It’s early Saturday morning, and I’m at the bottom of my extra large coffee. My to-do list looks ugly, and it’s been a hectic week. No rest for the wicked, it seems.

Laid out in front of me are several spreadsheets and notebooks, a three-inch thick manuscript I have two weeks to finish re-reading, and a timeline for the next year and a half. In the aftermath of Sir Terry Pratchett’s passing, I’ve decided (yet again) that my time on this earth is far too limited and the things I want aren’t simply going to manifest by thinking hard enough about them.

I read in an article recently written by Neil Gaiman that Pratchett’s work — a prolific collection that brought in 80 million and spans 70 books — was largely fuelled by anger. In my limited understanding of what pushes me to the page, I understand this: I’ve got a poltergeist in my head and it likes to throw around the furniture until I start paying attention.

No, I’m not happy just doing what I do for a living.

Yes, I need to write to keep myself on the level. I also need more caffeine, but that should be a self-evident truth.

I made a plan, guys. I gave myself timelines. And I came to an abrupt decision that’s going to cost me an arm and a leg and possibly a chunk of my sanity in the process. (My mom called me up after I made the first announcement to my Facebook page that I was doing this, asking how she could help. I told her to buy the book when it gets released. Tell all her friends to buy the book when it gets released. I don’t even case if they can’t read it because they only speak Hungarian. Just buy a copy.)

With the state of publishing as it is, and trilogies being dropped mid-way through their life cycles, I am going to self-publish the three books of The Neverafter Sequence over the course of three years. The first — Wake the Dead — will hit the market in 2016. The manuscript on my desk that I’ve been rereading? This little slice of gothic horror that centers around Highgate West? That’s a refresher course in the world I built. I begin writing book two on April first.

I have a lot of work to do leading up to Wake‘s release, as it was always my intention to finish drafts of books two and three before anyone ever peeked at the first manuscript. What this boils down to is writing two manuscripts over ten months, with another four months left for editing, revision, and the first marketing push.

How do you write a novel? Just show up every say and find that shining, pure, vicious determination to get it done on the days where you don’t wanna.

Tossing Around the Furniture

Part of the self-publishing process involves registering ISBNs for your books. In Canada, it’s actually a two-for-one deal where you register as a publisher at the same time.

It’s free to do. I spent a couple of days throwing around names, until arriving at the conclusion that I needed to identify with something supernatural but still a little quirky. Being impulsive and wanting to claim the name for myself, I registered in the system.

I am now a publisher, and consequently, this exists:

It comes from the German translation of the word “poltergeist.”

In folklore and parapsychology, a poltergeist (German for “noisy ghost”) is a type of ghost or other supernatural being supposedly responsible for physical disturbances such as loud noises and objects moved around or destroyed. Most accounts of poltergeists describe movement or levitation of objects, such as furniture and cutlery, or noises such as knocking on doors. Poltergeists have also been claimed to be capable of pinching, biting, hitting and tripping people.

Poltergeists occupy numerous niches in cultural folklore, and have traditionally been described as troublesome spirits who haunt a particular person instead of a specific location. Such alleged poltergeist manifestations have been reported in many cultures and countries including the United States, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and most European nations, with early accounts dating back to the 1st century.

– Wikipedia

Good Omens

I’m terrified. Doing the re-read of Wake the Dead is a quick lesson in understanding that it’s never going to be perfect, but hopefully I won’t embarrass myself too badly. There are good parts and there are bad parts, and parts where I forget to edit because I fall into the story when Eden gets scary convincing.

I think a lot about the stories that changed my life as I’m doing this — Good Omens was one of them. I might never be as prolific as Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, but hearing Neil read out a chunk of it after talking about Terry with Michael Chabon got me to pick up the book again and set it on top of my to-read pile.

I’m including the conversation here, not only because Neil is a great speaker, but because his memories of Terry are just as good as that petition that’s been circulating for Death to “Reinstate Terry Pratchett.”

The body of work from these two men is inspiring. I’d be remiss to say that legacies like these make me want to work harder.