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I had a post half-written this afternoon but I think I left it at work. Guess you'll get that tomorrow...

You guys, I'm such a fucking grownup, last night I went to A WINE BAR. A FANCY DOWNTOWN LOUNGE. They serve wine flights! More importantly, they serve cheese tasting flights. Most importantly of all I went there with OTHER GROWNUPS.

There's a bunch of us at the office, not just in my department, who do theatre in our off-hours, so we got together to network, though for "network" mostly read "drink wine and gossip". I did get to talk about a new play I'm working on writing, which impressed them way more than I thought it would (if it ever gets out that I write novels, apparently I'm going to blow some fucking minds), and we helped one of the other people make some venue connections for their wee little theatre company that has no home, and then we dished dirt on the people we work with for like, an hour. Good times. It was like blogging only with faces. Faces and cheese.

I am up to my elbows in Dead Isle, meantime; I'm trying to get through a hundred pages a day of quickie-readthrough, and only managing about seventy. I have caught some good stuff though; a couple of relics from earlier drafts snuck in, like Jack PSYCHICALLY knowing that they're going to Canberra about twenty pages before Ellis finds out he needs to go to Canberra. Oops. Fixed now!

I started playing around with the sequel I said I wasn't writing, too. Not with any intent, just sketching out scenes, and now I see the appeal of sequels because it's like fanfic. All the characters and settings and worldbuilding are already in place! I don't want to imply writing fanfic is easier or less awesome than writing original work, but oh my god writing sequels is so easy. I'm still not technically writing the sequel, but it's awfully fun to mess around with it.

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WRITE THE SEQUEL

(deleted comment)

I just don't want to get peoples' hopes up :D

Okay, so I am about halfway through reading The Dead Isle online here and the thought that you'd write a sequel is. . . . Oh, man. I love these characters so much that I'm reading it going, 'I'd like to write fanfic about these people.' However, you writing fanfic about them is way better.

(was also wondering if I should comment if I find a typo not already commented upon, 'cause I think I found a couple so far. Nothing major, of course, but I don't want to annoy you with comments if that is not where you are anymore.)

Please write a sequel.

Hold your typos till I post the new version -- it's likely they've been fixed or possibly disappeared with cut stuff :) Thank you though! I will definitely welcome typo-catching in the new version.

Oh man, I totally get the whole 'grownup' thing. I've been doing a lot of networking events recently and sometimes I have to pinch myself to make sure I'm really there.

I started playing around with the sequel I said I wasn't writing, too. Not with any intent, just sketching out scenes, and now I see the appeal of sequels because it's like fanfic. Yay for the sequel, the story is amazing and rightfully so deserves a continuation.

You wait a little more and then will be someone that will write fanfic from your books!!

I feel like this is going to go, "I'm not writing a sequel, I'm not writing a sequel..." for a few months and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, you're going to be like, "So I wrote a sequel..."

Possibly :D I just don't want to raise anyone's hopes prematurely...

Fair enough. :)

You shouldn't have cut "Dead Isle" down, you should have written more and then chopped it up. Give away the first one free and sell the other two books - it's the new model for trilogy writers.

lawl, that is so true. Editing, pshaw :P

LOL! I thought about it, but there's no real climax in the first half...

I am completely delighted by the fact that you describe a regular social event with a group of people as "like blogging, but with faces". :)

"It was like blogging only with faces. Faces and cheese."

Meatspace is EXACTLY like that when it's good. Perfect descrip!

"Drinking wine and gossiping" is the definition of networking.

Blogging but with faces and cheese. :D

That brings up an interesting question...would you give out one of your published novels to RL acquaintances, especially those at work? I mean, I know at least for Nameless you gave the link to this blog, so they wouldn't even have to google your author name...is that a concern or regret you have?

I actually did loan a copy of Charitable Getting to one of my coworkers. :D I didn't say I was the one who wrote it.

To be honest, I don't regret it. On the one hand I could get a lot more publicity if I owned my writing in brickspace, but I'm not that into publicity. I'm a shy person, and I like the divide between here and there. I work better online. :) And I would hate to give up the freedom I have here to talk about my life!

Ahh, that makes sense. I'm glad it's an arrangement that works for you - and I would hate for your journal to be locked or for the work stories to stop. :)

I was just dropping by to ask pretty much the same thing as

lavinialavender. Do you ever get frustrated that you can't reveal this side of yourself to your friends and colleagues. I can imagine the temptation to share some of your writing with them must get quite strong at times. Do you regret that you decided to keep such a... well, public blog. Thus meaning that you have to keep it private from your public face?

I replied upthread, but -- in essence, not really. The only times I really get frustrated by having the divide are times when I'm jittery on edge about something, like putting a novel to press or finishing the first draft of one, and I'd like to be able to say "I just finished a novel, I'm a little wrung out."

I like the freedom I have here to talk about my life and the people in it without having to worry about what they'd think. That's more valuable to me than brickspace recognition.

Besides, what if they didn't like my books? :D

That does make sense. I wasn't thinking so much in the recognition sense as the "this is a huge part of who you are" sense. The fact that it was a revelation to them that you're a writer is just surreal, because of course to me it's impossible to think of you not as one - of fanfic, plays, blog(s) and latterly more original fiction. I've only ever known you (to the extent that I, as a random café member do know you) through your writing - I was introduced to LC by my best friend and then stuck around because you have a compelling turn of phrase in blogging. It's hard to imagine there being a Sam out there without the writer aspect to his persona. But then, that's probably a rather naive thing for me to say. Why shouldn't I assume that in meatspace, with colleagues or with family, you don't have aspects to yourself which don't come across so much online. After all, you are allowed some private life.

But I can definitely appreciate that your freedom to blog is so much more precious.

(Good god do I ramble.)

Well, I'm still sort of known as a writer -- I've had one or two things in mags under my own name -- but these were also people I know but don't know well, so two of the three were unaware. Mostly I think I'm known as "bookish".

But you know, writing is kind of a solitary thing in any case. I blog a lot about it because it's not something I'd talk about in brickspace -- mostly I couldn't talk about myself that much, I'd get some kind of complex. :D I think we all have internal mental things we don't share with people, I just splash those all over my blog because nobody has to read it, so I feel okay being an egomaniac here :D