Cameron Johnston

The editing and rewrites have all come to an end annnnnnddddd my agent has sent the manuscript out on submission. Phew! So, what now I hear you ask? Waiting...mostly waiting...and hoping...and trying not to check my email every now and again...knowing that realistically very, very few books ever get picked up and published, but also that hoping bit is back again... I'm finding this wait a little different to my short story submissions. Partly because there is a much larger chunk of time, effort and imagination invested, and partly because if this novel does get picked up then I'll have books in shops and libraries - something younger me had dreamed about ever since I first set foot in my local library. I frequently left that hallowed hall with shaking arms holding ten books at a time, and I would be delighted to find my own writing fuelling other people's imaginations in the same way. I suppose we will just have to wait and see, and hope.

So my latest dabble with LEGO has been building a John Constantine minifigure, bottle of booze in hand, ready to glass the sodding demon in the eye. From Hellblazer thanks for asking, not the Keanu Reeves movie, you vile heretic! (Actually, it was an OK film) Now if only the TV series had taken off and been allowed to go darker. *sigh*. I thought Matt Ryan was pretty good. So here it is, with a little help from the Dr Strange set: "I'm the one who steps from the shadows, all trenchcoat and cigarette and arrogance, ready to deal with the madness. Oh, I've got it all sewn up. I can save you. If it takes the last drop of your blood, I'll drive your demons away. I'll kick them in the bollocks and spit on them when they're down and then I'll be gone back into darkness, leaving only a nod and a wink and a wisecrack." Hellblazer was bloody brilliant!

It's hardly a secret that I'm a huge fan of archaeology and history, as anybody who has ever glanced at my Twitter feed will notice. Whenever I have a few days off I like to visit museums, stone circles and standing stones, castles, hill forts and the like. Anything ancient I find utterly fascinating. Last weekend I took the ferry over to the island of Arran and explored some of the wonderful sites. Amongst the many well-preserved monuments I enjoyed two the most. We walked up the forested hill to view the Glenashdale Falls, and then visited the Giant's Graves on the way back down. These are actually neolithic chambered tombs that were once mounds. All the earth and turf scoured away by the elements, and heaped stones taken away for building materials. The stone bones of the tomb have been left exposed to the air. The passage you can see in the bottom picture is the entrance passage to the heart of the mound, and the burial cyst. We also revisited the Machri...

I've been busy the last few weeks. Really busy. Neck deep in edits on my novel actually. My fine agent Amanda Rutter at Red Sofa Literary sent me back my edits and as I readied myself to open the files I knew damn well what was coming. Still, it hit me like a well-aimed half brick to the face to behold a sea of comments, corrections, suggestions and advice. Where do you even start? For me, it was a little paralysing at first, but then I got to work on the quick and easy changes: typos and word choices, clunky bits of prose, clarifications and eliminating confusions. Gradually that mass of edits was whittled down to manageable chunks I could wrap my head around. Who ever said that writing a novel was the hard part? Re-writing and editing are far trickier, and yet also as - if not more - satisfying. It feels good to trim away the fat and build up the muscle, making my novel a leaner, fiercer, and more emotional beast. The end is in sight! And when it gets picked up by a publ...

As my novel is currently undergoing edits with my agent *waits with both trepidation and eagerness* it’s got me thinking about the process of critique and editing of my work by other people. It’s always a slightly daunting prospect to submit a new piece of writing for the first time, especially if you are asking people to pull it to bits and hold each morsel up to the light to be thoroughly examined. Still, that’s one of the best ways to improve your writing, and when all the dust has settled you will be left with a much-improved piece of writing. But you do need to develop a thicker skin. It may be your darling mind-baby but it’s not personal critique, it’s professional.  The harshest critic is likely be your finest friend when it comes to writing. There’s an important word – Professional. More on that later. When I joined the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers’ Circle back in 2010 (Has it really been so long??) I poked my poor little prose head right into the word-lion’s den ...

In other writing news, I received an email last week from a literary agent. Expecting the old ‘I liked it, but…’ rejection that every writer who has ever submitted anything gets, I found myself stopping and reading again. Why? This was no rejection email - this was an agent saying she loved my novel and was offering a Skype call to discuss representation!!! We arranged a day and time and a few days passed in a daze. I logged into Skype 45 minutes early…or I tried to, on two machines… panicked searching revealed logins to Skype were down worldwide. Argh!! Nightmare! Except, it was only for apps, and Skype for Web worked fine, phew, last minute save. The discussion went incredibly well and I’m ecstatic to say that I’m signing with Amanda Rutter of Red Sofa Literary . This novel of mine will be heading out into the world after a few nips and tucks.

It’s been an eventful and exciting month for me on the writing front, a whirlwind of new experiences, nerve-wracking waits and last minute panics (more on this in the very next post). First up we had FantasyCon 2016, FantasyCon by The Sea, in Scarborough at the end of September. It was great catching up with friends from all over and talking books, writing, and nonsense of all sorts. As always happens at these conventions, my best intentions of going to see a wide range of interesting panels goes mostly unfulfilled in favour of talking in the bar. That said, some of the things I did go to included: -Author Miles Cameron (of The Red Knight fame) talking about war logistics, scouting, water supplies, and why Sauron should have waged economic warfare on Gondor to bring it to ruin instead of going for ‘The Big Win’. -Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris and Abaddon books had a candid and informative talk on the world of agents and publishing and on how much input his authors ...