Yesterday evening, at 7:24 PM, I completed the first draft of Harlem Smoke, my new novel, while listening to the song "Azathoth" by Arzachel (the "end credits" song for the book's "soundtrack," incidentally). The first draft came to 290 pages and 126,036 words. All in all, the book took around 159 days to write, from August 14th, 2015 to January 20th, 2016 (a little over 5 months: I first conceived of the idea back in August of 2014). Presumably the 2nd draft might be a tad longer in terms of pages, but I'm not even thinking of the second draft right now. The relief of finally typing the word "FINIS" is satisfaction enough. I now also once again have a chance to repost one of my favorite J.K. Huysmans quotes, from a March 1887 letter to Camille Lemonnier, on the only rewarding aspects of writing:
“I have just written those felicitous words: the end! You know what that means! It is the only really good literary moment in one's life, I believe, given that, the very next day, disgust with what one has written sets in. But still, there has been at least one minute of happiness.”
Later on this year I hope to begin shopping it around to publishers (always my least favorite part of the writing process, but it goes with the territory).
The novel is set in the year 2015 and the location is the city of Providence, Rhode Island. The "plot" revolves around a black homosexual painter, formerly the member of a Lovecraftian horrorcore hip-hop band back in the 1990's, who finds himself haunted by his old creation when a number of local women start to turn up brutally murdered, the crimes seeming to match the lyrics of the one and only album he recorded back in the day (the name of this album being Harlem Smoke). Essentially, it's a mix-up of Frankenstein, Lovecraft, the TV show Hannibal, and a whole lot of other things. I certainly wouldn't classify it as a conventional Lovecraft horror novel, though.
There are a few other projects that might be in the works, but it's still too soon to tell. I'll provide updates in relations to them in the future, however, as things progress.
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