Have read a couple of things this morning that tempted me to talk about bitterness and how it can ruin one’s chances of achieving anything, but I decided not to. Instead…

Well, the flailing has begun. The person who has been waiting so patiently for Night Shift is very close to actually getting it. I hope to hear back from betas by Sunday. After that, there will be emailing, followed by nausea and possibly vomiting, and that may or may not be helped by the large quantities of chocolate I suspect I will consume in between times :S

On the other hand, I do have other things to do in the meantime. I have stories to edit and stories to write. I even have stories to draw – the flying horse looks promising – but that isn’t quite as much of a priority. Just something I feel will add to the prose. As such, it can be done afterwards. Also, it turns out a story I had backburnered for at least a year probably won’t stay locked away for that long after all. It’s kind of complicated but suffice to say I thought I had to forget about it for a year. Turns out I don’t.

In fact, that’s the one that needs stuff drawing. It has stakes. And a real arsehole of a villain. And gods!!!! I love gods. They’re great. And a flying horse, but I already mentioned him.

But first, or possibly simultaneously, there must be editing.

Connected to this, but not necessarily a very close connection, is the fact that I have been considering money things. Got stressed about it yesterday and the day before, but now I’ve done some maths and discovered it is FAR cheaper to get the train to work than it is to drive. As in, the train costs a quarter of what the car costs in fuel alone. So that should help with fuel costs, and have a pleasant knock-on effect on overall costs. And since I’ve started to try and get more fibre and protein into my diet (ie, fruit, veg and meat) this has made me spend more on food, but that should be more than cancelled out by what I’ll save on transport. We’ll see what happens. It kind of depends how quickly I can reeducate my system to crave fruit instead of chocolate. Fingers crossed.

Back to writing/editing stuff. Do you remember the last time you were really excited by a project? I mean, bouncing up and down excited. I can. It was last night. And it wasn’t even the flying horse that did it (although he promises to be a dude). It was discovering who the villain was and why he was being villainous. Because the Big Bad makes the story. And to be honest, I have no idea how my hero(ine)s are going to defeat this guy. Cos he’s rather smart, and totally driven, and not above using a multitude of stooges to do his dirty work.

But I’ll figure it out eventually. For now I get to look at pictures of lightning. Well, not right now. Right now I’m at work and scrambling to finish this before my lunch break burns out, but afterwards, tonight, AFTER EDITING, MHAIRI, DON’T FORGET THE EDITING *ahem* (please ignore my Dark Passenger), TONIGHT I get to look at lightning. And edit stuff. And write other stuff. And pay a couple of bills.

It’s all really rather exciting.

Between Skype and things that I’m not supposed to be working on at the moment, my brain is ALL THE EXCITE.

Seriously, yesterday I got to speak to not one but TWO of my dearest friends and both via Skype! One call came in via my iPod Touch, of all things, which felt almost like using a real phone, but not. Rather bizarre, actually. Incidentally, S. J. Higbee is a sweetie and writes awesome reviews. The other call was from Super-CP, Leona Bushman. And that was awesome because she lives nearly five thousand miles away and we’ve only Skyped once before, so we’d both forgotten what the other person sounded like.

She giggles muchly when I swear.

As far as things I should not be working on go… Well, what can I say? Not a lot, really. I don’t even feel bad about it :S The idea to make a screenplay out of this story just won’t let me go, and Leona had some ideas for various ways I could release the story while working on the screenplay.

Mostly, I was worried about stakes. I started reading this breakdown of the Avengers Assemble screenplay (the links are at the bottom of that post) and it talks about how the stakes are established in the first scene.

THE FIRST SCENE.

And it got me to thinking, well, this is a superhero story (kind of). I need to have STAKES. Not just stakes, but STAKES.

You know?

The good thing is, I now have the STAKES. And some rather extensive backstory/world-building which I wasn’t expecting, but what the hell, I’ll take it.

And now I have to do proofreading, before I’m attacked by Adele “Warrior Honeybadger” Wearing and all ten authors whose PROSE OF AWESOME graces the pages of Tales of Eve.

Not right now, of course. Right now I’m at work and the end of my lunch break looms, but this evening, after running, I must proofread at least two stories before going back to my teenager superhero. Ine. Superheroine.

She has a tough life.

It’s about to get worse.

Kind of.

I AM SO MEAN.

I love it.

