Deadline…what’s that?

Well, today has nearly gone. As expected I failed to finish The Woodsman today although I have managed to get to Chapter 17 - around eighteen thousand words to go. Of course - although it is a major rewrite - it is the third draft and so not quite as daunting as it sounds. Feel free to rib me mercilessly.

I’m probably a week to a fortnight of finishing the structural rewrite. Then, due to the amount of new material, I’ll need to do a line rewrite. The latter will probably have to wait a few weeks for me to distance myself from it a bit and then it’s off to my test readers. Hmm. Still seems like a lot.

My main aim now is just to finish the structural rewrite as soon as possible. Mainly because I haven’t really been writing any short stories - other than flash - while I’ve been working on it and I need to produce some in time for mid July. This is because I’ll be attending an Arvon course in late July, and I want to make sure I have some material to be ripped apart critiqued.

I wasn’t the only one who missed a deadline. Today is the day my brother’s daughter was expected to be born - I still can’t quite believe it: seems frightfully grown up. Anyway, I’m looking forward to going home soon and seeing everyone. It seems like ages since I was in Wales.

In other news, work is continuing on my new site. I’m struggling to find a theme that I want to use and so I’m considering whether a) I want to show advertising from day one or wait until the traffic is there and b) whether I want to just design the styesheet myself. To be honest I’m thinking I might be better off just getting content up there and worrying about a snazzy advertising integrated theme once I have the traffic.

Any ideas?

Time machine needed

So I’ve been working hard on the redraft of The Woodsman and managed to tidy up a major character’s exit without too many headaches.

However, it’s the 11th June today and my self imposed deadline of the 15th looks increasingly unrealistic. The structural changes were, on delving into the manuscript, far more substantial than I thought and I’m now basically rewriting the remaining four chapters from scratch. This means that I will need to do a final copy edit before the thing can go to my test readers.

Even if I did a copy edit on the back of finishing the rewrite (NOT a good idea) the manuscript is too long (probably going to wind up at around 85-90k) to do that in the time left. But bugger it, I’m too far along to quit now.

Trust me I’ll make some noise when it’s done.

In other news: I thought it was worth explaining why book reviews have all but disappeared of this site. Any new content that is, the old ones can still be found if you look for them.

The reason for this is not because I’ve gone mad and given up reading but because I am working on a new site project that will involve this type of content. I have the domain, the cms, the analytics and the hosting. I’m just working on the look and feel. As ever time is at a premium slowing things down to an annoying crawl.

Again, once it is in a workable state I will post about it here. What I can say is that like my reading it won’t be genre specific; anything will be fair game.

That’s it for now. I may post about the age banding proposal from publishers (about which I can and do rant at length) if I have…you’ve guessed it…time.

M.O.T Monday

Another year, another M.O.T. After last time you’d think I’d be organised, find a reliable garage that would sort out my service without having to auction my kidneys. Alas, you’d be wrong.

What actually happened was that I managed, somehow, to be less organised than last year, phoning through my booking to Kwik Fit two days before the damn thing ran out. Why Kwik Fit? Well, I used them in the past, thought they were good, heard they were good and refused to use Ford after last year. Having confirmed with the bloke on the phone that they would definitely be able to do both the service and the MOT on the Saturday I felt reasonably confident I’d done job.

Oh how wrong can one man be?

Very, it turns out. First up I managed to get lost in Erith - just two miles from my house. Next on getting G to phone the garage we discovered that the chap who had helpfully taken the call had neglected to tell the manager or write it down. No booking, no MOT and around forty-eight hours until the certificate ran out.

I had a moment.

Next up G, ever calm under fire, has to phone around half of London to get an appointment in a suitable time frame. The good news is she finds one, the bad news is it’s Ford and it’s in North Essex. Remember: I got lost two miles from my house. North Essex is NOT two miles from my house. This was not going to end well.

And that’s how I found myself at 10AM this morning driving through Essex in the sunshine. Seriously, it could have been a disaster but it wasn’t, I managed to get there, drop the car off, wander round the town centre, amusing myself for several hours and wander back without so much of an incident.

I even managed to dodge getting landed with a massive bill.

Of course there is the minor detail, a tiny thing really, that being: you could currently fry an egg on my forehead. You see I was to busy wandering around enjoying the sun to remember that I didn’t have sun cream on, that I had left my hat in the house and too dumb to notice that I was starting to resemble a baked potato. Judging by the headache I’ve got I really over did it.

