Flapping

Today has been spent mostly in flappy negotiations with people who want me to write things for them. There's been some distinctly good news on that front, though.

Item. Confirmation of my Greenbelt talks on The Spirituality of Doctor Who. Hurrah. This is all very splendid, even though it turns out on closer inspection that only one talk has been scheduled when I proposed two. It's also a shame that it's scheduled for the smaller (but very pleasant) literary venue, rather than the larger spaces they generally give the media / pop-culture talks. (This seems particularly odd to me since I fully intend to speak on Doctor Who in T.V. rather than book form, but that aspect of it's not really my problem.) The big difficulty is that contributors have to deliver two sessions to qualify for a weekend pass to the festival -- I've been rather banking on one of these, as otherwise I would have bought my ticket months ago when they were cheap. I'm flapping at them by email even as we speak.

Item. Confirmation of the commission for the co-written S.F. criticism proposal I've mentioned once or twice recently. Hurrah and huzzah, especially since the publisher's initial threat to give us a deadline of a little under four months has now been amended to the twelve we were rather wanting. Still negotiating the money side of things, though, rather delicately since neither of us has any particular idea of what would be standard for a large academic publisher. This is where an agent would come in really rather handy, of course.

Item. An invitation to contribute to another shared-universe short-story anthology from Big Finish. The themes are right up my street, and there's a chance of final placement in the book, which always makes a story stand out more. The downside -- which I haven't been able to negotiate the volume's editor out of -- is having to use some characters I find frankly uninspiring. He's firm on the point, though, so never mind -- it's a fiction commission, so hurrah and huzzah again.

Needless to say, all this has made me more eager than ever to obtain an agent at my earliest convenience, to flap on my behalf. Unfortunately, all the extra work may mean that I have to shelve the proposals I'm working on to wow them with, at least temporarily. Hey ho.