Reading through a betaed copy of NS and making the changes I agree with. The work isn’t sitting well with me. Not that it’s not necessary or even a good thing – it’s both. What’s irritating me is that yet again, I’m going through the manuscript. I’m bored with it.

I am well aware I will not only reach this point but go far beyond it if and when a traditional publisher picks the book up. There will be so many edits I will never want to see it again by the time we’re done, and I know some will creep through anyway. I know all that.

And I don’t care. I’m bored. BORED.

This may also have something to do with the comedown after CathCon, Catherine Hill’s birthday get-together up in Birmingham. I’m actually rather proud of myself as I drove up there and back and only got lost once. And even that was because the directions WERE actually wrong. One phone call later and it was sorted. Because I’d had the foresight to ask Catherine to tweet me her phone number. How organised am I?

There is a downside to all this organisation, of course. It means I have less excuse than I otherwise might to not do all the things that I have to do.

So for the moment, let’s dwell on CathCon instead. I met Saxon Bullock in the flesh for the first time, and there was much hilarity when I discovered he was him and he discovered I was me and we realised we follow each other online but hadn’t recognised each other’s faces. It happens a lot. I also didn’t quite meet Emma Jane Davies, who I talk to WAY more often than I talk to Saxon and also didn’t recognise. She was sitting about four people away and I was tired, so less socially outreaching than I might otherwise have been.

That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

I got to see Ren!! For the first time in over a YEAR because we only met for the first time EVER at alt.fiction last year. She is as marvellously witty and cool in the flesh as she is online, and of course she introduced me to Zubrowka vodka (which I have a bottle of in the freezer, but it’s waiting for when I send Night Shift to the editor), which bumps her up a category into whatever is more awesome than her current one.

I need to make a new category.

She also has the blingingest jacket EVER. It had to be mentioned.

Of course, getting to see Cathy and Dave for the first time since FantasyCon was fantastic, and it was also quite delightful to meet Charlotte Strong and her other half, Sam. They were simply lovely and I hope they will both get on Twitter a little more often than they are wont to do so that I can keep chatting to them.

And on the editing front, I have made an executive decision. There are currently three projects queued up to work on AFTER I finish going through these edits on Night Shift, and then going through the ones on Tales of Eve. THREE.

This week, all three are off the table.

BOOYAH.

I’m going to adapt a short story I wrote into a screenplay instead. And then extend it to make it into a proper length screenplay.

*happy sigh*

After I’ve bought more chocolate, of course.

I was talking to a friend the other day about how good it was that I was earning now and how I wanted to start planning on some goals which would make me happy, rather than relieved. I explained that paying off my debts wasn’t exactly going to make me happy. She pointed out not having a debt hanging over her always made her happy.

The fact is, I think these days we confuse happiness with relief. And I think we do it A LOT. Paying off my debts will indeed be a HUGE relief, and it will make me happy, for a given value of happy.

But it’s not a memory I’m going to look back on in my nineties with a smile and shiver. It’s not something I’m going to file away for writing fodder. It’s not something I will one day want to share with the Important Other in my life.

“Hey, honey, what have you got on this weekend? I thought we could get together and send some money to the credit card company. We can picnic and everything!”

Really?

Not me.

I’ve been too poor for too long. I’m ready not to be poor now. I’m ready not to think about paying off debts. Make no mistake, this doesn’t mean I won’t pay them off. Just that I’m now considering goals which will go beyond taking huge burdens off my head. I don’t want to be relieved. I want to be HAPPY.

Examples of things which make me happy might be going to see friends in the States (or just somewhere else in the UK), or going horse-riding, or going to a conference. These are all things which will require money, but they won’t make me feel relieved. There will be no feeling of “FINALLY. THANK GOD THAT’S OVER.” after I do these things.

I will be happy. I’ll feel like I have done something worthwhile with myself, my time, my money and my feelings. I’ll feel like the experience has made my life richer.

Here’s the crux of it - these things will have been my CHOICE. And that’s the difference, for me, between relief and happiness. Paying off my credit card debt will be a HUGE achievement. But it’s not something I would choose to do if I didn’t have to.

Having the freedom to choose what to do with myself, my time, my money and my feelings is the all-important difference between the two possible end results of relief and happiness.

If you have to do something, you’re relieved when it’s over. If you don’t have to do it, but you choose to because it’s something you want to do… that thing you feel afterwards? That quiet, contented joy which unfurls inside and causes a tremendous smile to flower on your face?

