It’s always a bit of a thrill to see the physical end product from your creative work. Even after five or six printed books, the tangible experience of holding the first physical copy in my hand still gives a bit of a buzz. Oddly enough, from experience, I also know that sensation fades pretty rapidly. Within a month or so, whenever I pick it up a book I’ve written, it always feel as though it’s someone else’s book.
I’m not quite sure why such ‘distancing’ occurs. In some ways it’s good in that I can actually pick up and read one of my previous books with a very objective eye. I recently reread Fionn: Defence of Rath Bladhma and the nice thing was that I actually quite enjoyed reading it. How weird is that?

I suppose I’ve never really thought about it too much until yesterday (when I picked up the physical sample copy of Liath Luachra – The Grey One from the printers we use here in Wellington). Now, I suspect that what happens is, once one creative project is completed, I just mentally “chuck it” as I move onto the next. This is probably good in that it actually makes me quite productive but it also means I no longer have such a strong sense of creative ownership of the works I produce. I suppose that just doesn’t become so important any more once you’ve delivered your first “creative baby”! With each new creative work you become a lot more pragmatic and substantially less precious about them.

Anyway, Liath Luachra – The Grey One is now available for pre-order on Kindle. It’ll also be available in hard copy from Amazon in the next 1-3 days.

For those who live in Wellington, I’ll have paperbacks available from sometime next week providing all goes to plan.

By the way, the white paper to the right of the computer is the rough draft of Fionn: The Adversary. I’m taking a week or two off from it at the moment but, yes, I am working on it.