Edmund Lester

I had some time to write this afternoon so made the most of it. Four new sections were added (2,125 words) bringing the novella up to 28,259. It is now moving into the end game of the story. Not much to go at all. I'm guessing two or three thousand words at most. My hopes of having it done by the end of the day do not seem likely though. I had hoped to get a good amount of writing done this morning. An initially bad night's sleep put paid to that. Still being awake at 3am meant once I did fail asleep getting up and writing by 9am just wasn't an option. Adding in having to go dispose of all the recycling as our collection was scheduled for tomorrow (and so not happening) and I didn't actually get to the keyboard until 3pm. So the writing slot was two and a half hours. About half what I had hoped. The good news though, is I still have three more days before I have to go back to the office so am keeping my fingers crossed I will finish it comfortably. And I really m

I can't believe it's the 30th already. Six days of my ten off work are gone (okay there is a fair bit of today left but when it's dark already you do start thinking it's done for). Today has seen a decent amount of writing achieved, if not exceptional. I added 2,502 words to the novella bringing it to 26,134 words in length. So there are a little under 4K to go if I'm on target. In truth I think it will be a little over that. I'm still hoping it might be finished by the end of tomorrow so I can have it done before we run out of 2015. One thing in its favour for this is I've run out of episodes of Sherlock to watch. One of the cable channels here in the UK was showing one episode a day but they only had rights to the first six. The announcement at the end of the episode watched today was they be showing the next few episodes from February. A pain in terms of the cliff hanger ending it left, but good in terms of there's two hours I won't be watchi

It's been an odd day. I've been watching a lot of the coverage of the flooding throughout Britain. I'm fortunate to live in an area which is mostly unaffected. We bought a house far from the coast and rivers and most of the way up a hill. Watching it is heart breaking. So many people's lives are being turned upside down by all these storms continuing to batter Britain. And it looks like there is more and more rain forecast. Scary. It's not just here. I've seen tales of exceptionally warm weather for the time of year, ice storms, considerable below average rainfall that seems to be threatening drought and much more weird weather from all over the globe. 2015 had been the warmest year ever. And they say this El Nino effect could last throughout next year. Adding on the damage we've done to the planet and who knows how bad this might get.

Over the past few days we've watched four of the movies that are linked together in English releases as Crimes of Passion. They are individual crime stories set in a beautiful part of Sweden in the 1940s/1950s. In feel they are bit like Miss Marple and star Tuva Novotny and Ola Rapace. Now they are very enjoyable but we were looking for the darker side of Nordic drama - the real out and out noir and these were a bit lightweight. That and we wanted to watch the arc story of the kind that was done so well in both the Killing and the Bridge. These Crimes of Passion are single stories. So we have left the last two for a later time and we opted tonight for the Spider (Edderkoppen in Danish). This is a six part crime series made in 2000 and set in 1949 Copenhagen. It's a tale of organised crime and police corruption and the reporters trying to get to the truth of the situation. We watched the first three tonight and we're hooked. It's as gritty as hell, wonderfully wel

Today has been a good day to write. I finished the scene I left part completed on the 27th and added a further four. In total I added 2,955 words to the novella bringing it up to 23,632 words. It's going pretty much to plan so 30K is still the target. It might go over by a thousand words or so but it won't be more than that. I'm still hoping I will get enough time over the next two days to complete it before the year's end but I'm not going to predict that will be the case. I know I will come to regret any such bold claims. The plotting of the next stories is still underway. I might be a little way away from starting the intended next project though. I have about the first third mapped out in my head (and some on paper) and the ending is sorted. The problem is I haven't quite figured out how to get from A to B. It's a bit up in the air still. If I haven't got it finalised so I might just write the opening couple of chapters of the Runecarver - the

The thing with these Christmas holiday breaks is you lose track of things. Once Christmas itself is done and gone who really knows when they are? Okay, I need to offer apologies to anyone who works at this time of year. I used to and I know how it feels so sorry if us idle layabouts are being irritating. Just remember you get your chance to be smug by having more vacation time available at times of  year when there's something you can do with it. And as anyone who actually knows me will tell you I always know when it is - I don't lose track of the date or day. My brain just won't let me. It's two days since my last blog entry - yeah, this one is a little later than intended. I did a fair bit of writing yesterday - some 1,757 words. I ran out of time though when it came to doing a blog entry because I was going along with the family to watch my wife playing a gig - baritone sax time too. The intention was that first thing today I was going to put that right and de

