A busy few weeks in which I fall in love with and begin to despise Terry Pratchett
Hello all!
Been a bit quiet - unfortunately that is simply regular life doing its thing. Long story short I’ve been working very long hours lately and not had much time for blog-writing. I did manage to squeeze in some proof-reading; less than I wanted but as much as I could manage.
Proofreading continues as it has before and so far I’ve shaved a thousand words out of the novel, which is an added bonus! I’ve also started looking at some different options for covers, but early days yet.
In other news yesterday I stopped serving as chairman for GothCon and my successor (and also predecessor) was elected to take over. I wish him and his board the very best. I’ll continue to serve as staff for the convention and support it in any way I can, but my rocky career as chairman is over. The convention is in excellent (and experienced) hands.
One thing I have found time to do in the last few month or so is do a bit of reading. More specifically I have picked up Terry Pratchett.
It’s not my first foray into Pratchett: I tried The Colour of Magic many, many years ago and found it quite unimpressive, but at my wife’s insistence I gave Small Gods and then Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms a try about three years ago and found those a lot more interesting. Going through a bit more has been on my to-do list ever since and in the last few weeks I finished off Feet of Clay, Mort and am now about halfway through the Hogfather.
I think it’s unfair for writers to be so good at so many things. He could have been a bit more fair-minded and written rubbish plots or at least have made the world a bit more inconsistent here and there to make people feel better about themselves. That would have been the decent thing to do, but noooo, he had to go and be this damn good at more or less everything (some of the earliest Discworld novels not withstanding). It reminds me a lot of reading Iain M. Banks the first time: Finding an author that good at world-building, that good at plotting, that good at prose and that good at theming was equal parts wondrous joy and horrifying discouragement.
Anyway, I know I’m several years late to the party but the fantastic thing is I still have many Discworld books left to read!
Work should be back to normal after this week and I’m hoping to speed things up a bit by then.
As ever, thanks for reading!
/Pontus