That’s happiness.

The short answer is, because they’re not children. Figuratively speaking.

The long answer is, well, longer.

Last night I made the mistake of engaging with a bunch of men who were under the impression (among other things) that responsibility for rape starts with the victim. Needless to say I did not agree. I won’t go into the details of the conversation, but it did spawn a highly inappropriate (but deeply satisfying) conversation on Twitter on the subject.

(There were tasers and castration and all sorts of fun things. Like I said, inappropriate, but satisfying.)

The thing is, these are not conversations I WANT to have. No one WANTS to talk about this stuff. But if I don’t, who will? There are many people out there who agree that we need to talk about this, but before writing this post I did think, “Oh man, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer. I should just post about how super duper awesome it was to get my first ever royalty payment yesterday.” And then I realised.

THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

(Not my royalty payment. That was, and still is, awesome.)

But the fact that I don’t want to talk about rape. Because someone has to. And today it’s me.

So, back to villains. Or, in this case, arch-villains. You know, the Big Bad who (or which) must be confronted by Our Hero(ine) at the end of the story? The One Who Must Be Beaten At All Costs?

So often in the past, the Bad Guy is a rapist. Because nothing says unspeakably evil like rape, right?

Well, no. However, while there is only one kind of evil – it’s after power and control, and rape certainly provides that – there are different kinds of people and I honestly don’t think a good Big Bad, as in one who is a really worthy opponent, has the same mindset as a rapist.

I mean, the Big Bad is smart, right? They’re focussed? Devoted to their cause? They have a plan. They’ve been working towards it for a long time, building on previous successes. Conquering the world, or just one city, or outer space or whatever, is a process. To them, Our Hero(ine) is just one more step in that process.

I know I’m biased, but I don’t think rapists have that kind of focus. They see something they want and they take it. Like a child who wants a cookie now now NOOOOOOOW!!!!! *wails, screams, drums heels on the floor*

(By the way, I’m differentiating between rapists and stalkers here. Stalking also requires a process, focus, dedication, etc. NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT.)

To me, these two mindsets are totally at odds with one another. One is about the plan and the steps taken to achieve it. The other is about want, take, have.

If anything, a good Big Bad has more in common with Casanova, seducing woman after woman, than with a rapist. Seduction is a process. Rape is not.

You’re probably wondering why I brought all this up. Well, during the Twitter conversation, Zoe Sharp suggested doing “unspeakable things” to offenders in one’s books. I responded I wouldn’t do a rapist the honour of being in one of my books.

For one, really, I wouldn’t sully my stories with that scumsucking bastard. But mainly it’s that they simply aren’t good enough.

It’s not that they’re not good enough as people, although that is a part of it. It’s also that they haven’t got what it takes to be a worthy opponent to my hero(ine)s. There’s no particular skill required to defeat someone who takes a really short-term, immediate gratification view of life. You deny them what they want, kill them if they won’t get the message, and move on.

(I’m talking about bad guys in books here, not real life. Although this is something that came up in last night’s Twitter convo.)

When a kid wants something and throws a tantrum, I have no problem with saying “No” and walking away. Granted, I don’t have children of my own and this might be harder if I did, but I don’t, so that’s that. And I wouldn’t put them in one of my stories either.

The other thing is that rape is, by definition, small scale. Until men evolve more than one penis, they can only rape one person at a time. I say “person” because Lord knows, men get raped too. They even get raped by women, but again, only one orifice available at a time.

A Big Bad, to be frank, is busy. They are after power and control, but controlling one person at a time is, to my mind, inefficient. They are more likely to want to destroy entire cities, planets, or just absolutely everything. They don’t have time to waste on one individual. More to the point, I don’t think one individual, even a series of individuals, would be enough.

That’s what makes them so dangerous. Because they want everything, everywhere, forever. And they will stop at nothing to get it. You’ve got to think big to be a Big Bad. Rapists, by definition, are small-scale.

(And cowards, but that’s another story.)

It wasn’t ALL bad. I had a birthday. My age is now a palindrome. Since this only happens one year out of every eleven, I feel it should be celebrated.

But that was about it. I shipped WAY too much chocolate, mostly due to stress, and the remaining part to do with now being addicted to chocolate again. *sigh* I’ll break it. Eventually.

