Nursing a book through it's first few months in the market is much like nursing a baby through its first few weeks of life. At least it seems that way to me – my own baby had colic and my wife and I were run ragged, didn't sleep, and lived on the edge of complete mental breakdown until the colic went. Maybe it's different for other parents – I mean writers.

My book, TimeSplash, has been out for two months now – almost to the day – and I'm reaching a point where I can contemplate taking my foot off the book promotion gas pedal and letting it coast out the rest of its journey on the information superhighway. I'm sure I haven't done enough, but you soon learn that you could never do enough, and accept your limitations. Or am I thinking of parenting again?

Meanwhile, life has been going on. I have written, revised, edited, and polished up another novel. Science fiction, of course, and another thriller, but this time set a little farther into the future and with much of the action taking place on the Moon. It was great fun, but now I need to find it an agent. Someone who cares about sci-fi and will help me find my new offspring a good home.

But, even while that goes on, a new story has been taking shape. Farther still into the future, and on a much grander scale, this one is a three-volume space opera in which a future humanity struggles for survival and a ten-thousand-year-old robot finally comes of age. In the past few days, I have written the first dozen or so pages of this great saga, finding the right beginning, finding the right voice, and I must say, I don't want to do anything else right now except to keep on writing it.

It's hard to keep your feet on the ground and think about book promotion with your head half-way across the Galaxy, meeting new and wonderful people. Yet TimeSplash is a terrific story and the people in it still come unbidden into my mind from time to time (some of them whisper to me about a sequel). And TimeSplash still needs my help. It would be out there on the Internet, alone and starving, if I didn't nurture it with a few mentions and a blog post or two now and then. Yet, for me, TimeSplash is two books ago, and the new one is clamouring in my head all the time.

To misquote my old music teacher, every good book deserves a publicist. Writers – writers like me, at least – are not really suited to the job. Those empty pages sing an irresistible Siren-song. The godlike power of creating fascinating people and fabulous creatures commands you like an addiction. The trouble is, there is no interview for an aspiring writer, no-one to check your marketing credentials, or your fondness for sales, and reject you if you don't seem suitable. The only test you need to pass, is that your writing is entertaining and looks saleable. And, I suspect, to pass that test, you need to be the kind of person, like me, who would rather be writing than almost anything else.

The TimeSplash Blog Tour

Graham Storrs is the author of TimeSplash, a fast-paced time travel thriller. This post is part of the TimeSplash blog tour running from 16th February to the 5th May. To find out more about the book, go to the TimeSplash website and check out the blog tour schedule page at TimeSplash - The Blog.