Into the Ether

Yesterday I sent The Last Free City to Will, my editor at Macmillan. (Will, if you read the previous more downbeat post - only joking! The Last Free City is the greatest work of literature written in English...). There is nothing more I can do to the novel unaided. If Macmillan accept it, of course, I get to work with a professional editor and that will improve it. A good editor will bring a keen and objective eye to material you may have been living with for a period of years, and if my experience of The Dog of the North is anything to go by, the effect on the text can only be positive.

Of course, Macmillan may not want the book - and as a writer you should never submit anything unless you're prepared for that outcome. I feel curiously relaxed about it, because there's nothing else I can do now to improve my chances: I've spent a year writing the best book I can, I've sent to an editor who likes my writing, and that really is all I can do. It's out of my hands now.

I'm already thinking about what I'm going to write next. For some time I had this nailed down pat: The City of Green Glass, the story which wrapped up this particular part of the Mondia cycle. Now I have other ideas, and I may reach a couple of generations back into Mondia's history instead, because there are stories there which interest me, and directly bear not only on The Last Free City but also The City of Green Glass--which is now likely to have a different title, because it's so confusingly close to its predecessor. Alternatives I'm thinking about are The Vitrine Gates and The Glass Labyrinth. I don't need to worry too much about any of this just now: until I know the fate of The Last Free City, I can't devote too much time to another project because I might have more editing to do.

For now, I can just enjoy not having a work in progress--although soon enough I will be bored, I'm sure!