Also found out it is impossible to top up one’s benefits with casual work here and there, which is apparently all I can find right now. Actually, I haven’t even found that. I’ve found the possibility of it. At some point. Maybe. And if I do get it, anything I earn will be deducted from my benefits, cos hey, £70 a week is plenty, right?!

Wrong.

I’m not even qualified (according to the employer, anyway) for a part-time sales job in a stationery shop. Yay.

This is why Naliara the space-going dragonfly and you, her unexpected (and totally untrained) rider, did not make an appearance last week.

I know I should always be positive and happy joy joy, particularly here, on my blog, my (supposedly) professional shopfront to the world, but last week, my ability to give a shit took a hike. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t do any work. I wrote about 15k last week on The Project Which I Previously Hated But Have Since Come To Feel Some Affection For. Which was good. And it’s mostly done, into the editing phase now.

I just stopped caring about non-work stuff. Which sucks because part of this whole self-employed, writing-as-a-career thing is that you have to give more than you get. I feel that way, anyway. That if I’m not constantly being here and visible and at least somewhat entertaining, the world will forget about me and go elsewhere.

Which is quite possibly a really stupid thing to think, but there you go. I’m a sucker for the approval of others. And constantly getting rejected through the job search process means I pull back from the rest of the world on here because of feeling totally unworthy, etc, etc, and thereby feel even more unloved and unworthy and blah blah blah.

On the plus side, some good stuff happened over the weekend.

My aforementioned birthday was on Saturday. I ate crap the entire day. It was awesome.

Tales of Eve, the anthology I edited on women creating their perfect partner, has gone to the formatter. I did the introduction. Apparently it was good. Never done an introduction before, so bear that in mind while rolling your eyes. If you end up reading it, that is, which you really should cos the stories are AWESOME. Ten authors, six male, four female (I’m particularly proud of the (more or less) gender parity) – there’s Adrian Tchaikovsky, Juliet McKenna (writing sci-fi, not fantasy!) and Suzanne McLeod. There’s Alasdair Stuart and Paul Weimer, who do a lot of non-fiction writing, reviews and such, and should really write more fiction because they’re BLOODY GOOD AT IT. There’s Ren Warom and Rob Haines, whose stories made me cry. There’s Colum Paget who is officially an award-winning short story writer (I’m sure some of the others are too, but I remember his win because he got it the week before I met him). And there’s Fran Terminiello and Andrew Reid who are just…well…brilliant.

It’s got science-fiction and fantasy and every wee grade in between. I can’t believe I know these people. I can’t believe they said they’d contribute. I can’t believe they actually did. And have you seen the cover art?

I love it. It perfectly captures the vibe I was going for. Which is (in case you’re wondering) a combination of power tempered with compassion. That sometimes inexpressible combination which makes up the female spirit, if you like. Not easy to pin down, but Daniele Serra has managed it, I think. Oh yes, that’s right. We’ve got an award-winning cover artist, too. Fox Spirit does things right!

Oh, and if you’re curious, you can read Ren’s story, Unravel, here. As a free taster, if you like.

And I got the last of the feedback on Night Shift. So first I get to edit the story I just finished drafting. Then I get to edit Night Shift.

My life is full of yay.

Thank God I’m starting the next Scent story (The Scent of Goodbye, the follow-up to The Scent of Freedom). Having something new to write is what’s going to keep me sane, I think.

Maybe.

I hope :S

The verdict is in, from multiple trusted sources. While it’s cute, the romance in Night Shift isn’t solid. I mean, it’s there, but it needs to be more there.

For the romance writers out there, I am aware that writing romance is HARD. While Night Shift isn’t a romance per se, there is definitely a romantic thread. And the romantic thread HAS to be there. It absolutely must. In fact, because the book is looking a tad long (at 100k it’s already somewhat over what I believe to be the preference for YA urban fantasy) and I’m going to have to add in scenes in order to build up the romance, I was thinking last night about what I could cut. Answer: nothing. Well, not in terms of plot lines, anyway. All the sub-plots have to be there. Yay. So it’ll be general trimming of fat, something I’m sure my brilliant betas will help me with.

Anyway. Back to romance.

