Sunday 18 October 2015

Part two of my editing saga.

I've finished edit two of my final Old Geezers trilogy, with about twenty more (edits that is) to go before I publish. I think my Christmas estimate may have been right. it's only which Christmas which is now in debate.

    Here's the first page, which as usual will probably change another hundred times before the end. Not the info but just the way it's presented since I wrote the books so that no reference to the first and second were needed but with a pitiful plea that the reader did, so that my rent got paid and I could dress my daughter. I'll think of something even more pathetic than that on the next edit. 

    This was going to be the cover but I quickly realised if I did then I might just as well not bother writing the book at all. 


‘A lousy, goddamned joke!' Chet’s enormous fist slammed into the plastic table with enough force to propel a mug of coffee high into the air. Ignoring the sound, and the scalding aftermath he glared at his two alleged friends and took another ragged breath.
    ‘I mean, you actually take us back in time - to a war; then you get us shot at by regiments of storm troopers, then blown up by tanks, and now you’re giving me jokes?'

    Less than two days since hurtling back through time after being hunted by invisible monsters – and visible Nazis, it was to discover that they’d landed in another dimension where he was actually married to the woman he despised most in the entire world, AKA the Chief Administrator of the asylum in which they lived. The very concept had all but driven the last vestiges of sanity from his mind. And now they were telling him that it was all just one big joke.

    Any sympathy he might have expected was clearly unforthcoming, since the subjects of his wrath were contorting in near hysteria. Amon, the snivelling worm he longed to swat into unconsciousness, giggled uncontrollably as tears and other, more viscous fluids from his nose and coagulated onto an already filthy shirt. While Abe, usually a very reserved man and eminently capable of living for days without so much as cracking a smile, joined him, sobbing apologetically into trembling hands. With an alarming snap Chet’s feeble chair finally succumbed to his weight, throwing him to the floor in a painful jumble of arms and legs and forever ruining whatever remained of his previous reputation as someone not to be trifled with.

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