Sunbathing on Battlements

It's time to get back on my hamster wheel and be a productive little critter for the next twelve months, or until Christmas. Christmas sounds good. Actually, Christmas sounds awful--cold and too much food and dark nights. If only it could be summer forever.

I've had a fantastic break from work, been to lovely and sunny places - I ♥ Wales - actually that statement isn't news as I've always loved Wales, but this year the sun shined and actually burnt. Burn is not good, especially when you're at an age were you should know better than to turn lobster red in the sun. Thankfully, the kids returned home pasty. My niece rubbed so much suntan lotion into her skin she was like a slippery eel.

We played in the sea, someone got pooped on by a loose-bowelled seagull, I won a big fluffy chimpanzee and a slightly-less fluffy dog and lost a fair few pounds in the process (the jangling kind), I griped about the price of candy floss (cotton candy) - £2.50 - what!!!! But thankfully, the candy floss on this side of the border was cheaper so I did have a bag or two in almost as sunny England.

I read, read, and read some more. Nearly a hundred short stories (Interzone, Black Static, The Zombie Feed, Never Again, Spook City, BFS Journal, Postscripts), devoured a graphic novel (Anya's Ghost) novellas (Unearthed, The Door to Lost Pages, No Traveller Returns) and novels (Water for Elephants, The Robe of Skulls), meaning I've made a dent in my to read pile. Albeit a tiny dent.

Writing-wise, I edited and edited and edited In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair, I completed a new short story Disregarding Rabbit Holes, started work on another short that is as yet untitled, and cut some words from the unfinished second draft of my novel The Ghosts of Folding Time and started layering in extra spookiness and removing a giant robot. And my story, His Name Carved on Empty Space, was accepted by Every Day Fiction (and will be published this Wednesday). There was Theatre and Nowhere Hall and Barbed Wire Hearts news, one of which involved the posting of signature sheets which I am eagerly awaiting delivery of.

If I owe you an email, I will get back to you very, very soon. My inbox is awash with goodness. Now to twitter... I mean, put my head down and write.

WIP Wednesday - Are you done, Kathleen Fair?

Or maybe that should be titled, 'There's so much missing here, Kathleen Fair'.

The novellette/novella is complete at 14,537 words. Hearts, men and mirrors have broken, but fair Kathleen is the most lost of all.

Now to let it stew while I contemplate what happens in the bits between the bits or decide to lob off other bits.

The above was achieved with a little help from my friend, Freedom. Dude is a pain in the ass at times with his tough love, but in the end, when the universe restores, I appreciate his tenacity.

WIP Wednesday - The Freedom of Kathleen Fair

On Monday, I discovered Freedom. Or rather, on Monday, I was brave enough or perhaps tired enough to finally download Freedom. For the uninitiated, Freedom is a computer program that blocks the internet and the only way to override the program is to switch off your computer and restart it (and I'm far too lazy to do that). You can set it for between 15 mins and 8 hours. So far I've set it twice for two hours, although I might go for four or five hours this weekend, and it works a treat. Both days I wrote a little over 2000 words in two hours; I don't think I've done that in years, at least not regularly. Of course, I shouldn't really tempt fate before I've tested it for a month or so, but so far...

...Fan*blinkin*tastic. I might conquer the world after all, or at least my 'to write' projects.

Thus, I am 5034 words into The Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair. So far the story has spun a web of gargantuan furniture, mirrors, Hellish graffiti, Perfume, a dead boy, and a girl who was supposed to be meek and mild yet somehow barraged into the story with her fists raised.

The manuscript currently hovers around the line: You should have run, Kathleen Fair.

In other exciting news, Daily Science Fiction have accepted my story Exit Stage Life. For a moment, I thought I might have amassed enough pro-pay wordage sales to upgrade my HWA membership to Active, but by my rough calculations I'm still about 300 words short. You need three pro-rate stories published amounting to 7500 words, and I have five pro-rate with about 7200 words. Damn my brevity.

Call Me Narcissus

I am so in love with the title of my new story that I can't stop whispering it. This of course does not make for a productive writer, thus I am currently 654 words into In the Broken Birdcage of Kathleen Fair. I couldn't get the story plan to sit right until I found my main character's name, we ran the gamut from Gina to Erica to Erin (okay, not much of a gamut), but none of them fitted and then we came upon the name Kathleen and she is of course very, very fair.

In other news, I may just, eventually, maybe, you never know sit down and finish my ghostly time travel saga 'The Ghosts of Folding Time' which I started writing last November. I mean, we have an entire first draft and part of a second draft and a whole heap of madness. And then of course there are a bunch of grandfathers to deal with. In the meantime though, I should head downstairs and continue babysitting and watching Alvin and the Chipmunks for the hundredth time this weekend.