So much going on right now. 

I’m working on the final first draft of the first Shield novel – if you can have such a thing!  And then I need to work on a strong pitch so I can try and sell it at Manchester. It isn’t the normal m/m romance – it’s science fiction where the main characters happen to be gay and happen to meet and fall for each other, and there is no happy in ending in this book and only an ambivalent ending in book five, at the close of the series.  Frets.  I’ll be using the flight time to Houston to work on the submission and synopsis.

Talking of Manchester, I’ve upgraded my attendance at the conference to “Spotlight author”, which allows me space on the freebie USB drive that every attendee – including the publishers – is getting.  That means I can put in a biography, tout FlashWired, and also offer up a freebie fiction for the attendees’ delectation.  So I’ve written a flashfiction called Candlelight, and will be refining that this week to get it ready.  It’s a very short thing and quite romantic. There’s no rush on this as it’s due with the Manchester people by 24 June.  As it’s so short, I may even write a second one.  But then, I should just concentrate on the first Shield novel and then start work on the second.

And finally, two weeks today I’ll be in Houston, for Galacticon 3 where fellow writers Sarah Madison, Jennifer Roberson and I will be running a panel on fanfiction (“It’s all grown up”) and also running a writing workshop where we have every intention of making the participants do all the work. I’m frantically getting that all ready –  printing out a bio of myself with a plug for FlashWired, printing out info on the workshop itself for the participants’ packs.  I wish Galacticon could just confirm how many people the room will hold.  Hope to heaven it’s not more than 50!

And finally, my five proof copies of FlashWired should arrive this week from CreateSpace.  I don’t suppose I’ll do much with them, but it will be nice to have a real hard copy in my hands