down your neck to worm its way past any scarf, if you had one, to dampen your shirt. The shirt soaked through, wet at top and bottom with a strange dry band just above the waist, that should have a name. The dreich day shirt. But dreich doesn’t always mean rain, just gloomy – so in Scotland that means mostly rain.
Anyway. Today, in Colorado, where the sun shines 300 days a year, I went out walking in the rain. A luxury now, a chance to be nostalgic, perhaps a little maudlin, to feel the wet element upon me, and remember the times I had no choice but to face much worse conditions, and be glad now I don’t have to. I drink my tea by this electronic hearth, and bid you a fair evening.
