Boxing Day round up

First off I need to apologise for the misleading heading for yesterday's blog entry. I'd listed it as the 1st blog entry of Christmas Day thoroughly expecting the be writing another later on. The day though didn't happen as I'd thought and I never had chance to fulfil that implied promise - not 'til now anyway.

Well yesterday, whilst everyone was doing all their Christmas things (and ordering me to keep out of the way) I added some 980 words to the novella. Today I've beaten that comfortably - adding another 2,626.

The novella is approaching the two thirds mark now on 18,920 words. I'm hoping I will get enough time over the next week to finish it (1st draft anyway) before the New Year starts. I want to get the next novel up and running as soon as possible in 2016.

The planning for that is going reasonably well. I spent over half an hour this evening before starting in on the novella bringing some ideas together. I may well be bringing in a bunch of characters and a mysterious organisation I'd sketched out for another story that didn't fully form to join with the notes I have for this one and make them into a, hopefully, sensible and coherent whole.

The two parts feel as though they will fit together well - at least in my head they do. We'll see once words start to be put down on electronic paper. It might all descent in a pit of nonsense. I'm hoping not but you can never tell. The interesting thing though is the genre.

You see since returning to this writing malarkey I have written in several different genres but ones that are easily linked.

1 Horror Novel (2 if you count my first ever attempt)
2 SF novels (3 if you count my second ever attempt)
1 Fantasy Novel
3 Weird Novellas.

Well this current idea fits into precisely none of those categories. It's a bit more thriller in feel - albeit with some tech stuff in there and a great big heap of paranoia. It's not a deliberate decision to not include anything from my favourite genres and by the time I've filled in all the bits of the plot that are still to be finished it might have shifted across into one of them but for now it's missed them all.

Although on a second consideration it might have touches of Philip K. Dick in there. I did mention the paranoia angle didn't I? So maybe it isn't a total departure.

I don't want to give away too much about it yet. Not for fear of giving away a good story idea (not that I'm going to claim it is one, just wouldn't want to take the risk in case it is). It's more that I'm struggling to describe it without it sounding like a Dan Brown clone. It isn't that in my head; it's just that the summary I tried earlier sounds like one.

In my head it's much more a PKD story crossed with Max Barry (a really great Australian writer of surreal stories) and then coated with some Thomas M. Disch trappings. There is also the chance a bit of Anthony Burgess might influence it - think One Hand Clapping if you've read it. (If you haven't you should.) And oddly when I was writing down the plot in my notebook I had a bit of a Robert Ludlum thought in my head.

So wrap all that up and see what you make of it. If you're intrigued keep your fingers crossed I can keep it together enough to write the damn thing and then get it published. Let's see what 2016 brings for it.

BTW one last thought - December's writing diary has seen 32,848 words of fiction written in 26 days Ten of those were non-writing days due to Christmas etc and wanting to spend some time with my wife - that will always win out. So I have ensured my daily average for the month will exceed a thousand words - of fiction. I've probably added another 10K into this blog and other things over that time. Not a bad effort even if I say/type so myself.

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