So Where Is It?
The astute among you may have noticed that I never gave an exact release date for my new novel, Percival Gynt and the Conspiracy of Days. The promo image on the website says only "Materializing 2018," which was less intended to provide me wiggle room than it was to give me my own wiggle village.
Wiggle village! Doop! Doo-de-doop!
That said, I always had a target release date in mind. The astute among you might have even guessed it from that same promo image. (And no, the release date was not "sometime in the year 20,018.") And if you guessed it, you might have also noted that that date has now come and passed. Bummer.
Wiggle village! Shoop! Scoobily-poop!
So what happened? Why did the date slip? When might it have slipped to? And why is this song so catchy???
Wiggle village, wiggle village! Gonna wiggle all over this tow-oun!
So what happened? Many things. Well, three things. Well, three things and a two year old.
First and foremost, never trust a man who won't tell you the delivery date to stick to that delivery date. These people (mese people) are notorious procrastinators and/or fiddlers. And I'm definitely on the "and" side of that slash: I will procrastinate. I will fiddle. I will even procrastinate when it comes to fiddling. But I will never fiddle with my procrastination! I am a procrastination purist.
Still, better to be self-aware and transparent than to keep setting arbitrary deadlines and missing them.
Second and slightly-less-most, my wife (who is smarter than I am) convinced me (she is also convincier than I am) to do one last copy editing pass relatively late in the process. That turned out to be a good thing, as there were some very extremely helpful notes that came out of that pass.
For instance, did you know that "convincier" isn't even a word? I KNOW!!!
Well worth it, but it added a couple more weeks to the schedule. And I might have been able to absorb that except for there being a third thing.
So... Third thing. My grandmother died about ten days ago. She was 97. She'd led a long and happy and adventurous life. She flew planes and rode elephants and went to Antarctica twice and and taught math and played ping pong and programmed computers with punch cards and may or may not have decoded secret messages from outer space. And she lived long enough to see me grow up and get married and have a kid, which is about as much as I can ask of anyone.
It would have been nice if I could have gotten the book out before she passed, but I've been carrying the proof copy in my bag for a month or so now, and the last few times at the hospital it frankly didn't seem that important.
And also I have a two year old. He is a time suck. I am currently trying to teach him that when he asks for something and I say no, asking for ten of that thing is not an effective counter-offer.
Remember: It takes a wiggle village to raise a wiggle child.
So when can we expect the novel? Before June, for sure. MAAAYBE this month, but more likely next. Unless more THINGS happen. My schedule is based on a 100% cessation of THINGS. All caps THINGS. Regular lower-case things and camel-case Things are still okay. Unless they are Stranger Things, in which case my novel will be delayed by approximately eight additional hours.
tl;dr Later.