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 ch

I guess most people will be with their family flat out today and not tapping on a keyboard like me. (BTW - not after sympathy) So I'm not sure how many people will read this but I have a few minutes so I thought I'd blog; not really in the right head for writing yet. Christmas is here. Kind of an obvious statement, I know. You can hardly miss it after all. There are adverts and TV programmes everywhere after all. Now I am not a parent, nor a Christian so this day has less significance for me than many. The good part for me is getting to spend time with the (small) family I do have (as it is with many I guess). Well last night we tried to get our now traditional Christmas activity off to a good start and settled in to watch some Nordic Noir. We chose Jordskott. It didn't go down well with any of the others really. We only watched one episode. I enjoyed it but it's not really your typical Nordic Noir. It lacks many of the dark crime bits (even though it starts with

After three days of hardly seeing my wife as she was always out gigging and with the knowledge that once Christmas is over she will be off for another three or four days of being out gigging I wasn't going to spend last night and tonight in this office tapping the keys, writing my novella. I was going to spend time with her when there was time. And before you ask how am I writing this blog entry unless I am being away from her - well you do have a point. But I am going to keep this short. You see there is a writing thing I want to blog about and it's a good one. I got the email containing a link the pdf of latest issue of the Literary Hatchet containing a short story of mine. Click on http://literaryhatchet.com/  and you'll get to the main screen - click further on the Issues menu item and scroll down to issue 13. I'm in that one. You can download it for free. Just to whet your appetite and for me to show off a bit more - here's a screen shot of the titles page

Today was a day off work. As my wife was gigging all weekend we decided on this day as our chance to have one last day out before Christmas and possible take in the Frankfurt market in the middle of Birmingham. It didn't quite turn out like that. My father in law received, last Friday, a faster than expected appointment at the hospital to check on the result of some previous surgery. (It went well.) But it meant she was going to have to drive him into Leicester which put paid to our going out for the whole day. And then some other things happening in the next two days meant the only time that the main shopping to cover the period over Christmas could happen was this morning. That reduced the part day out to no day out. Never mind. It wasn't an essential trip. In any case it would mean I had a chance to do a little more writing while wife/F-in-L did the shopping. (And before you ask they choose to not take either me or the M-in-L on these trips, we don't chicken out.) T

Well my morning of writing has come to an end and it's been a successful one. I completed the section I left incomplete last night and added a further three to it for a total of 2,407 words. If I get the same kind of time to write this evening (with my wife being out playing again) I should see at least another two thousand added to the total. Not going to count my chickens until it's all done though. Things have a nasty habit of getting in the way. The novella is now just seventy words short of thirteen thousand the paranoia has well and truly kicked in. I rather like writing these Ben Williamson stories. It's fun seriously messing with the same character in all these different ways. I must have a dozen or more potential plots scribbled down now in my Ben Williamson notebook - yeah, he's graduated to his own notebook. I'm really hopeful I will get one of these published soon - I think it could make a cool series. Away from that I'm still no closer to decid

Last night was the second night in a row my wife was playing a gig (this time on baritone saxophone) and so I had a night in writing. (Now before anyone asks why I don't go along and watch her play, she plays a lot of private functions and I'm not allowed to attend. This evening is another private function, Boxing Day is a wedding and so on. I will be going to one over Christmas as it's a pay on the door but general when she is playing I write.) As a result I managed to get a decent chunk of writing done. The weekends progress is as follows Saturday - 3,145 words Sunday - 3,641 words I am hoping to add some more today but I have things to do to get ready for the day job tomorrow so time is more limited. We will see. Anyway, the novella is now standing at 10,526 words, a little over a third of its intended length. I'm hoping to be over halfway before Christmas and finished by New Year. That was I can kick off the New Year with a new novel project. I guess som

I might have blogged a bit yesterday but I still completely forgot one thing I intended to mention. In between reporting anything relevant to my writing and my ramblings on, well pretty much anything that comes to me, I have been detailing my on going book collecting. Since the car boot (US read swap meet) season ended it's a been a little thin on the ground. There just aren't the used book stores there used to be any more and buying new books isn't as much fun. But I do have charity shops to peruse and whilst they are often not all that good for the kind of older sf I am addicted to it does pop up occasionally. Yesterday wasn't one of those times however so apologies if you thought this is where I was leading you. I popped into six shops and managed to find just two books and both of them fairly recent. For completeness sake they were S.M. Stirling - Dies the Fire Graham Masterton - Taken for Dead Better than nothing - considerably. Those are two fine authors

