Two years.

My SFR story Keir is two years old today. Two years! I can't believe it. Two years ago today I sat at my computer, 10 pages of an old short story clutched in one hand as my kids played out in the garden, and going insane. I felt like I was disappearing. That beyond the labels of 'mother' and 'housewife' (both of which I was proud of but it seemed something was missing) 'I' no longer existed. I know saying that I wanted to find myself sounds a bit corny, but that's what it was. Reclaiming something of who I'd been, who I really wanted to be, before I completely lost touch with that part of my life. So it wasn't only Keir's redemption that I wrote over the following six weeks. It was mine.

Two years on and I can't quite believe how far I've come, and yet with the sobering thought of how far I still have to go. Keir is contracted to a publisher and I've just submitted my first set of pre-edits, but having a contract isn't the end of it. There's still plenty of work to be done to get Keir to its projected release date of April 2012. There will be promoting, marketing and editing to do. I'm glad in many ways for the advice of friends and fellow authors that have prepared me for some of it, but I know it won't be easy. I still have other pieces to work on elsewhere, a family and household to run and, come October, another university course to study. I'm facing the fact that I probably have another two years work in my current projects before I'd need to start anything new. I already have two follow on books ready to edit, another half written, a scifi novella just finished and a post-apocalyptic prequel that's about 15K into an anticipated 50K. I have a fantasy short entered into a competition for November and already have ideas for expanding it into a novella. I have a scifi short up on Smashwords and the vague idea of putting together an anthology of speculative fiction at some stage.

Gethyon - scifi novella

Sometimes I wonder where it all came from! But more, I can't wait to see where it goes ...