Winds and novels

In two days, Cyclone Pam will bear down on New Zealand's east coast bays, islands and promontories. Already the waves south of Whangarei are huge and forceful. As I wrote in my novel Island, "… it [the storm] has no designs on any of these [objects in its path]; it moves according to its intrinsic energies and those devolving upon it from the greater systems of the earth." However, Pam is the greatest weather system currently on earth so perhaps that should read 'evolving'. Whatever, however, it made for an exciting swim just now: should I dive through this looming monster or race to shore before it crashes? 

Distractions! I have manuscripts to edit — several novels, even though I saw myself write recently that they're too unweildy and time-consuming for a solo publisher. Nevertheless, as I also wrote more recently, I've been changing my model and the new one is about sharing — energy, input, skills, marketing and income — with the author. Self-publishing has become respectable, but it's still a hard and lonely road, too often with a product that lacks the quality checks of traditionally published work. Publishing in the new (it might be said chaotic but certainly unpredictable) publishing climate is also a bit lonely and hazardous. Teaming up makes good sense to me, and this particular handful of novelists concurs. (One didn't and has beat a retreat, thriller in hand.) Thanks to those who go on believing that a novel's worth writing, and those who go on reading them.

May all in the cyclone's path find safety.