I should probably mention that I finished the first draft of Flight of the Illynov in April, and am awaiting feedback from my first reader, who will tell me whether the novel is worth revising, or whether I should just start on my next novel and trust that I will get better with practice. Once I hear back, I will likely take another six months making necessary revisions before sending it out to a developmental editor who will undoubably ask for extensive revisions. So not quite done yet. But at least I have actually finished the first draft, which is itself a milestone.
The fake cover above is from Pulp-O-Mizer, a way too much fun website that allows anyone to create convincing Pulp SF covers. (The web resolution version is free, but you can also pay reasonable prices for high resolution images on coffee mugs and t-shirts and so on, so tempted to go for a coffee mug of this one.) The pulp SF cover is probably appropriate for my novel which is essentially a 1950's-style space opera adventure. If I haven't mentioned it lately, I started this novel 39 years ago, when I was still reading SF from the 1950s and 60s so its part of a genre that is essentially 40 years out of date. Three-quarters of my potential readers have either passed away or switched to large print biographies by this point, so probably a waste of time from a commercial point of view, but I chose the simplest of the 12 novels currently in my head for my first try.
