Changes afoot. Views wanted.

I've been thinking about what to do with my online 'Tumperkin' name.

When I adopted that moniker, about 4-5 years ago now, it was on a whim. I wanted to comment on the first reader blog I'd started regularly visiting (Bam's place) and I wanted that comment to be something other than anon. I wanted to own the comment, and not just for the duration of the thread. I hadn't yet started seriously trying to write and I had no real idea about the online world. The name was plucked out of the air - a silly pet name Mr T used to use. I started my own blog a few months later and so my investment in this absurd name increased.

I blogged, I wrote. Eventually I submitted my manuscript. And suddenly, here I am, due to become a published author under the name Joanna Chambers - at the end of this year.

I'm setting up an author website - I only have bare bones of that just now - but I also want to maintain a blog, and for that blog to still have a readerly slant. I've decided therefore, to 'migrate' my current online identity to my author name. Eventually, I'll probably move the blog over to the author website too, when it's ready, but for now I'll keep running IIR and may retain it as an archive of all my old posts (unless I can work out how to migrate the content).

I'm thinking of doing this in phases over the next few months:-

1. Change gravatar to new one (done - here and on Twitter)
2. Change identity to 'Joanna Chambers (nee Tumperkin)' (ok, I know it's a little 'artist formerly known as Prince' but still...)
3. Change identity to 'Joanna Chambers'
4. Once website ready, migrate blogging activity over

What do you think? Sensible?

That's the easy part. The more difficult part is thinking about whether to change anything I actually do blogging-wise. I love talking about my readerly thoughts but once I'm 'out' as an author will I feel differently about that? I know this topic has been spoken about a lot recently (Jill Sorenson's honest and considered post at Dear Author, Sunita's plea for more peer review at Vacuous Minx) My personal worry is that there would be a perceived difference between reader-me saying X and author-me saying X, i.e. if reader-me says this book lacked pace, I'm not suggesting I could do better. But if author-me says it, the worry is that there's an implicit, I am the Oracle of the paciness of books - check out my work if you want to see how it's done.

God, the thought.

As it happens, I don't tend to write 'proper' reviews - I tend to want to blog about quite specific things - things that capture my imagination and actually it tends to be things that provoke predominantly (though not exclusively) positive reactions in me. So maybe it will be easier than I think.

Then there's the whole promotion thing which, clearly, I'll have to do. But this blog has always been promotion free and of course, being me, I've been all self-congratulatory about that like a gigantic idiot. Bah. Actually, maybe I should keep my readerly blog here? Or, not. Oh, it's tricky! I suppose I'm just going to have to find my way as best I can.

I should say I think there are people who do this (writer reviewing/talking about books) really well and with integrity e.g. Jill Sorenson at DA, Lynne Connelly at TGTBTU to name but two. But suddenly, it's me in this situation.

What do you think, both about the migration plan and this?

A recent reading pleasure

I've missed blogging about reading, as I read. I find that blogging is best for me when it's really fresh - if I don't blog about a book within 2-3 days of reading it, it's not going to happen. That means that this blog isn't representative of everything I read - just what I've read immediately before I blog.

And so to a recent moment of reading pleasure, in Life After Joe by Harper Fox which I enjoyed for all kinds of reasons, but most especially for the declaration scene near the end. Matthew, one of the heroes, has managed to get himself illicitly on a helicopter out to an oilrig to find the other hero, Aaron West. Love this moment of arrival:

"Take it easy with him, Jens. He's had a rough trip out, even by my standards."

I raised my eyes from the concrete. There was an almost infinite stretch of it beneath my feet, and it was not moving. Almost infinite- in the far distance, between gigantic scaffolds and towers made of girders and chains, I could see an edge. Beyond it, darkness...Here the gale arrived in flying wedges, each one accompanied by a blast of horizontal rain...

..."Hang on. There he is. West! Over here!"

He was in front of me. He strode through the flow of men heading in the other direction , and I saw how they parted for him... He was alluring, welcoming or forbidding just as he chose, and out here...out here, plainly it suited him to be a sheer granite cliff. I saw in an instant why he never had any trouble from his coworkers. And he was, as always, devastating. He made the ghastly waterproofs look tailored. His short black crop was plastered down with rain.

I love the coincidence of setting and character in this moment. Aaron's been hiding something from Matthew and it's later in this scene he will reveal it. And this is part of the reveal, the start of it. Matthew knows Aaron works on the rigs, but this is the first time he's seen him in his working guise, and he's different here.

I also love the strangeness of the place Matthew finds himself in, this harsh all-male platform in the North Sea. A forbidden place he shouldn't be in where unexpected things happen. After the declaration, when they're in Aaron's bed Matthew notices:

Outside, wild, white drifts of snow had started to fall driven by the wind. It hadn't occurred to me that it snowed out at sea, in lonely wastes of water with no-one to watch.

It's all quite unexpectedly lovely. As are Fox's loving but unsentimental descriptions of Newcastle, where most of the book takes place.

I read this book on Thursday/Friday, then immediately read Driftwood which is set in an equally lovely and unsentimental Cornwall. I highly recommend both books.

I'm not very good at blogging hiatuses

Although I'm on a blogging hiatus while I finish edits to the book, there are few things I just have to share:

Thing the First: my laptop is very unhappy indeed, having been infiltrated by... something. If you've emailed me and heard nothing back recently, let me know.

Thing the Second: I am almost finished the edits on the book. Timing has been tricky as I've had two rare weekends away in the middle of the time allowed and my day job has been horrifically busy - however, I'm almost there. The process has been fascinating and I want to blog about it (and also about the process of crit-partnering) at some stage - but probably not till I've seen how it all finally plays out and I have the full perspective.

Thing the Third: I'm hating not blogging (as evidenced by this, um, blog post) and not connecting with people. Feeling overwhelmed at the beginning of last week, I emptied Google Reader then was overtaken by a flood of remorse and regret to think of the posts I've missed. I find myself going on Twitter at those hours of the day when there's no-one around, hanging around for five minutes hopefully then mooching away again.

Thing the Fourth: Interestingly, in the midst of all of this, I am still reading. I've glommed a few ZA Maxfield books in the last couple of weeks, starting with the intriguingly titled Pharoah's Concubine (which I loved) then working backwards through a few other stories in her backlist. Really interesting to note her progression as a writer from Notturno to Crossing Borders to Pharoah's Concubine. Maybe, when I'm back to blogging I'll do a post on this - reading her books has given me both readerly and writerly food for thought.

Thing the Fifth: I've realised I need to get better organised. I've got 2-3 writing projects of varying sizes I want to take forward in the next 12 months plus website/promo to think about. It's all quite daunting when I think of how many hours there are in a week then deduct the (very similar) number I spend doing my job and looking after my kids. And that's without factoring in holidays/ some semblance of social life/ any kind of exercise/ de-stressing or relaxation. When I say there aren't enough hours in the day, I mean that very literally. I need to focus on what the most important things are and start thinking about having actual targets. It's probably inevitable I'll blog less - see Thing the Third :-( .

That's it from me for now but if you see me hanging around friendlessly on Twitter, take pity and say hello.

T