I was thinking I might wait until I had finished writing completely before tapping in another blog entry but some thoughts were going through my head and distracting me from writing so I decided I'd best get them down. I'm writing another Ben Williamson novella. So far today I've added 2,640 words bringing the whole up to 6,380. And for anyone who's interested those words have also brought the December writing total up to 20,308 new words between No Man's Land and this novella. not bad considering I've not been as focussed one word count as I was last month. Anyway that's not why I've interrupted my writing to tap out this blog. You see music is a great inspiration for me. I'm currently halfway through a section of the novella that is set in Düsseldorf. Anyone who's read this blog recently will know that I've been listening to a great deal of German music - especially Kraftwerk. And guess where they hail from. Yeah; it's Düsseldorf.

The UK government has gone ahead with cuts to subsidies on solar panels less than a week after a deal in signed on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Just curious, but how barking mad is that? And how barking mad is it that this is not the only such reverse from environmentalism that we've had? I just skipped across to the BBC News website and opened the Science page to take a look. Okay it's a bit Tim Peake focussed at the moment - understandable given the UK's first ever astronaut has just joined the crew of the ISS - but there are still eight articles in the headlines and commentary sections that relate to global warming or climate change or whatever you want to call it. Britain is a great country for innovation - we seem to have it in our blood - but it is being stifled by policy shift after policy shift in precisely the wrong direction. Now here's the rub. I am 48 years old next month. I have no children. Neither I nor my wife have siblings so there are no n

Well the weekend started off well. I logged on as soon as I got in (usual pre XMas shopping things) and watched the emails downloaded. There were four from various agencies I'd submitted my novels to and all four were rejections. Or to put it another way - good morning World, good to see you too. Three of the rejections were for my YA Fantasy, the other for the political science fiction novel. Rejection Report so far Mr. Stinky (horror) - 20 - 11 presumed dead Against the Fall of Empire (sf) - 18 - 8 presumed dead The Intersection (weird novella) - 3 - 3 presumed dead (but far fewer submissions) The Patternmaker's Daughter (ya fantasy) - 13 I had better not delay revising No Man's Land for too long. It's probably starting to feel a little left out in not appearing on this list. I could also start sending out submissions of A Parallel Life - the other completed Ben Williamson novella. I've been holding back as I'm not totally happy with one part of it

You may have noticed something about this novella I'm writing. I've not mentioned its title in this blog, or n twitter, tumblr, Facebook or wherever else I may haunt. If you are thinking it is an oversight let me assure you it isn't. The title is an important part of any story but out of the ones I have written so far it has not been as relevant to the story as it is here. In No Man's Land, my previous novel, the name of the station was pretty much arbitrary. Okay maybe not arbitrary as I think it is a pretty good name for a space station and it fits the plot quite well but the story would have worked just as well if I'd invented a different name. Likewise with the YA fantasy the Patternmaker's Daughter the title was relevant but not crucial. Patternmaker is an insult in the world the story takes place. But I could have probably come up with something jut as effective if I'd taken a bit longer to think about it. I could go on through my other storie

Well today was a back in the office day after a day off. Getting up that bit earlier is never fun. Ah well. Anyway, this evening started with a quick trio of submissions of the YA fantasy novel to some agencies where new agents were looking to build lists - always worth a shot. I started with subs because having finished one novel on Sunday I always find it a little tricky to start a new one and I didn't want to just sit here staring at a screen. Having done them I thought I would see if the writing muscles fancied a quick flexing. Surprisingly I found this new project quite easy to get going. It probably helps that I decided on another Ben Williamson weird novella as I know the characters well and so all I had to do was concentrate on the story. Well the novella now stands at 2,550 words and I am underway on a new project - yehay. Always feels good to have something underway. It'll give me time to decide on the next novel project. I had thought I was going to go for t

Well, this is a really odd part of writing. I finished a novel yesterday and find myself in between projects trying to decide where to go next. It's odd. I may have said that already. I know one thing, or rather two. The first is I do not want to just jump straight into revising the bawdy scifi thing that is No Man's Land. I have had one or two ideas for how to improve certain parts - things to add, things to reword a little. But I'm writing these down in my pad rather than being tempted to grab the file and start editing. That can happen later. But equally I'm not totally sure I want to start writing another story just yet - which is a great pity as the rest of the family are busy putting up Christmas trees so I would have had chance. And before you go all bah humbag at me (however justified it might be) they tell me to stay well out of the way when they do this. The also tell my father in law to stay clear so it's not just me. It's pretty much no men folk

