Through May and June this year I held my breath and gave myself a headache. Two
deadlines: finish my novel, The Shadow Fabric, and build a chicken coop. Alongside
working full time and generally trying to live, I somehow succeeded in both.
For more on my frustrations, see a previous post: Take the Time.

To make things a little more fun, I decided that I’d build a coop rather than buy one. I had a month in which to design and construct it. Besides, we wanted them to have a mansion, seeing that the poor things had so far spent their lives crammed in cages without room to spread their wings or even see daylight!
The other was to complete the penultimate draft of The Shadow Fabric. With the help of the Brighton Writers Retreat a week after reserving
those hens, I surprised myself in managing to edit a monster amount of pages. And getting a gold star.
With such a successful day, I decided to aim for its
completion by the end of June (two weeks after the chickens get to open their eyes to the world).
I finished my novel a week before they arrived, and
completed the coop the morning we picked them up.
With one project ahead
of schedule, and the other having downed-tools on the day, I could then breathe out.
Here we are, almost a week on, and each day we’ve been rewarded with eggs, plus I’ve begun to hand out copies of the novel to my beta readers.

Here I’ll step forward to say I
understand why people get excited, often ahead of themselves from what I understand, and self-publish. It’s just too damn easy.
But I’m not doing that – these copies are for my beta readers only, as I say, and
when they’re returned, peppered with comments, corrections and criticisms, I’ll
be putting it all together and editing the beast yet again.
That will, I
promise, be the final edit.
It’s strange to hand out my WIP (work in progress), it
really is. Scary, if I’m honest. After two years of The Shadow Fabric being the
largest thing I’ve tackled, I have finally let go. Indeed, I’ve unraveled the Fabric… at least, towards my beta readers.
Now it's off to make myself an egg sandwich, thanks to Kiwi, Clementine, Cherry, and Peach.
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Author photo (c)Christopher Shoebridge |
Mark Cassell lives in a rural part of the UK with his wife and a number of animals. He often dreams of dystopian futures, peculiar creatures, and flitting shadows. Primarily a horror writer, his steampunk, fantasy, and SF stories have featured in several anthologies and ezines.
His debut novel, The Shadow Fabric, is a supernatural story and is available from Amazon.
Twitter: @Mark_Cassell ~ Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorMarkCassell
His debut novel, The Shadow Fabric, is a supernatural story and is available from Amazon.
Twitter: @Mark_Cassell ~ Facebook: www.facebook.com/AuthorMarkCassell