Yes, it’s hard. Because it’s not just a plot thing. Not even a plot thing, in some cases. It’s a character thing. I have two personalities which are definitely a perfect match and it’s pretty much inevitable that they’ll fall in love, but showing that process, and making it understandable that they fall in love…that’s something else. I have little experience in that kind of thing myself, and in my own life there just seemed to be a spark and then it…happened. And sometimes, usually actually, that was a BAD THING. So it’s been rather difficult to separate my personal experiences from what I need to develop on the page, and the last thing I want is for people to say it’s unrealistic. But I don’t have much to base it on in order to make it realistic.

Not to sound self-pitying or anything, but there it is.

I was chatting to my mum about this last night (who also recounted a funny story about a friend of hers who apparently reads this blog and got worried because I mentioned my mother’s ill health – to avoid any further confusion, my mother is the one with the heart condition and who lives 120 miles away; my mum (technically stepmum) is the one who is perfectly healthy and lives about 5 miles away).

So, was talking to Mum and in answer to my (somewhat rhetorical) question about how people actually fall in love, she made a comment which really resonated with me: “I think it’s the everyday things.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realised she was right. It’s not necessarily saving someone’s life that makes that person fall in love, although it can certainly help. It’s the little things, the removal of everyday hindrances, the constant showing of a thousand and one tiny marks of support and respect. That’s my opinion, anyway, and I’m probably going to run with that for this particular romance, but I’m interested in the opinions of others, because this won’t be the last romance I write. Bearing in mind this book isn’t a romance pure and simple, but the romance is very important. Are the rules different in those cases? What are The Rules, anyway?

I should probably Google that… :S

I have to say, I loved ENSLAVED, a gorgeous, sexy paranormal romance. So I’m incredibly happy to welcome Renee Murphy to the blog!!

First of all, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. I’m so proud to welcome you to my site!
Thank you for inviting me.

So, obviously you write or you wouldn’t be here. The question is, is writing work or pleasure?
Writing is a strange mix of pain and pleasure. There are days when the words flow and everything is hunky-dory. But then you have days when getting even one word on the page is a struggle. On those days I seriously question why I want to be a writer. In the end it all balances out. If writing were all sunshine and rainbows, everyone would be an author. Only the brave (or insane) few make it through the struggle.

What’s your ideal full-time job (apart from writing)?
That’s a tough one. I’ve wanted to make a career of writing for a while now. Anything I’d chose would have to be in entertainment and allow me to release pent-up creativity. Regular “day jobs” leave me twitchy, feeling confined. In other words, I’m a horrible employee.

What are you doing when you’re not writing?
Since writing is my day job, I work from home. Which means during writing breaks, I’m cleaning, wrangling our billion pets, helping my nephew with homework. Basically I’m a housewife without the wife part. So . . . I’m a house? That’s not right.

Indie or Traditional, and why?
Each has their benefits. It really just depends on what a writer wants to do with their career and what works best with their work ethic.

What/who do you read for pleasure?
I read a lot. When I’m working on a particular genre, I won’t read it. Which makes things difficult since my latest projects are Paranormal Romance and I have a towering stack of para rom books waiting for me to read. I have an exception to the rule (who doesn’t?), Sherrilyn Kenyon. Her books are my crack. J.R. Ward is another exception with her Black Dagger Brotherhood series. For both I will gladly take a full day off from writing to read.

Did your book end up the way you intended?
I knew from day one what the endgame for Enslaved would be. The how of getting the characters to that point was what made writing it interesting. The book coughed up a bit of brilliance I hadn’t seen coming until I was deep into outlining. I never go into a book expecting anything other than shiny new words and characters to play with.

Describe your book in three sentences.
Deryck wants nothing more than to be free of a life of servitude. Shayla fights every day to move on with her life after an abusive marriage with a man she never really knew. The powers that be show Deryck the key to his freedom—Shayla—but she needs to find the power in herself to free both of them.

Now for the important stuff. We want to know who you really are. These questions are designed to reveal the TRUTH OF YOUR INNER SOUL:

Are you right or left handed?
Right. My left hand, as my mother says, is just there to be pretty.

Chocolate or cheese?
I go through phases. Right now I’m all about good cheeses.

Wine or whisky?
Whiskey.

Dogs or cats?
Both! You can’t make me chose. I’m an animal person through and through.

Coffee or tea?
Tea. I’m an amateur tea snob.

Favourite flavour of ice cream? (or frozen yoghurt, if you just HAVE to be different)
Cheesecake frozen yogurt.