I finished writing draft one of the bawdy sci-fi novel No Man's Land. Feeling quite happy about it as I thought I would be writing the epilogue on Tuesday so ahead of schedule. Going to take the next day or so to think over which of the ideas will become the next project. I know common sense tells me the Ben Williamson would be the best as it is only likely to be 30K and I have a market in mind for it but I need to write what feels best at that moment. Not sure yet but I am positive I will have committed to one idea in the next day or so. Went through the notebooks yesterday to figure out how many I'm choosing from and there are eleven different novels with plots in various stages of development in them. Yeah - I have options which is good. My wife will tell you of the bad side of that arrangement though - I have to make a decision. It's kind of strange. When I'm doing my day job I find decisions easy. As soon as I step away from that the difficulty goes through

I'm heading off on a tangent already and I haven't even opened the Word doc for the novel I want to finish. Ah well, I will just have to accept I am the King of Procrastination The reason for this tangent was a my posting last night about Germany music wise. My musical listening was structured around German starting, middle and end points with Helloween Avalon Kraftwerk Well as I was paying the inevitable price last night for all the caffeine I'd consumed during yesterday's writing sessions it truck me just how many German bands feature in my collection. So I've popped Rammstein's Mutter album in to kick off the day and I thought I might try to list them (obsessed with lists). Let's put the four just mentioned down to start and see where it goes from there Helloween Avalon Kraftwerk Rammstein Tangerine Dream Scorpions Michael Schenker Accept Poverty's No Crime Neu! Can Amon Düül Amon Düül II Ash Ra Tempel Faust Popol Vuh Nena

Today has seen more words added to this novel in a single day since November 7th. I have written 3,209 words, finished chapter 21 (penultimate) and written half of chapter 22 (final). The novel is now up to 86,658 words. Two thousand more and the last chapter will be done and then there is just the matter of the epilogue which should be no more than a further two thousand. It will come in at a smidge of 90K which was my intended target when I plotted the thing out. Not too shabby an estimate if you ask me (which you haven't). It'll change a little once I get to revising it and adding in the comedy bios for some of the leading characters but the word count won't be far off what it is now by the time it's all done. And then I will have another one to fire out into submissions land to ensure my never ending stream of rejections can continue. That's the cycle of things - spend all that time writing your latest, greatest masterpiece, revise and polish then send out

Well I'm 1,574 words into today's writing and I have just finished the penultimate chapter of the book. Yep, the next time I touch a keyboard will see the first word of the final chapter hit the screen. Kind of colossal that moment is, every time. And to give you a little tease, the chapter title is already there - 'Watch out Fan, You Know What’s Coming' I thought I'd take a break from it though, rather than just jump in so I can formulate the opening couple of sentences properly - and come up with some more euphemisms involving wild animals and bodily parts. Brain cells need a quick refresh. So here I am, listening to the Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow - kind of trendy for me - and typing up a quick blog just to get some more words flowing through the grey cells. Words like epimorphisms, pneumatics and prestidigitator. If I get lucky it might even through in a weird phrase like bloviating obfuscation. I like that one, makes me feel good which is half the point of it I

Well my wife is off at the next part of the weekend music madness. She's playing a charity set in a coffee shop in Ashby de la Zouch so I am all home alone with only music and my computer to keep me company (trust me, I'll be fine). Well having dealt with the mass of emails (mostly twitter notifications and junk mail) I am getting myself in a writing mood. So I thought to prefix my next creative burst I would type up a quick blog entry. Now you might think that as pretty much all I've done since the last entry is sleep, get up, eat breakfast and help my wife with carrying amplifiers and saxophones (and you'd be pretty much right). But there was always the chance of an email from a publisher or an agent that could mean I had some writing news to share. There wasn't; which is good news in one sense as my day didn't start with a rejection or twenty three. No doubt they are all just saving them up for later so I get a mid afternoon downer-fest. The only main

Well it feels good to get back writing the bawdy scifi novel after the craziness of the week. I won't be on target to finish it off this weekend - not unless I get really productive anyway. But I won't be far off. Tonight I added 1,017 words bringing it up to 83,449. The first one and half scenes of chapter are in the bag (or should that be in the book?) so it's getting closer to the end all the time. I'm still expecting it to be 22 chapters and a short epilogue and this late in the book I can't see the plan changing overmuch. I might sneak an extra scene in somewhere but it's pretty much done. I'm also hoping to get time to sort out some more submissions this weekend. I know I have this one publisher reading the full manuscript of the Patternmaker's Daughter but I am not counting on it getting a positive result. I'm still going to work on the premise of needing to send more out. And when I think of it I do have four completed, fully revised boo

