My (incredible, talented, fantastic) editor still has my most recent novel. This is definitely okay… it certainly took me longer to get to her than I expected, and the pandemic has had impacts on all creative work in myriad and frustrating ways.
Still, that means the novel may not actually drop by the end of this month. I remain optimistic, but a big piece of that is going to be how much I have to change, and how far-reaching those edits may, or may not, be. Let us say I remain cautiously optimistic.
In other news, I have started my next course for my English degree: Shakespeare Tragedies and Histories (or vice versa… same course whichever order you put them in), and we have started with the play Richard III. It’s an interesting one, and the opening soliloquy is certainly captivating. The big thing for me is that there’s no real “hero”. The protagonist is a horrible, selfish, evil man, and continues on his course without remorse or second-thought the entire play. And yet this is considered one of the most compelling characters in all of Shakespeare’s work… Richard has more lines than any other character Shakespeare wrote save one (Hamlet).
We’ve only just begun to really dig into the story, but I am looking forward to getting to grips with this kind of narrative. I usually struggle with stories that don’t have a happy end (this one does, arguably) or moral, “good” characters to follow (this one most certainly does not). We’ll see how it goes!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!