Tuesday 22 September 2009

Life in the slow lane

Ah, the trials of working from home. For the past week or so since I sent the first draft to Simon I've been doing bits and pieces, preparing for events looking at new ideas and that sort of thing - but I haven't been writing, not real hard-graft thousands of words a day writing. The problem is that if I'm not writing I don't feel as if I'm working, which I know is daft.

This week I'm preparing a plot line for the next book and doing some reading and I promise to try not to feel guilty about it.

I also have a great new 'aviator' chair, so hopefully no more sore backs!

But its not all highs: Amazon has come back to haunt me. A couple of weeks ago Claudius was up in the top two or three thousand books and in the top 100 historical novels, in the past few days it has fluctuated between 10,000th and 60,000th for no apparent reason. On the other hand Caligula is selling pretty well. Time to give up watching the numbers again.

4 comments:

Lexi said...

Thanks for the reminder (for all us unpublished writers out here) that publication is not without its anxieties too!

The Amazon chart is a terrible thing.

Doug said...

You're so right Lexi, but it still beats the old journalistic hamster wheel. I had word back from Simon yesterday that he thinks the new book is 'great', which is high praise from him, and I feel I've made real progress on the next plot line over the past couple of days. So things are looking up again.

All the best

Doug

Unknown said...

Amazon to a writer is like the scales to a dieter - there's no logic in the numbers whatsoever..

Will Rufus ever resurface, Doug?

Doug said...

I know what you mean about Amazon, but there's always a horrible temptation to look at it because day to day it's the only measure you have. I've stopped doing it again due to the pain.

I doubt Rufus will feature in another book, but what I will do, I think, is upload the last part of The Emperor's Elephant at some point, so people can see how it would have ended, either on the blog or probably on my website.

Your copy of Bestiarius has been sitting on the table in one of those jiffy bag things for a week. I will send it this week, promise!

Say hello to Ged for me. How does he get the time to do all those daft Facebook quizzes?