Wow, it’s almost the middle of October and I haven’t posted an update. I’m going to blame the fact I was at a writing retreat in Colorado at the end of September. And my book release, yes, that too.
The Colorado trip was excellent. Great company, some drinking, good food, good conversation and a big chunk of writing.
And this guy:
Apart from the writing retreat, it was a pretty light month – 12,412 words in total. Most of my time was spent revising the third zombie book. It’s now going through a second pass with my editor and should be wrapped up pretty quickly.
Now I’m working on what was supposed to be a prequel novella for my next series. However, I’m already 17,000 words in which should be around the halfway point. It’s more like a quarter of the way through the story. I may have to rethink this plan. I’m really enjoying writing it though, it’s got the same sort of geeky humour I sprinkled throughout Unseen Planet which makes it a lot of fun to write (and hopefully read).
My September reading was mostly dominated by one book – Clive Barker’s Coldheart Canyon and I still haven’t finished it. I did read a few other books on my trip:
- Mass Hysteria by Michael Patrick Hicks is a very dark, very bloody, horror novel that reminded me a lot of the old school Shaun Hutson horror novels. Good stuff but not for the faint of heart.
- Nokyo Rising is a short but sweet science fiction short story from Eamon Ambrose the excellent Zero Hour.
- Druid Blood by M.D. Massey was an odd read. It’s a prequel to the Junkyard Druid Urban Fantasy series, but is maybe not the best introduction. It’s an older book and is aimed at a young adult audience rather than the more adult Junkyard Druid books. I haven’t read the main series but this one didn’t work very well for me. the McCool series is still on my TBR list though.
- And finally, Cosmic Jury Duty by Ernie Howard is another good science fiction short that’s well worth picking up.
I was catching up on some podcasts so I didn’t listen to a lot of audiobooks but I wrapped up Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher (excellent) and listened to Mercedes M. Yardley’s Little Dead Red which is even more powerful in audio.
September was a bumper month for movies (at least relative to the rest of the year)
- The Dark Tower wasn’t as terrible as some people made out, but it was missing any real emotion and I’m not eagerly awaiting a sequel.
- Assassin’s Creed was a videogame movie and that’s pretty much all you need to know.
- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was excellent. As the title suggests it’s maybe not a really positive film and there’s some real gut punching scenes, but it’s in my top ten films for the year.
- I picked Carrie Pilby up randomly on iTunes as a 99c rental because it looked fun and it was. Not the same impact as Me and Earl, but still pretty good.
- IT. Yes!
- Underworld : Blood Wars is another predictably over the top instalment but you can’t go wrong with a bit of vampires vs werewolves if you’re in the mood for a popcorn movie.
In among all that was the launch of Serial Killer Z. I’ve got three books in the series (plus a prequel for my mailing list) lined up and the launch for this first one was a fairly low key affair. Still, it’s going well and readers seem to enjoy it so far.
That’s it for now, have a good (rest of) October.
[September in October by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 14th October 2017]