Author! Author!

Some news and updates on my fiction writing:

The YA novel Elina and I have written came back from a big publisher. Scheisse! We talked about this and settled that Elina will rewrite it. I admit that she knows the genre way much better than me. I may've written too hardboiled stuff for the little girls. (Just to remind you: it's about a 14-year old girl whose dad turns out to be gay.)

Elina read my P.I. novel and liked it a lot. She's not connoisseur of the genre, but would've easily got bored if it were utter rubbish or just some hackneyd action. It's not. It's closer to someone like Jason Starr or Terrill Lankford, about whom I wrote just couple days back. At the last pages, I was also reminded of Gaspar Noé's disturbing little film Seul contre tous/I Stand Alone, even though Noé's hero could easily beat the shit out of mine. Elina noticed some mistakes in the plot, have to make corrections.

This is going off to a mystery novel competition, and so is my other crime novel, with another P.I. in the lead - this time it's Joe Novak who's been seen in three stories in Isku. I'm talking about The Dostoyevsky Reel that takes place in the late fifties' Hollywood, amongst its schlock scum. It's not nearly as grim as the other novel (which has no title, by the way), it's more along the lines of traditional hardboiled private eye novel. I noticed some mistakes while rereading it.

I could still do something to my third novel, which has a tentative title Blood Orgy of the Void God, and send it too to the contest, but it's not a mystery novel in any sense. More like a religious horror thriller. I've been dabbling with some ideas regarding the novel and may yet return to it.

I've also written some paragraphs to my story about Joe Novak in an empty hotel room, touching things, thinking about his past career as a private eye.

I realized one thing earlier today: I've never concentrated on writing fiction this much. Maybe this is what it takes: concentration. It's just too bad I have non-fiction commitments to make and some ideas I should be taking forward to publishers. (The damn TV thing got my schedule out of order! Must refocuse. (And I must get back to work.))

And, please, check out the Ink Slinger Bog Armored Car/Kids Clothing Story contest up at screenwriter Paul Guyot's blog. You may find something familiar there. (Use your vote! I need the T-shirt!)