If you ruled the world, what are the first three laws you would pass?
Rule #1 – Don’t be a jackass.
Rule #2 – Hate speech will land you in a room full or teen girls singing Justin Bieber songs.
Rule #3 – Reading an hour a day is mandatory.

If and when Armageddon strikes, what three items will you take into the fallout shelter?
1 – I have a go bag packed with supplies, so of course it is coming.
2 – A shotgun. For protection and hunting once it is safe to surface again.
3 – A stack of books.

You’re dying and a vampire offers you eternal life – as a vampire. Do you take the offer?
You know, it wasn’t drinking blood and not seeing daylight again which made me pause and seriously think about my answer. It was knowing I’d have to watch my family die and remember that pain for eternity. I’d like to think I’d say no and be satisfied with the life I’ve lived. However, in the spirit of honesty, I’m greedy. I collect life experiences any way I can. Becoming a vampire would give me the chance to do more, be more.

When you die (assuming you didn’t take up the vampire’s offer) what will you regret not having done?
So much of my recent past was spent buried in regrets. I forced myself to stop looking at the past and focus on what was coming my way. No regrets. I’d die with none, only the curiosity of what would come with my death.

Name three things Heaven has to have (otherwise you’re getting reincarnated ASAP):
1 – Extra-large bathtubs.
2 – The most amazing library ever.
3 – People of every race, belief, gender, sexual orientation existing together peacefully.

What three things should our world have that would make it a better place?
1 – Better education systems globally—including third-world countries. Learning is not a privilege. It is a necessity to ensure our world continues to grow instead of destroying itself.
2 – Healthcare for those who can’t afford it—without restrictions or jumping through hoops.
3 – Laughter. Not enough people laugh any more. They take themselves and life far too seriously.

Last, but not least:

Dragons or unicorns?
Dragons, of course. The only acceptable unicorn is the one in The Cabin in the Woods.

MS: You see, now I want to see The Cabin in the Woods…

Thank you very much!

Author bio: R.C. Murphy spends her nights writing urban fantasy novels and a slew of short stories for her blog, The Path of a Struggling Writer. By day she is a not so mild-mannered housewife, wrangling vampires, demons, and various other nasty creatures. R.C. has joined forces with fellow writers, artists, and actors to form the Zombie Survival Crewwhere she reviews movies, TV shows, as well as penning articles on important survival skills.

Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Zombie Survival Crew | Just Ink Press

A few words of introduction: I like Choose Your Own Adventure stories. I did one back in 2011 and it was quite well-received, so here we are again. There are options at the end of each installment – you tell me what you want to happen next and the option with the most votes wins. You can vote here, on Twitter or on Facebook. And the first commenter each week gets into the next installment as a character. I can’t promise said character won’t die horribly, but there you go.

Enjoy!

Naliara waits for you, her iridescent wings glittering in the sunlight. The verilin, the men who ride up with her to the moon to trade and mine, stalk past you. You are here to clean the travel pods, pockets in the flesh of the back of Naliara’s head that seal up to carry men beyond the air and up to the moon. You will never fly on Naliara. You don’t have the connections or the money to enter the training school.

It’s a long climb up the ladder and your arms and legs ache by the time you reach the top. Here you can see the spires of the distant city of Kerilin rising above the rarnya trees, which are themselves hundreds of times your height. You’ve never been to Kerilin. You’ve never been more than an hour’s walk from Kortschya, the tiny village where you live, just five minutes’ walk away. Any settlement with a dragonfly keeps it close by, for safety. Kortschya is very lucky to have Naliara. It’s unusual for such a small place to have its own dragonfly. The trade Naliara opens up makes Kortschya wealthier than some towns.

You jump down into each pod and run your hands over every inch of the flesh within to make sure nothing has caught there which might irritate Naliara. Her health is paramount, and if anything goes wrong, you’ll be blamed. Various bits and pieces of rubbish go into the bag hanging from your waist – bits of moon rock, fragments of torn clothing. If it’s big enough to be picked up, it’s big enough to irritate the dragonfly, so into the bag it goes.

A deep hum makes you look up sharply, wondering if Naliara is preparing to fly. She is never impatient during this process. The pods the verilin travel in are part of her breathing system. Wild dragonflies tend to get a lot of infections there. Allowing men to travel in them ensures they will be kept clean – it’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

But it’s not Naliara. Beyond her, coming in fast over the rarnya forest, is another dragonfly. Above its head, a ball of fire forms. As you watch, it shoots towards you.

