Where we are

It's been a while, so here's an update on all things "MFWC".

Firstly the changes:
The website is no more. Until I can figure out what I need from an author's website and how to maintain it best, I've taken it down and let this blog and the twitter account be my internet presence. It's not ideal and as a writer, I kinda liked mfwcurran dot com. But as a business person, I know that I'm more than mfwcurran dot com, so the new dot com will reflect that when it's up and running.
(Also, as an aside, some pesky Chinese company bought the domain and tried to sell it back to me at an inflated price - you can imagine what I said.
Feel free to bombard them with anything you wish.)

And so to the writing:

The big news is that AFTER THE SEA ROSE will be published by Editions Didier in August 2015. We even have a book cover:

Here's what Editions Didier say about it:
"The year is 2041. Half of Britain has disappeared beneath the waves. Young Pete is on board the Orpheum Lass when the crew is forced to call at Cannock... an island like no other where the terrifying occupants have transformed it into a hunting ground..."

AFTER THE SEA ROSE is volume 1 of a series I started writing way back in 2008, called the ISLES OF SHEFFIELD, so there's a little history behind it (you can read about that history here). The folks at Editions Didier have done a fantastic job with this book, and the illustrations are marvelous. Perfect for young adults, but also adults looking for a quick read. It also comes with a free download of the audio book. If the audio book of SANDCASTLES ON THE MOON is anything to go by, you'll be in for a treat.

At the moment, UK readers can only get copies of AFTER THE SEA ROSE online via Amazon or direct from Editions Didier. There are no current plans to publish in the UK, but that may change with demand and what happens next with the ISLES OF SHEFFIELD books.

Any news will be posted here.

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What else?

On the horizon are several projects, some close to completion, others a little further away. What I can tell you is that I have two horror novels in the offering, an apocalyptic story that I'm close to finishing, a science fiction/fantasy epic that is one year away, as well as the next Secret War novel. There are other projects that need revising and resending to interested parties too.

What I would ask readers for is patience, following a chaotic couple of years. I am still unrepresented following the death of my agent, Dorothy Lumley, last year. I won't approach another agent until I know which project I want to submit for publication. What I've learned after 8 years is that your next book tends to be the one that judges you for the next 5-10 years. If you write a successful horror novel, then you become a horror novelist. A successful sci-fi novel, then you're a writer of science fiction. I write in all these genres, and I'm not wishing to be branded quite yet.
The good news, is that I have many projects (I'm not short of them!) so you might see a flood of books in the coming years, rather than the current trickle.
As always, any news I'll post here.

And thanks for keeping the faith, it keeps me going, you know? 

About Re-boots

Everything seems to be re-booting these days. Some are good (Mad Max Fury Road) others not so (Total Recall, Robocop - pretty much most Hollywood fare at the moment; and then there’s British Politics, the Greek economy etc etc).

This blog is re-booting too. Another re-boot in a history of re-boots, around on-going commitments from every corner. You see, I haven’t committed to blogging for some time. It doesn’t pay the bills, the publicity is negligible, yet it’s been an important platform to say things that matter to me.

As time has rolled on, more and more things matter to me. This blog should be bursting at the seams, rather than the bi-quarterly output of recent years. I can only apologise and say that it hasn’t been in my control. Little is, when you have kids, I’ve learned. They complicate things – boy, do they. 

Which is why I’m a little mad to consider kick-starting this blog while youngest is still in nursery and eldest is as demanding as the writing.

Still, there are stories which need to be told, which I suspect is the reason for every re-boot in history. Not unlike Mad Max Fury Road and British Politics, attempts to reinvent themselves because of ineptitude (politics); or a desire to explore modern mythology and bring kick-ass action movies to the big screen once more (Mad Max).

My own blog-re-boot is less ‘British Politics’, more ‘Fury Road’. Every attempt to re-boot this blog, has been scuppered by circumstance, and my enemy: time. Time just goes, like grains through my fingers, spent on a day-job to keep the family going, on my children to keep them loved and inspired, with Sarah (to keep our sanity), and on occasion, with family and friends, who might get a look in at some point. Oh, and I write books too. Did I mention that? 

At some point, I get to do this thing right now, social media. But as a priority it's ... well, you don't want to know how far down the list it is.

I am prevalent on Twitter through convenience. It’s easier to compose 140 character-tweets at random moments than fully fledged streams of thought like here. You don't need to draft a 140 character sentence as much as 800 word blog entry. Nor do you need to take time out to maintain the site the tweet sits on, refreshing it so people will be interested. Or make sure it's being hosted (keen eyes will notice I no longer use the mfwcurran.com domain - but more of that later).

All this is time, grains of it, slipping through my fingers and dissipating in that invisible vortex that surrounds us, binds the universe together, and strips us of the days going forward.

My books eat what grains I have left. Writing 10,000 words per book per week, gives me little time to contemplate my own musings on writing or what interests me the most about the world. 

I don’t want to be one of those blog-writers navel gazing or endlessly blogging about the fascinating things my kids are doing. Both may be fascinating to me, but do you really want to know that my 3 year old son has an awkward way of pronouncing ‘chips’ (think ‘sh’ instead of ‘ch’, and ‘t’ instead of ‘p’, and you can see ordering at restaurants can be interesting)? No. Apart from a derisory smile, it isn’t really that amusing to anyone but myself and Sarah, (and maybe the man sitting next to us who snorted lemonade out his nose after our youngest ordered ‘fish and shits’.)

And that’s the catch. Blogging, any writing really, has to be interesting, or you become that prattling-type of social commentator, saying much without meaning anything.

So let’s try this re-boot again. Let’s be Fury Road about it. And who knows, I might get a little Mad along the way.