Published some stuff

Hello, again! While I was fiddling around with some work, and waiting for an editorial review of my book, which is going to be called The Smiling Stallion Inn, I decided to publish some stuff that I happened to have lying around.

First off, there was a short story that I had written a couple of years ago as an experiment to see whether or not I could write a science fiction short story: The Sable Valley, which is available exclusively on Kindle.

And then I decided to do a Kindle version of my poetry book, ‘A Song of My Heart’, which has been available on PDF and book format, but I decided that now was the time to create a Kindle version of it.

And finally, for some more fun, I dusted up the 2002 version of The Smiling Stallion Inn, which was part of the first manuscript for Legends of Arria that I wrote when I was 13 years old or so. Yay!

Why Kindle? Well, I’m used to self-publishing through Kindle now, I might use some other self-publishers like Nook and Smashwords in the future, but for now, it’s easier. And beside the Kindle version of A Song of My Heart, the other two are best suited to a digital format, they are not fully fledged books, and The 2002 Smiling Stallion Inn is more of an extra or a bonus.

I suppose that’s all for now.

Doctor Who fandom etc.

Hello, everyone. In the past month or so, I have been getting into TARDIS Eruditorum, both the blog and the books. They really have inspired me to tackle some of the early Hartnell and Troughton serials again; I started off with The Rescue, and I have already gone through The Romans, The Web Planet, and the Space Museum.

“Zarbi! Ech! Ech! Ech!” The Web Planet is really funny once you think about it. The first two or three episodes were pretty great for me, but then it did sort of go downhill, with some of the over-the-top metaphors and religious talk. The Planet of the Ood, or ‘Ood Planet’ is a really much better version of the Web Planet in my opinion.

They cover some of the same bases, like the Animus and the Ood brain, the Ood singing about DoctorDonna, and the webs of light that the Menoptra will weave about the Doctor and his crew…yeah. I also checked out what ‘About Time’ had to say about this serial, and they mentioned several points at which Ian Chesterton/William Russell probably decided to leave the show, all of which made me laugh.

I plan to watch The Chase, The Time Meddler, The Gunfighters and The War Machines after that. I’m also scattering some Tom Bakers into the midst of these serials, like I had to watch The Brain of Morbius after The Web Planet, to kind of relieve the stress/ache The Web Planet had caused. That was a great plan, The Brain of Morbius really is as great as I remember it being! I watched that, and the special features, straight through in one night! Yay! It really is a perfect serial.

So as you can tell, this summer is my Doctor Who summer, basically, of watching as much Classic Who as I can stomach, and rewatching some serials that I might have seen once, but years ago online. Watching a Doctor Who serial on the computer doesn’t really compare to watching it on the telly, as it was made for the telly, really. I have a shorter attention span for watching videos, generally, when I am on the computer. I also just got a smartphone and I’ve been streaming some Red Dwarf, which I haven’t seen in awhile, and I’m getting into Black Books–I laughed to see Martin Freeman as the doctor in that first episode!

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough about fandom for now, back to my work. I’m already working on the third book of a series for which I haven’t published the final, definitive version of the first book. I know, I get ahead of myself sometimes. I did try to submit my work to several agents, hoping that it could be republished in its new revision, but no replies yet and usually they reply within 6 to 8 weeks, so if there’s nothing in this next week or two, then I shall indeed resort to using CreateSpace once more, probably with a smaller book size, 5×8 or something like that.

I just don’t know if I should pay for the editing. I may try the review service they offer, although I don’t know what that might be like, and then I might get a Library of Congress Number, especially if it’s the final definitive version. I’m also wondering about publishing former drafts, like the ‘2003/2008’ versions of my work, as they are quite different from my current 2013 version (as I’ve dubbed it), which fleshed out some minor characters a bit more and had more backstory. But the 2003/2008 drafts might be decent enough books on their own as a simpler version of the narrative. I don’t know, it might be excessive, but it could be something to explore in future.