Even your Dreams are Square

Maybe Tymmy isn't quite ready to go out yet. The first person who critted it for me didn't even get the fact that the cat is supposed to be blind. You've got to worry when someone says they can visualise everything your blind PoV character is seeing :) Seriously though, I'm not too worried at the moment. If more people fail to get it then maybe I'll look at it again.

The Sidewalk's for Regular Walking, Not Fancy Walking

I was in town on Saturday morning, idly browsing my way around Waterstone's, when I decided to see who I would be next to on the shelves if I ever get a novel published. It was somewhat daunting to discover that in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section I would be snuggled between J.V. Jones and Robert Jordan. I laughed out loud, causing the girl driving the till to look over in my direction. I went to hide behind a bookshelf until someone bought something.

Not to worry, I thought, the novel you're working on at the moment is Horror. The Horror section wasn't much better: James Herbert on one side and Stephen King on the other. Yeah. Nice.

It has since occured to me that there are other sections. Next time I go to Waterstone's I'm going to have to see where I would stand in the Crime or Romance or Fiction sections. Maybe I could even take Al's advice and see what potential lies in the Adult section.



Can Everybody Just Notice How Much Fire I'm Not On

So what have I got done this weekend? Well, I've made some revisions to Tymmy with a mind to getting it sent out next week sometime. I haven't listened to everything that was suggested for it, but I've made a few changes that should make it a better story. I've put it back up at the workshop to pick up some last minute comments whilst I hit the web to find somewhere to send it. As before, keep to this spot for news.

Some small news: I've started Dearest . . . again. This will be the third draft. Remember that organic writing progress I got so excited about before? Well, it didn't work. I found myself losing track of characters and time (I'm not even sure what month the action was in when I last finished writing, and I think the diary extracts may as well have had random dates attached to them for the real ones were about as accurate). I found that it was a chore to go back to it each time. I'd come back to it after a month or so off and absolutely dread having to look back and remind myself where everybody was. I also didn't have any clue how my main characters were going to reach the end of Part 1, and I still had a few chapters left to run in that part.

So it was all going nowhere and I also feel I need to detach my own experiences at Nottingham from the book, else I'm in danger of writing a very short, yet incomplete, autobiographical account of my degree course. With any luck, this new draft should work a lot better for me.

Same targets apply as they did before - six (new) chapters by the end of the year (although I hope to get a lot more than that down).



A Professional in a Monkey Mask is Still a Professional

No word back from The Well yet, but it has only been two weeks. A tense two weeks, but it's still too early to expect to hear anything yet. The publication's quoted response time was two months after all.

Later . . .