... I bring you the not-news that my next book title is also the name of a Guild in World of Warcraft. I haven't checked, but with a name like 'Guardians of Paradise' I'm guessing we're looking at light 'n' lawful types. Also from the virtual pages of google alerts, a hit for 'Principles of Angels' for a site which appears to be giving tips for how to improve your oral sex technique. No, since you ask, I did not click through.

Of course, if I was Joe Scalzi, then when I didn't have anything of massive import to say I'd post dramatic/impressive/witty pictures of weather/scenery/cats. Sadly, I'm not, but I do commend his blog to you.

Having gone on (at some length) about the writing process, I'm now at the stage of Bringer of Light where I'm abandoning some of those organisational crutches.

The questions in the 'questions' file have all been answered (or deferred until the next book...). It's been weeks since I've looked at the 'character' or 'reference' files, as anything I don't know about my cast or world is going to be one of those 'unknown unknowns' and will probably remain undiscovered until I start thinking about the rewrites. The 'outline' file, previously the repository of most of the unused plot, has itself become unused.

I still have the 'timeline' table open as I write, but that's mainly to refresh my memory on what happened leading up to this point. The remaining notes are all in my chapter files, currently scatter-gunnered across several separate chapters as I guess where they'll eventually be needed.

In some ways this is my favourite part of writing a first draft, when all that hard work pays off and I find out what really happens at the end (as opposed to what I thought was going to happen). In other ways it's one of the most nerve-wracking and dangerous times. Nerve-wracking because if the damn novel doesn't come together in a satisfying way then I'm going to have my work cut out to fix it before the delivery deadline; dangerous because in my eagerness to reach a resolution there's a risk I might in inadvertently miss something vital, or not give the climax of the story the space it deserves and end up with a final section that comes out rushed.

Of course, there is still a fair amount of plot to get through – I'd estimate between eight and ten chapters worth – and a lot can happen in that time.

I'm proud to unveil (well, insert) the final version of the cover for 'Guardians of Paradise':

Observant (or particularly sad) readers may notice the addition of certain vowels. I liked the cover before: now I love it.

Writers are, of course, megalomaniacs. We toy with our characters' fates in a cruel and capricious way. Bwa-ha-ha and all that.

Yeah, right.

I've now reached the point in Bringer of Light where all my plot threads tie up and head for the denouement. It took a while and one of the strands ended too early (must sort that in the rewrite), but here we all are, on a spaceship.

I really should have seen it coming, but I've been so tied up in the individual plot threads (pun intended) and so focused on bringing everyone together that it hadn't occurred to me that, with the exception of the pair of characters who are married to each other (technically – it was a marriage of convenience), my rag-tag little band of rebels and misfits is rife with personal animosity, some justified, and some not.

Now I take the time to think about it, I can't really blame them. They have the same broad aims but very different priorities. Not to mention the culture shock. And in the case of two of them, an instinctive and unreasoning distrust resulting from of thousands of years of careful conditioning.

What they need is a nice juicy crisis to pull them all together. Actually, I've just the thing...

The original plan was to be reaching the end of the first draft of Bringer of Light about now. That would leave me a month or so of 'fallow time' during which I'd revisit some short stories (and have a social life), ready to embark on the double cycle of rewrites (aka 'rinse and repeat') at a leisurely pace and in plenty of time for the November 30^th delivery deadline.

As is often the case, Real Life, in this case the need to earn a crust between advances, has got in the way. As a result I'm about a month behind plan. I say 'about' because I don't set rigid writing deadlines: though writing certainly requires discipline, I've found that being too demanding on myself leads to guilt over not meeting self-imposed arbitrary targets and/or putting quantity over quality. It's all very well producing 10K of first draft in a week, but not so smart if 8K of those words end up getting cut from the final version.

So, though progress is slow, I'm looking on the bright side: the end result should hopefully require less rework.

The release date of the paperback of Consorts of Heaven has been delayed and will now be 29^th July. This puts it only 10 weeks before the hardback and trade paperback of Guardians of Paradise hits the shops, on 16^th September.

To allow for last-minute slippage and to co-ordinate with the local literary festival, the official launch/signing event for Guardians of Paradise will be on October 2^{nd .} As is becoming traditional, this will be held at the Little Green Dragon Bookshop in Alton, from 2pm until we all go to the pub.

