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 . . .