The ball of fire roars overhead, belching smoke. The air is so hot you feel your face burn. Naliara’s wings hum to life as the fire slams into the base of a rarnya tree at the edge of the clearing. The tree shudders, then topples, its trunk creaking, then cracking, then slamming to the ground between the other trees. Birds explode from the forest, clattering into the air, and animals flee over the ground.

You’re under attack and you don’t know why. The wind Naliara’s wings create threatens to blow you right off her. You cling to the side of the pod, then look towards the ladder. The rules are clear – you do not fly on Naliara. If you’re fast, you probably have time to get to the ground before she takes off. Of course, there’s nothing to say you’re safer on the ground. The fire is spreading even as you try to make up your mind. And the attacking dragonfly is getting closer, another ball of fire forming above its head.

Do you stay onboard, or go for the ladder?

I have spent most of the last three days freaking out. Having sent Night Shift off to my regular beta readers Friday morning, and then to another two betas a couple of hours later, I fully expected to have to wait WEEKS for any feedback. Because, hello, the manuscript is over a hundred thousand words long. I mean, it’s not massively over a hundred thousand words, but it’s still over it. There’s definitely a six digit number at the bottom of the screen. And that takes time to read, right?

Well, not if you’re beta reader S, who blasted through the whole thing in a day and sent me an email the next morning with about half a dozen inconsistencies he’d noticed and the assurance that it holds together and he’d read it again in a couple of days’ time.

What?

Beta reader R wasn’t far behind. She finished it yesterday and notes that she’s seen “things that need work, but nothing deal-breaking.” Really? Cos I can handle work. Sheesh, I can even handle deal-breaking – everything can be fixed – but not having to fix it is infinitely preferable. And she said some other nice things about the world, characters and general writing, but I won’t share those with you in case you think I’m making it up.

This was all quite handy, I must admit, as it meant I was too distracted to even really notice anything to do with the Sci-Fi Weekender which happened in Wales this weekend. Two birds, one stone, baby.

Anyway, freaking out. This is what I did for most of Friday:

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD OTHER PEOPLE ARE READING MY STUFF LIKE OTHER ACTUAL PEOPLE WHAT IF THEY HATE IT WHAT IF THEY DON’T OH MY GOD THIS IS ONE STEP CLOSER TO HAVING TO SEND IT TO AN ACTUAL PUBLISHER PERSON OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD

And so on and so forth.

Not terribly restful, as I’m sure you can imagine. Nor productive, as it happens.

And then I started getting feedback the very next day. I was shocked, but it made the freaking out better in some ways and worse in others. In some ways, wow, they actually like it, maybe I’m not so bad at this writing lark. In other ways, wow, this brings me closer to having to show other people the manuscript. Like, the editor who’s been waiting for it for the last six months… :S

I mean, we’re getting towards the public here. Night Shift is officially no longer my word-baby. It’s my word-toddler. Currently it’s in nursery school, starting to meet other people and learning things I can’t teach it, like social graces. Going to a publisher is going to the posh grammar school that has entrance exams. Getting published? Well, that’s A-levels. (High school graduation for the Americans among you.) That’s BEING RELEASED INTO THE BIG BAD WORLD WITH A KISS FROM MUMMY AND A WHOLE LOT OF HOPES AND WISHES AND OH MY GOD SOMEONE PASS ME A PAPER BAG AND SOME DOUGHNUTS…

Scary stuff.

But kids grow up. So do word-babies. Mine’s wandering around the place and bumping into the furniture. But not, apparently, hurling itself down staircases or climbing on bookshelves. Or maybe it is climbing on bookshelves. *eyes bookshelves* Yeah, they’re definitely being climbed on.

CUE FEAR.

So yes, that’s where I currently am with Night Shift and the freaking out. Eek. Doesn’t really cover it, I know, but still. EEK.

Oh yes, the space-going dragonflies. A couple of years ago I did a Choose Your Own Adventure serial here on the site. I think I’ll do another one. There will be space-going dragonflies. BIG space-going dragonflies. And the first commenter each week (choosing which way the story goes next) will get their name in the following week’s episode. So if you fancy dying horribly- I’M KIDDING. You won’t necessarily DIE. Sheesh, I’m not THAT bad. Not all the time. HONEST.

Maybe I should have commenters specify if they would like to live or die. Hmmm.

I’ll keep you posted…