That ideal world I referred to a while back would make the following tax deductible to help out us poor starving writers:

1. Chocolate. Because we need to encourage ourselves.

2. Massages. Because we spend a long time sitting in one (possibly uncomfortable) position while the words (hopefully) pour out.

3. Wine. See chocolate.

4. Pizza (when used as an aid to plotting). OK, that's probably just me.

5. Beloved (when I pick his brains). Yeah, that's definitely just me. But really, he should be.

It's been one of those busy yet quiet weeks in the garret, with little of import to report. However, apropos of last week's post, I will say that my so-far very limited sample of googled goodness implies that 'Guardians of Paradise' as a search phrase is going to be netting me a fair amount of eco-spam. Makes a change from god-spam I suppose.

This week, I have mainly been proofreading. Specifically, checking the page proofs for Guardians of Paradise, which is due out in just over three months. Review copies should be ready to go out far sooner.

This means that the time has come to employ the marvels of t'internet to find out what, if anything, the (virtual) world has to say about my latest book. Or, to put it in language a geek might understand, to add the phrase 'Guardians of Paradise' to my 'Google Alerts'.

I already have alerts set up for 'Principles of Angels' and 'Consorts of Heaven', and some very interesting results they give. In addition to relevant reviews, articles and examples of my books being sold/resold there's an awful lot of non-relevant and often quite fringe religious stuff – mainly Christian for 'Principles of Angels' and Hindu for 'Consorts of Heaven'. I've also had: Mesopotamian spirituality, the Indian tourist board, Jack Russel breeding (no, I have no idea why either), King George III, ghost-hunting, Smallpox vaccine, past-life regression, Sandra Bullock, levitation, monoclonal anti-bodies, the American civil war and alchemy. Blimey.

I await with interest to see what 'Guardians of Paradise' will bring up....

I had intended to write about the 'two-thirds blues', that point in writing the first draft of a novel when the initial impetus is long gone and the end seems impossibly far away. However, my protracted writing wibble of the last few weeks means I'm over that hurdle now; I'm currently working on the climax of one plot thread, after which it needs to collide with the other plot thread, after which, um, some exciting events and startling revelations will occur, until we're all done.

Thanks to assorted Other Stuff, both writing-related and real-world, I don't currently have as much time as usual to write. However, in some ways this isn't such a bad thing. I've found that there's a kind of inverse law about writing fast-paced climactic scenes: if I write them in a crazy rush that mirrors the required result, then whilst the process might be fun, what I end up with isn't as good as if I take my time and consider all the permutations and possibilities. And then there's those 'exciting events and startling revelations' which need to happen later and which, in case you hadn't guessed, I'm still a bit hazy about. Having a lower daily word-count target gives me more time to work stuff out. At least that's the theory.

I have three main times when I work stuff out prior to writing it. There's plot pizza for the high-level stuff. There's plot walks for nuts and bolts and general problem solving. And there's the morning daydream, the time between waking up and getting up when I let my mind wander, and quite often find myself listening in on conversations between my characters, or watching detailed scenes unfold before my eyes.

So, when I woke up unfeasibly early this morning, I didn't try to get back to sleep. Instead I turned my subconscious over to the muse (pretentious? moi?). It even had a choice: wring more details out of that current climactic scene, or come up with some good ideas for the final denouement.

Either would have been fine. Instead, what did it do? It delivered up the opening lines of Queen of Nowhere, a book which currently consists of a title, a concept and the 300 word pitch I sold it on. According to my stated 'fractal quilting' method that opening shouldn't be arriving until I've got a lot more detail on the book. Looking at my schedule, I'd say some time around next Christmas.

As if the timing wasn't perplexing enough, the lines are written in the first person. I don't write fiction in the first person. OK, so I do write short stories in first, and yes, the story I used to work out what made the hero of Queen of Nowhere tick is first person. But a whole novel? Give me a break.  

Sometimes the muse just pokes you with a sharp stick then sits back and laughs.

Firstly: the official launch/signing for Guardians of Paradise will be, as is becoming at traditional, at the Little Green Dragon Bookshop in Alton, Hampshire. The date will be Saturday October 2^nd, which is actually a couple of weeks after the book hits the shops, but does coincide with the local literary festival. More details to follow nearer the time.

Secondly, just in case anyone thought I made him up, you can hear Beloved's side of it and see pictures of him in this article on the FanLit website. Oh, and win copies of my books too.

Finally, I am told, though I have yet to see for myself, that I am one of SFX's 'Hot 50' in the magazine's current issue. Who'da thought it?