Going live!

With many copies of 'Ginnungagaps' winging their way out to various publishers and agents at the moment (and many winging their way back with letters saying things like 'This is engaging but...' etc), my second children's book 'Nearly King Jimbo' is complete and ready to go, go..GO! this week. It's hard work putting aside the disappointment of the rejection encountered so far and zizzing myself up to inject renewed energy into Project Number Two, but I am finding the process easier which means one of two things; that either I am becoming inured to the sting of rejection and am treating it as one barrier out of the way between me and publication or I am turning into a hard-nosed writing machine.

Excuse me a moment, I need to rescue a rather lovely lemon sponge from the oven....

Now, where was I? Ah yes, 'Nearly King Jimbo'. Now, I am rather fond of this story. I have enjoyed writing it very much and I enjoyed reading it to Andy. I did voices and actions. I would have put on hats if I had hats. The hens provided sound effects for the episode in the farm-yard. It has been an extremely fulfilling writing journey. Characters such as Alice, Mr Jobble and his dog Mick and to a certain extent Mrs Bobbinflaxenfluff (although I'm still not 100% certain of her - wouldn't want to meet her up a dark alley way at night) have become part of my 'life- in- fiction'. The Queen is very much me and there are elements of Andy in King Andy. Many were the times during the story that I wanted to slap Nearly King Jimbo for being an idiot but he turned out all right in the end thanks to my subtle character development so I forgive him. So I am anticipating that rejections for this book could hurt a little more than they have for 'Ginnungagaps.' Perhaps that's why it was my second project? Perhaps my Guardian Angel has been toughening me up in readiness by getting me to complete Ginnungagaps first? Shall I stop asking rhetorical questions?

When I was thinking about marketing 'Nearly King Jimbo' last week and I was writing my synopsis I thought, 'This is very much a performance piece. Perhaps I could perform a reading on U-Tube, or You-Tube or Yew-Tube or whatever it's called. That way I could maybe trap an audience who will demand publication of the book. 'Give us Nearly King Jimbo in the written form!' they would cry (hopefully not because they would be appalled by my performance). 'Give us a whole series of 'Nearly King Jimbo' adventures! Author! Author!'

Oh yes! This was a plan. And then, spookily, Andy leapt into the kitchen yesterday morning like a man on a mission to bear marvellous news. He doesn't do leaping very often and even less so since we had the floorboards replaced with lovely but rather slippy tiles. He had a look of evangelical excitement on his face. 'Hello,' I thought,'have the BBC changed their mind about who they want as the next Doctor Who?'
'I've had an idea,' he announced. 'About Nearly King Jimbo!'
'Good,' I say because I like to see him all lit up with enthusiasm, 'what idea is this?'
'I'm going to find an animating programme on the internet and draw some animations and you can perform a sample chapter and we can record the performance and animations and put them on U-Tube, You-Tube, Yew-Tube as a marketing device!'

And that is why I said 'spookily'.

'Excellent!' I said, because I am always keen to try out things that we think of separately that manifest themselves to be the same idea. (I believe superior forces are at work on these occasions. So does Andy - he calls it 'co-incidence.')

And so that's what we are going to do. It may take a while. Art does. Especially good art. Andy took himself off to his animation studio aka the box-room that is known as 'Andy's Study'. Four hours later he calls me to come and have a look at the 'work-in-progress-so-far.' It's fantastic!! Andy doesn't believe he is very good at these things but in truth he is a talented artist. I am very excited about this project. The hens are very eggcited. The cats want to know when they can have a tin of tuna to share.

Watch this space...