Well I now know the world isn't going to let me ego or optimism grow out of control. After the boost it had when a NY based publisher asked for the full manuscript of the Patternmaker's Daughter (my YA Fantasy) I had the three rejections I mentioned in the last blog post - which was something of a return to normal. Well one more day on and I have another two rejections to add to the pile, one for Mr. Stinky (horror) and another for the Patternmaker's Daughter. Right - that's it World. After five rejections in the two days following the full manuscript request I think the ego is in check. You can stop now, I don't need any more mood suppressants. After all the fun of the week I think I need to get back to the main job in hand - finishing draft one of No Man's Land. I left it at the weekend on 82,432 and two chapters from finished. I was hoping that I would have this done by the end of the weekend coming but having had three days of not writing it that'

[There is some writing news in all this rambling] Well things have been a little odd over the last three days and it all stems from one email I received. A New York based publisher sent an email requesting the full manuscript for my YA Fantasy novel the Patternmaker's Daughter. Or to put it another way - yehay! Now for the downside. It's not totally terrible; just that I need to make a confession and it's a little embarrassing. You see I finished the YA fantasy and tried my hardest not to do anything with it - like revise or anything. This is where the problem started. I have read a number of places that say you should give it a good gap between finishing the first draft and the revising. I think one of them may have been in Stephen King's book On Writing. Anyway I was determined not to just jump straight back in and start fiddling with it. Si I started writing the bawdy sci-fi novel No Man's Land instead and promised myself I wouldn't get back to revisin

Well once more a Sunday has passed me by and tomorrow the office calls. not complaining about having to work to pay things like the mortgage just that... well who wouldn't mind not having to? Anyway I have made reasonable progress on the novel this weekend. Yesterday saw 1,889 words added, today a further 2,211 bringing the total length to 82,432 words split into 20 chapters. Considering the plan was for 22 chapters you could say I'm getting close to done. Aside from the writing I received another rejection, this time for science fiction novel Against the Fall of Empire which brings its rejection count up to 16. Should I start taking the hint about it? Nah! I'll just have to go find some other places to send it. I still like it. I just wish that one day some of you out there might get the chance to give it a read. I can always dream, can't I? There is one piece of advice I was given a little while ago by a published author friend. When you get a rejection send at

Today was a bit of a slow start. My wife played a gig last night and wasn't back until late. So this morning was mostly a non-event. By the time we'd dragged ourselves out of the pit (carefully and gradually), eaten breakfast and watched the final You, Me and the Apocalypse episode it was gone midday. My previous early morning Sunday writing sessions were not going to be a feature of today. Okay, before I get much further I guess I should say a few things about that episode and the show as a whole. For anyone who never watched I'll give you a brief précis. It's surreal. An asteroid is heading for Earth; one large enough to wipe out all life on the planet. The story focusses on a bizarre bunch of characters, from a priest and nun in the Vatican, a bank manager in Slough, his mother and flat mate, the bank manager's previously unknown identical twin, the bank manager's missing (for seven years) wife, a wonderfully twisted and cynical rich old lady played to

Some seven years ago I had my first stab at writing using the pen name I.E. Lester (hence the URL for this blog and my twitter account. A few minutes ago I accidentally stumbled on the for from complete isfdb page for my writing back then at http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?118820 It got me thinking. I wonder how many other pages there are back from my days as a mainly non-fiction writer between 2008 and 2010 before I set up my comics and scifi toys/memorabilia business. (It occupied so much of my time I didn't write for years.) Anyway I found a few so I thought I would compile a list of URLs An article on Generations Starships http://www.darkermatter.com/issue5/generation_spaceships.php An article on Exoplanets http://www.darkermatter.com/issue1/exoplanets.php Short science fiction story http://everydayweirdness.com/e/20100629/ Short comedy horror http://everydayweirdness.com/e/20091023/ A review article covering 4 PS Publishing novellas http://www.irosf.co

