EREN prepares for launch

It's a weird experience, sharing work. This blog was originally started to try to break me of the habit of being secretive and coy about my writing. I'd say it's done a good job so far. Getting out there, on Twitter, on Facebook, in the world at large, certainly helped me get signed to an agent - but it's the contacts I've made that matter just as much. Other bloggers, Twitter-ers, general readers - the community, I suppose, of writers. Being more declarative about writing is always good.

EREN is approaching submission to publishers. We're in the last stage of edits now. I'm changing all the single quotation marks ( ' ) to double quotation marks ( " ) for the American version, along with spelling and word choice and, at times, idiom. It's been line-edited and gone back and forth between me and Molly several times. It's been formatted into a lovely sans serif font.

And then editors are going to read that. Isn't that strange? It's a terrifying thought. It's a brilliant thought. That EREN might be taken seriously and considered by real people, as a real book, is still completely bizarre to me, even if it is what I've wanted for so long.

But that's where we are. I wrote a short bio of myself in third person to go with the pitch, and Molly is deciding which editors and publishers to approach on both sides of the Atlantic.

And now, a big shout out to my stupendous wife Ashley, who bought me a pipe, that I could be a Real Writer. What an awesome gift.