Status update: CTTT

An update on my next book, COLD TO THE TOUCH: Of the tales I initially submitted with my proposal, some were promised to appear elsewhere first. I'd assumed, even if accepted, CTTT wouldn't appear for some time, so it seemed logical I could get away with offering the tales at that point and by the time the book saw print they would have already appeared elsewhere, as promised. The book, though, is due sooner than I anticipated, which meant I had to do some creative juggling. At the end of the day, only one tale (one of my favourites, alas) will not be making it into the book. So, I've been working diligently on replacing that tale and as of early this week, it was done. The story has been read and accepted by the editor, so I'm officially done with the writing of the book. Whew! It feels good to have it done.

And, since the contents list is done, I can send it all off to the person whose agreed to pen a foreword for me. Slowly, everything is coming up Millhouse.

Right now I'm in negotiations with the publisher about cover artwork. Those of you who are devoted New Madness readers (ie. no one but me) may remember a post from two Christmases ago where I mentioned I'd spent a sleepless night designing the cover to my next collection. This book is it, but the cover I did does not work with the publisher's plans. Thus, we are working on something else. For those of you who can't get enough of my cover art (ie. only me again) I'll still post the artwork here at some point and give you another peek behind the curtain of how it came to be. No reason why it should remain hidden on my hard drive, after all. Especially because I've been keeping it under wraps for so long all ready.

But, I hear you say, what is going on with the non-book writing? Well, I'm a distance into the first draft of a new tale, one that I hope (fingers crossed) can be used to replace a story I had to pull from another market to use in CTTT. It's been going well so far, so hopefully I can get it into shape quickly. Then, I have another anthology I have my eye on, so I need to write something for that. Then, when all of that is done, I have another project I hope to complete by September. If I can, then I'll be on reading-vacation until the new year. I really need the break! I need to fill the creative gas-tank with reading-fuel. Then in 2010, I'll start work on a special project, one that I hope pays dividends. We'll see...