Writing fills the void between working, sleeping and doing the daily/weekly things that must be done. Writing takes my mind off my mind. Everything else is an interruption. It’s that blunt. If it were possible I wouldn’t sleep, eat and go to work. When I’m alone, creating fake worlds and fake characters, I don’t have to keep up appearances. I’m not complaining. Goes with the territory.
As is the tendency in those with creative impulses you’re constantly thinking, planning and working on several future projects. Everything creative you did in the past starts to feel, not inferior necessarily, but inaccurate. You’re convinced that your current work is an accurate representation of everything you ever were and will be. That still holds true to some extent, even if in practice it’s a little disingenuous.
It won’t make a difference to 99.9% of people/followers that in 2007 I put my slim novel Replika online. Without time, sufficient marketing and publicity it was left to gather digital dust and indifference. During some respite last summer I took Replika offline, with the intention of updating the cover, writing a new blurb and making a few tweaks.
A few tweaks turned into a new edit, rewrites and some extensions, but nothing that changes the central themes, characters and plot. I corrected typos, polished some clunky sentences and explored a few niches. The finished product is more of (and I hate this term) a reboot. This version feels fresh and facetious. Better than the original in my view. It still remains a frisky, frivolous, batshit novel about memory, time, perception and identity. It still pokes and pricks the perversity of pop culture, as it must. You’ll also notice that the book is now called Replikat. This occurred not because there were copyright/contractual issues to fulfill (there weren’t in case you were wondering) but because… (Well it’s in the book)
Fun is one of those adjectives I’ve rarely used in recent years to describe any activity I’ve been involved in but I managed to apply it when writing the new scenes and chapters for the book. I didn’t allow my imagination to be stifled. The novel also contains the term roisterers and features the Canadian actress from 90s kid show, Spatz.
Bit of trivia. In 2005 I submitted a very early draft of Replika to a publisher. A few weeks later I was surprised to find that the publisher left me a message asking me to call him back. When I eventually reached him I listened to a glowing review about how it made him laugh, etc. ‘I can’t publish it though,’ he said. ‘Here we go,’ I thought. It’ll be the standard ‘Due to the high volume of manuscripts…’ rejection motherfuckery and I’ll vow to give it all up again. Not this time. Turned out that they published erotica. The publisher suggested that I should write a blog. Funnily enough the book featured the first appearance of a young Smirnov Kool before the ego took on a life of its own in the ‘blogsphere’. This information, I’m certain, won’t mean anything to more than a dozen or so friends/followers.
I hope you enjoy Replikat. If you want to try before you buy I’ll be posting some selected extracts/quotes on here or some other inane network in the coming days/weeks. Give it a go. It was fun. I think you’ll like it. If you prefer something darker and metaphysical, my collection of short stories Annihilation is available. In the meantime I’m working on several more projects.
JW
JSNWNSTNLY 