Recently in The Trusted Professions Category

Well, that was fun.

Many thanks to all those who read and helped to edit: Nat, Annie, Adrian, Rob, Sarah, Jayne, Chiara, Anood, Katie, Matthew, QE and Nerd Girl, whomever she may be.

It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be- I still went out three nights a week and while I had to miss a few things I'd rather not have, spending my evenings writing was more interesting, and more fufilling, than watching TV. Plus I technically finished writing on Wednesday, which means I finished a whole week ahead of schedule!

So, what next for The Trusted Professions? At the moment I'm thinking fourfold:

1. Proofreading: I've already printed a bunch of copies of the manuscript and am distributing them to various clever clogs with highlighters attached to pick out all the typos and repeated words and various other written no-nos (want to volunteer?) In addition, I'll be going carefully over all the comments made during the process and re-writing sections of the novel accordingly. I'm not very happy with Chapters 1 and 2 and they'll probably be entirely transformed. I'll also try and make everyone sound less 'American', although really I'm not sure how to do that. I may try and fatten out other areas that were glossed over, particularly the 'rushed' ending.

   I should mention that I will not be updating the online version with these changes. The first draft will be trapped in the amber of the internet and the version on my desktop that I'll be making revisions to will be the master copy, and hopefully it'll be quite different (and better!) at the end of December.

2. Cover art: This is oddly one of the aspects that I'm most excited about, making a cover for the book. If Atomized taught us anything, it's that if you stick an attractive (and/or semiclad) young woman on the cover of your book, it'll sell millions even if it's your granny's laundry list. If you or somebody you know is a short-haired woman who wouldn't mind being on the cover of a novel, contact me.
3. Publishing: I've decided to go the Lulu route, not just because I really can't be bothered with the stress and expense of trying to go through an actual publishing house, but also because, like flickr, I think Lulu is an incredibly clever idea (it's the future of publishing, no doubt) and I want to reward the company with my patronage.

   It'll cost about £5 to actually print the book, plus then I'll add like a £2 commission on top of that, to which Lulu I think will add 50p. I'd have to pay them £75 to make the book internationally distributed, which I think I will do, so I'd have to sell like 37 copies to break even, which doesn't sound so hard. You'll buy one, right?

4. Podcasting: I love audiobooks and am very excited about the idea of making TTP into one and uploading it to iTunes, maybe even shopping it to the BBC. TTP particularly suits itself to the format because, unlike most audiobooks, it literally is someone talking. I've already cast someone as Dr. Fielding and she's excited about putting it together, and I'm currently searching high and low for someone who can convince me they are Dalent. If you know any British men with good speaking voices, let me know.

I suppose I should think about, uhm, copyrighting it, as well. How does one go about that, exactly?

The next thing I was aware of was my hands being roughly put together and plastic handcuffs being snapped around them.

I needed to find out where Colmes was, and fast. I paced rapidly back and forth across the marble hallway for a few moments, muttering to myself.

?Did they give you any clue where they were going?? I snapped at Gillette.

?No. Just that it was to dinner.?

?Damn.?

Y?know I read once that the brain, at least the conscious part of it, perceives time at a certain rate, like twelve moments a second or something. Not a huge amount, but the brain kind of ties events into a single coherent stream so that it seems like they all flow together. They reckon the mind gradually perceives less and less moments per second as you age, which is why every year seems to go slightly faster than the one before it. Ever noticed that? That?ll be scary, huh, when you?re only perceiving one moment per second, and everything just seems to fly past you at terrifying speed, and you can only respond in slow motion? No wonder old people seem so constantly alarmed.

I dumped the car outside Paddington and stumbled into the emergency room. Someone walks into a room wearing nothing but a blood-stained bathrobe, it gets a heck of a reaction, let me tell you. I was rushed to triage and the robe was cut away from me. As it turns out, the bullet had gone straight through my triceps and out the other side, completely missing any bones. A graze, as far as bullet-wounds go. An inch to the right and it would have missed me entirely. They stitched it up and put me on a plasma drip to replace my lost blood, in addition to putting me on some heavy-duty painkillers. I kind of dozed off during the stitch-up, and when I awoke there was a Police Constable sitting on a chair next to my bed.

You know much about dream interpretation, Doc?

Yes. Studying Freud is a prerequisite for Psych 101.

?Jesus man, are you alright?? Jez crouched over me as I spat the last bit of bile out onto the floor. ?What a fucking mess.?

?I can?t do it.? I managed to say through gasping breaths.

Despite Jez?s protestations, finding a someone who?s willing to kill someone else is not simply matter of popping your head into the Bail bondsman?s office and seeing if there?s a dude in there with a scar on his cheek named Arty. You can?t just put an ad in the Times saying: ?Killer required, one-off job, no health plan.? As much as we couldn?t afford to bring suspicion on to the operation before it was carried out, it would look ten times worse if, after Saul had been killed, people started snooping around and discovered we?d started posting curiously worded want ads that didn?t exactly specify what they were after. If we thought finding a honey-trap was tough work, this was a whole other order of magnitude above that.

?That?is a very generous offer, Mrs. Colmes.? Jez said.