Edmund Lester

Today was a bit of a mixed bag. The novel didn;t seem to be working first thing today so I did a little bit of work to support the previous one. I wrote two synopses for it - one at 800 words or so and quite detailed; the other in under a page of A4 - agencies/publishers have different requirements. I also started in on correcting grammar etc on it as the test reader wants to a copy. No way I'm handing it on unchecked and risking an incorrect they're, their, there. I would be mortified. I even found another couple of agencies to send previous novels to - so there are two more submissions out there. Then onto writing - it kind of clicked this afternoon and the sf-noir, as I think I now must declare it, grew from 24,741 to 27,437 words. Not quite the 3K I had hoped for but when you add in the 1,300 words or so of the two synopses I did kind of get there. I did a bit more pre-planning on the YA SF that popped into my head the other day. The notebook will take a little bi...

The day before yesterday I ended the writing session on 22,507 words. I've mentioned before that yesterday was a washout writing wise. Today was better head wise but rather limited on time. not that I would trade the morning and lunch out with my wife for 100,000 words. The writing this afternoon went well. I ended the session on 24,741 - so 2.2K in about three hours. And I sent off another submission to a US publisher for the Political SF novel Against the Fall of Empire. This evening thought had been pre-booked for days. Although the exact content of it was up for discussion. It was a film/drama night with the family. And after much discussion we opted for the first two episodes of Swedish drama Beck. It's kind of strange watching them. We've recently watched the final four episodes (from season 5) made last year. The first episodes were made all the way back in 1997 and the characters that are in the whole run look so young. I guess it is 17 years but wow! The mos...

Yesterday was one of those days writing wise. I gave it a try a couple of times but deleted pretty much everything I tried to write. So I gave it up as a bad idea and moved onto other things. The other things being submissions. So as a result the weird novella was sent off to another three potential publishers; the science fiction novel to six US agents; and the horror novel to another agent and a potential publisher. I made another short story submissions too of a (hopefully) comedic story with demons, ghosts, zombies and Minnesota Twins baseball caps. The YA fantasy has been printed off ready to be edited. This last I know is probably a little too close to having written it but my test reader wants to read it and I want to at least fix up the grammar a bit and add in the two scenes I've sketched out to make the plot flow a little better. So that was that yesterday. I did get to watch a bit more TV than normal and actually spend some time with my wife which was ve...

I'm more than half way through my week off work now - darn. It's not that I don't like my job - I do. It's just been great being able to do some serious writing day after day. Well I worked on and off on the novel all day and it has progressed from 18,289 words to 22,507 words. Over 4K today. The story is coming along quite well and my cursing is growing more anatomical and more weird. When I revise I am definitely going to have to upscale the inventiveness on the earlier swearing. Aside from that I prepped another submission of the horror novel Mr. Stinky - this time to Ghostwoods Press. Fingers crossed as with all of them. I went through my spreadsheet containing all the other submissions. There are a couple due this week, so I will be firing off follow up emails to them tomorrow. Not expecting anything from them but it'll be better to know one way or the other. Well writing itself is pretty much done for the day. I am going to be watching another episode...

Today was not as productive writing wise as other days this week. Mainly due to the morning off I mentioned earlier. It was worth it though. I'm not going to allow myself to get so far behind with the Flash again. I will either keep up to date (-ish) or just stop watching it. So this evening I did a bit more writing and brought the final total for the novel today up to 18,289. Which means it's longer by some 3.2K words. Will make an effort to at least match Monday's 4K tomorrow. Be a tough ask as I have kind of confirmed I'll be watching some Scandinavian drama tomorrow evening. But I can try. Also have another potential brake on the progress of this SF Space Opera Murder Mystery Whodunnit. I had a phone call with my main test reader this evening. He'd been threatened with redundancy of late and it was looking a little dicey but fortunately he's had a couple of job offers from other companies so he's a little happier. So cue one meandering science fic...

Okay, it's the second day of my week off work. So far so good. not had to leave the house for four days. I'm not saying I'm turning into a hermit but it's been good to have no pressure on to do anything. Take this morning for instance. I came into my office; turned on the PC; opened al the apps I need to do this (Word, Outlook, IE) and then thought - nah. My wife thought the same about her music too so it was good timing. So instead of working we finished up season 1 of the Flash. Now this is a series that for some bizarre reason I still like after watching 23 episodes. It gets off to a good start - there's a superhero from heck's sake and most of the rest of the cast are scientists. What's not to like. Well there's the science for one thing. Now I know superhero stories play it a bit loose with real science stuff and we have to make some allowances. After all being bitten by a radioactive spider is a pretty dumbass origin story science wise. But ...

I will have to admit I wasn't totally all out writing for the rest of Monday (after the first blog post of the day). I may have watched a bit of TV and spent some time with my wife - I still like her after 23 years together. But I did do some writing. The sf novel is up to 15,130. Which means that today it got tidied up, put into a novel like structure from my notes and 4,000+ words were added. That will do as a pretty decent kind of day. This novel is a bit different from the ones I've done previously - especially the YA fantasy that was its immediate predecessor. This is definitely an adult story; not in the way of extremely strong violence of sexual content though. I've created this wisecracking, foul mouthed smuggler character and he's narrating the whole thing. So it's a bit sweary in places - okay in all the places. I'm getting a little creative with it too - many of the combination swear words are amusing my wife when she gives the first draft a quic...