I'm just reading through the print proofs of News from the Squares before it goes off to the printers.
So far I've spotted one incorrect quotation mark, however there are bound to be other errors, no matter how careful everyone is.
Something will slip past and the first person to read the finished book will spot it immediately and within 10 seconds I will get a Tweet telling me of the mistake.
But, other than those annoying little issues, I am feeling rather positive about the book. I have spent some time recently talking about my books at various events around the country and explaining the ideas behind 'Squares' is harder than I expected.
If you simply say 'It's a book set 200 years in the future where women run everything' it gives, I imagine, a very shallow impression of what the book actually deals with. I haven't yet learned how to explain what it's really about.
Maybe I should say 'It's about a man with the emotional skills of a 5 year old spoilt kid from 2011 learning how to grow up and be a mature human being with an understanding of his emotions few contemporary men achieve before their mid 50's.'
Doesn't sound sexy though does it?
It's not as easy a pitch as 'Brad Pitt has to fight millions of killer zombies to save his family and there's loads of massive explosions.'
However I am now starting to understand what I have written. This is often the case, the story emerges from somewhere unknown, it is only in the aftermath I can start to see what I was trying to do. Emotionally thick? Moi?
I have had two life long interests, machines and gender. The two topics don't often travel hand in hand but they always have with me. I know I'm not completely alone.
In 1914 an American Writer called Floyd Dell wrote an article for a radical socialist magazine called 'The Masses' titled 'The Mona Lisa and the Wheelbarrow.'
In it he struggled with the notion that for 1000's of years man, as in male humans, could understand machines but were baffled by women, as machines were now ubiquitous, it was time for men to focus their intellect on understanding, as opposed to trying to rule, crush, control or dominate, women.
Yeah, 1914, we've come along way in 99 years....not.
So, that's essentially what the book is about, a man who understands wheelbarrows but is totally clueless about women, and he ends up in a world where women make all the decisions that affect the lives of everyone on the planet.
Challenging and thought provoking? Hope so.