It's an odd feeling. I wrote the novel in about six months in 2011, then I sat on it for a long time. I decided to write some more things, shorter pieces, and put those out there first. I did that, then I went back to The Werechicken.
You want to know what happened? I had written a lot of other stuff by the time I came back to my novel, which was my first serious piece of writing. By that time I was a better writer, and what I found was that I had NOT been a good writer when I started writing my novel.
It was awful. My English was terrible, I had TONS of exposition that even I myself got bored reading, and I had a knack for throwing in little sentences that contradicted everything I wrote later. It was not a good feeling.
Editing is a hard, slow task, but re-writing is a different beast altogether. I hate it, and to be honest, The Werechicken is damn lucky it ever saw the light of day, because I gave up on it more than once, thinking that it would just be easier to chalk that one up to experience, and move on.
But I didn't.
I didn't do it, because I believe in the Werechicken. Maybe no-one else gives a flying turd about my novel about a young man 'blessed' with the ability to turn into a small, white chicken at-will, but I do. I think it's a good book. I think it's a solid fantasy story, and most importantly, I think there's bits in there that will give readers a good laugh.
And that's what I set out to do. That's really why I write. The world is a far too serious place, and I wanted to make it a little less serious. The Werechicken is essentially a 'fuck you' to people who insist that life has to be hard, and a struggle, and unpleasant, because those people, while they may be partly right, do not make the world a better place. There is a time and a place for seriousness, but it's not for EVERY time and place.
My main hope for my book is this: that someone will pick it up, read it, switch off from the 'real world' for a few hours, and get lost in the world that I've created, which is most certainly NOT serious.
If you buy it, I hope you enjoy it.
Yours,
Steve.
