Lorraine Wilson's Blog, page 3

Agents lost and found

Bookish update: Writing has slowed considerably what with events, health wobbles and other things. But the end of this book has become clear, which is a relief, I was driving blind there for a while! I’m just back from London where I had Ghosts Event No.3, and my last bookish event is in Glasgow next week after which I will retreat under a rock for the forseeable! It’s been spectacular though, and a joy to get to chat with fabulous author friends and readers alike. Having met with my new agent, ...

Publication day waffle

I have grown a habit without plan or forethought, of posting on/around each new book’s publication with my thoughts on what that particular book means to me and where it came from. For Mother Sea, that post was an explanation of the content warnings for the book, for The Last To Drown it was about the experience of writing chronic pain and the craft of novella writing.

With the publication of We Are All Ghosts In The Forest this week, I have been attacked by a fit of the pensives again and wante...

Longevity & Leaky Pipes - 2

Welcome back to part 2 on my ramble through author career attrition rates! Last week I looked at a few data points and what they were suggesting. Now I want to dig into my only-partially-informed and speculative opinions on why we lose so many authors and what we might be able to do about it. Come along for the ride, and please let me know your thoughts - I am not pretending to expertise!

So why do so many authors fall by the wayside?

Cruel reality check. Some books just aren’t very good (Iain Du...

Longevity & Leaky Pipes - 1

First a wee writing update from the drafting cave! I’m currently 45k words into A Monstrous Theatre and while I’m a little worried my plot is trying to streeeeetch itself out beyond my hoped for 90-95k total, I’m having a blast! I am loosely expecting edits back on The Salt Oracle by the start of November so I have a month of drafting time left before I will have to shelve it to crack on with edits. As a bunch of October is going to be away from the computer (in Spain, whoop), I’ll be happy if I...

Diary - We Are All Ghosts In The Forest

I just opened a draft of this blog, checked my calender and nearly expired. There are unbelievably only six weeks left until the publication of Ghosts. SIX WEEKS FOLKS?? Excuse me while I hyperventilate quietly.

So what are the next month and a half going to look like?

As you know if you have read my recent posts, I’ve technically already had the first book event for Ghosts - a book party at Glasgow Worldcon, celebrating some of the upcoming releases from the Edinburgh SFF Writers Group. It’s no...

News, blues and murders

Hi all,

I have a confession - in between making headway on A Monstrous Theatre - the new wip - I’ve also been drafting a whole bunch of articles for my fabulous publicity manager to pitch to magazines. Because of these articles, I am feeling all inspirationed out on topics to explore in this blog this week. I’m sure I’ll have a renewal of my lightly salted opinions soon, but in the meantime I figured I’d take the opportunity for a more generally newsy update.

So let’s start with Worldcon!

As you...

Running workshops

I think I threatened to write a post on running workshops months ago, but have entirely not done it. As I’ve recently put together a new workshop for Glasgow Worldcon though, now is as good a time as any! The idea for this post came from a few conversations with friends who wanted to try running creative writing workshops but didn’t know where to start and/or felt underqualified to do so. I thought it might be helpful to talk through how to choose and write a workshop, and also how to find gigs ...

Author Events and Spoons

I’m posting this blog five days before the start of the biggest book event I’ll have ever attended. Next week, the World SFF Convention (Worldcon) is coming to Glasgow - five days, 6,000 people, hundreds of events spread across the SEC campus, workshops, parties, and intense bar-conning (socialising in the bars). I have, for my sins, committed to quite a lot of events, and the combination of my busy schedule and the sheer scale of the event have me feeling really quite daunted about how I am phy...

Diary - All The Birds Will Be Hostile

So this one’s gonna be brief, because there’s not much to tell but there’s also a bit of a change afoot.

As you may remember, Birds was due to go out on sub in April. That hasn’t happened, instead it is going to be (hopefully briefly) shelved, because I am in the process of moving agents.

If/when I sign with a new agent, they will likely want to do some editing of Birds before sending it out on sub, so the timeline of this project is taking a slight detour. Until these things happen, my own perso...

Summer Reading

The sun is out (somewhere), the schools are winding down, and the prospect of holiday is on the horizon. So what better time to look at the books I’ve loved so far this year, and also to ponder the strange weight and joy of reading books for blurbs.

Writing update:

I wrote back near the start of the year about being in an epic reading slump, struggling to fall in love with books, struggling even to persevere with books I knew I’d normally enjoy just fine. Fortunately, this tragedy was brought to...