The Next Work: Part II
After I’ve finished a manuscript, I’ll usually reread it several times, fleshing it out while the story’s still fresh. When I no longer think I’m getting anything meaningful out of it, I print it out and give it to my alpha readers. I’ll then incorporate their feedback and go over and over it again until I’m back at the stage I think I can do no more. Then I’ll sit on it. I’ve sat on ‘Prudence’ for almost five years. That length of time is unusual. Other things have taken up my time. Pride, Just Another Week in Suburbia, and August Falling were all published in the interim, and each…
Song of the Curlew
In early 2017, I published a young adult novel – Pride – under my YA moniker of ‘Lazaros Zigomanis’. This is actually the name I was baptised under. To provide some background, it was 2002. I ran a football website and the season had just finished. Collingwood had lost the grand final (there’s a shock), and I needed content for the off-season so I could maintain some readership. Therefore, I decided to serialise a story, and since my website was football-centric, I decided it was going to be a football story. I’d already had this vague idea for about ten years, but it was originally going to be based in…