This year promises to be ‘interesting’ on a personal, as well as a political level…
Coincidentally, I’m going to be visiting America again in this time of change. Last time I went it was to volunteer for the US National Park Service in 2013 as part of my MA; this time it’s going to be a musical odyssey (Chicago to New Orleans) to mark entering my seventh decade.It will be interesting to take the pulse of America at the start of the Trump presidency, and see how people’s attitudes have changed from 2010 and 2013…
Back on the somewhat firmer ground of my literary plans, a big year lies ahead. My big project will be to publish A Children’s Crusade via an ebook platform and also print some hard copies which I can sell personally. This means that the book will disappear of this website at some point during this year, but I plan to replace it with the pilot screenplay Lights in the sky which also acts as an introduction to the trilogy.
The launch of the ebook will require me to be rather more proactive in promoting my writing than I have been up to now! Marketing tools to be deployed include YouTube readings, press kits, more submissions, more blogs, links to more forums etc etc.
You will also see changes to this website, likely to include a news bulletin to be added to the home page…
Away from promotion and marketing, the writing continues. I’m now more than a hundred pages into my fifth novel, provisionally entitled The leftover girl. The book is effectively a prequel to Lights in the sky, taking place on Earth in the run-up to, and the early years of, the Alpha Mission. It’s framed as mainstream SF novel (with magical realist elements), and for this reason I’ve decided (for the moment, at least!) to publish it under my mainstream pseudonym, Stephen Clare. But this decision may be reviewed (it would require another website for one thing!).
All the best