Well, Saturday was pleasant. Met up with a couple of friends and discussed sci-fi, horror, comic books and more, Three geeks in a room - the world should be scared. Even managed a mini bit of collecting on the way, buying three books. These were Robert J. Conley - Brass Ursula Le Guin - Orsinian Tales C.J. Cherryh - Faery in Shadow Not much else to say about the day really - apart from it being a bit windy. This is the fourth storm since the UK starting naming them and this is definitely the worst from the look of the news reports from further north. There's a lot of flooding in Cumbria. You have to feel for the people whose homes are inundated with water. I know how much my home means to me. To have nature (adversely affected by us over the last decades) destroy the one place you are supposed to feel comfortable and secure must be devastating. I only hope they recover from it quickly. Onto writing. Well, I have completed the first scene of the day. Okay being accurate I h

A little while ago a friend of mine finally found his way to the joyous state of being a science fiction reader. Cue chorus of applause for him. Now he's been a reader for much of his life but stuck mostly in the realms of TV/Film tie in stuff and biographies, never venturing into the good stuff, even though he's been a lifelong science fiction/fantasy/horror fan when it comes to TV/Film/Games. So he asked if I could give him any recommendations; oh could I? So I put together a quick list of some of the best sf stories I could think of and set him to finding them (okay, I did also pass over a few  from my dupes pile to get him going. Anyway having just gone mad and started to tidy my office a little I found the original list so I thought I'd add a quick blog entry and list them here in case anyone else is looking for some books to go hunt up and read. Some of them are pretty obvious, some might not be. Here goes. Arthur C. Clarke - Childhood's End / Rendezvous wi

Not much writing is going on tonight - been helping out with some of my wife's music. Worth it. So I arrived home to two more rejections from agencies - one for the sf Against the Fall of Empire and one for the YA fantasy the Patternmaker's Daughter. Bugger, eh? Nice way to start the weekend. Well I've redressed the balance a little and sent off another couple of future rejections / submissions (delete as inappropriate) into the great submission pot in the aether. Fingers crossed. I have written a few paragraphs in the bawdy scifi but nowhere near enough to really report. I will do that tomorrow when I get some decent writing time in. I really wanted to mention a few things about the next project - to see if anyone out there feels like giving me some advice. You see I have a plethora of ideas for the next project and I'm still a little up in the air about which one I should attack first. 1 - Ben Williamson weird novella number 3. Cons - bit specialist being a

I wrote the blog entry earlier thinking I wouldn't have much more time and that I was pretty much done creatively for the night. Then the first sentence of the next scene popped into my head so I thought I'd better type it into the document. Well it didn't stop there. In fact it just flowed out at an incredibly rapid rate. So much so I added another 830 scene and finished off chapter 19. Here are the stats Tonight - 1,870 words Chapter 19 - 5,016 words Novel - 78,332 words That last one does include the chapter header for Chapter 20 and the first sentence of it. Yeah, that kind of came to me as soon as I'd tweeted about the chapter being over. This time however I know I need to stop for the night. It is gone 11pm and I do have to be in the office tomorrow with at least one or two of my faculties in some semblance of working order. Only thing I have left to do is back up my files. God to go fetch flash drives and then I'll be done. Next comes the weekend

I was late in tonight - I left work early but had a thing (wife/musician/stuff) that meant I didn't get to the keyboard until gone 8pm. On my wife's band rehearsal night this is much more normally before seven. And then the first thing I saw was an email from a publisher I had been rather hopeful about with regards my submission. I'd sent them my weird novella the Intersection and felt it had a good chance, especially as the first email I received from them said they though the synopsis was interesting. So there was I (just two days after having sent it in) all hopeful. Until I opened the email and read it, that was. The email said they'd enjoyed it but it wasn't what they were looking for so were going to pass. Bugger. I did immediate react by sending them another submission - for the horror novel Mr Stinky - as they said they would gladly accept further submission and I am always someone to take such a statement at face value. That done though I have to a

My novel is in an awkward place again. I know where it needs to be in a short while and I know where it needs to head after that. The only problem is this middle it. I think I have it cracked though and tomorrow night one more quick scene will have set up the end game of the whole thing. But tonight it meant it was difficult. So much so I only managed 690 words even despite having time enough to write at least double that. Still I have written something, kept the momentum going and that's all that matters. Here's the update Tonight - 690 December - 1,288 (so I write more tonight than yesterday - yay) Novel - 76,462 One more writing thing. After posting last night's blog I had a little more time than I thought so decided to send a few more submissions out; five more for the YA Fantasy the Patternmaker's Daughter to be exact. Now, there's a lot of odd advice out there about submitting if you read all the blogs and submissions guidelines on various publishe