We’re submitting my book to publishers

[This post is imported from my old Livejournal account, where I blogged from 2007-2015.]

Why, hello, yes i AM still alive and well and able to type out blog entries in my spare time, so it’s a mystery why i haven’t updated in so long.

Wait, no it’s not. I don’t have any spare time anymore! Hahaha free time what even is that, amirite guys (sob).

I started my masters research and since then I have been sucked into a black hole of labwork and cute phd students (so.many.babes.) and meetings and learning to use every piece of equipment under the planet and I’m having SUCH A GOOD TIME. Everyone is perfect and my project is amazing and I want to do what I am doing right now for the rest of my life. (I’m doing a couple of modules too in cosmology and astrophysics and the like, but I s2g they have yet to enter my consciousness in anything other than ‘ooh! A lecture! An hour I can sit down and nap and not worry about thing exploding in my face!’)

I will explain my project in detail at some point, but basically I’m looking at using a fancy piece of equipment to hydrogenate organic molecules in a more environmentally friendly manner, and trying to find the optimum conditions for it to work in. It’s a lot of pouring liquids and running NMRs and crying when we get unexpected results.

Anyway I TOTALLY KNOW that none of you care about that, so let’s talk about what you are all here for (haha I’m kidding, no one uses lj anymore it’s just ME). MY BOOK, which is currently known as Untitled Manuscript, because apparently ‘The red earth rolls is too literary a title for the blockbuster this is hopefully destined to be’ according to my agent.

After I spent approx my entire life rewriting, we are finally submitting to publishers next week, so I’m oscillating between terror and excitement on a particularly increased rate atm. Next week editors are going to be getting phone calls about my book and hopefully reading it and ???? ? ????????

I had to write an official outline for the sequel, which makes it REAL and it was kind of more stressful than finishing the first one, because i had to turn vague mental details into solid decisions and aaaaah the whole plot is going to fall apart why did i write so many cliffhangers???

And it’s done! I sent off the final draft and I have heroically stopped myself reopening it to start editing again, and I am so glad I have work up to my ears because I will not survive this is any other way than just living in the lab until the deadline.

Wish me luck, or a slightly accelerated agonising death, pls!