So that was Monday. All in all quite good. After all I’ll be saving money on gas tonight, for tonight Matthew I am the human grill.

Bargain.

The week that was

Well, that was a tougher week than I was expecting.

It’s funny isn’t it? You get back from holiday and you always expect it to be a bit of a shock to the system but no matter how hard you prepare it’s always a shock in an unexpected way. So it goes I guess.

Monday was our first full day in the UK and we switched on to GMT quite well. I was feeling a little stiff after the flight but nothing out of the ordinary, or so I thought, by Monday night I confess I was struggling to move my head. By Tuesday morning I couldn’t move my head at all, in fact the only way I could get out of bed was to roll onto the floor and then stand through moving just my waist and knees. So that was the first thing, I was stuck like that most of the week. It’s funny how only turning from the waist unnerves people, I felt like a bond villain…albeit one that has gone to seed.

The next thing I can’t really tell you, suffice to say it’s a four letter word beginning with W and a source of ongoing stress. I’m told this is normal.

Finally today the third thing happened. You know how bad luck always goes in threes? Well that’s what I’m hoping anyway as it means I’ll be due some good luck. Anyhow: this morning I’m talking to my mum, who’s visiting at the moment, and all of a sudden we can hear a very loud dripping. Now after the last plumbing related debacle I have a pretty fine ear for any potentially unplanned water feature and so I leapt into action…pausing briefly to yelp for my neck. On pulling back the curtains I discover that our bay window is leaking water from about four or five different places across the frame.

I had a brief moment.

So that was the third thing. I hope. And I now fully expect all three recently submitted pieces to come back with acceptances as a means of redressing the balance…what do you mean it doesn’t work like that?

In writing related news I finally sent off a short story I’ve been working on for ages. Good for the soul that. And I’ve been slowly building the segue between Golgotha and the forest for The Woodsman in preparation for the major surgery required to bring the end rather closer to what I would like to say with the story than the way it is now. I think I’ll still hit my deadline of the 15th June but it will be touch and go.

But hit it I shall. Why? Because yesterday I started laying down notes for what I’m pretty sure will be my next novel length project and I’m keen to get going. I’m very excited.

Now back to the forest. I have Tream to kill and gods to pick fights with.*

* For the newer readers: no I haven’t been taking hard drugs, I am referring to my story The Woodsman.

There and Back Again

Well, I’m back in the UK again, sat upon my bright red couch and trying to stay awake until the sun goes down. It occurred to me - after I’d done it - that working out I’d been up since 11pm Friday UK time wasn’t the best way to go about that.

We had a fantastic time in New Zealand. It was really cool meeting up with M and C after such a long time; their place overlooking Evan’s Bay has views that I honestly don’t think one could ever get tired of. Christchurch was a huge amount of fun and of course our trip to Kaikoura was a particular highlight.

Hell, I even managed to write a fair bit. And while I’m on the subject I’m pleased to report that I’ve finished another two chapters of the third draft of The Woodsman as well as starting a new short story. Most importantly I began to have ideas again, they - ideas - generally dry up when I’m burned out as I was before I left the UK and only return once my shoulders drop down from around my ears.

Now I have until Tuesday morning to get over my jet lag before I rejoin the real world once more. I think sleep is going to feature rather large on my agenda as well as my quarterly shear in aid of looking vaguely like I’m gainfully employed.

I’m going now as I’ve started talking about haircuts - a sure sign I’m waaay too tired.

One year on…

Today this blog is one year old.

I’m quite surprised I managed to stick at it for this long; in the past my sites have only lasted a few months before I got bored. In the case of The Other Side of The River I’ve managed to post every week and I’ve proven to myself that I can drive traffic off the back of my own content.

It’s been quite a ride. I was shat on in Paris, mugged by an Indian Holy Man, risked liable in the name of satire, annoyed aging politicians, been reduced to fanboy incoherence, tried to pick a fight with Orlando Bloom and bumped into Pulitzer prize winning authors. I’ve managed to get published a few times myself - including in a book - and I’ve made some new friends along the way.

And most importantly it’s fun – that’s why I’m still doing it.

Weymouth

Well, been a bit quiet around here hasn’t it?

Sorry about that. As mentioned last week I’ve spent the weekend in Weymouth working on The Woodsman. G was there for a photography course in preparation for a wedding she’s shooting later in the year and I tagged along in the hope that being sans internet, sans London, would enable progress.

I’m pleased to report it did and progress has now increased back up to it’s former pace. Last time I left them Anya and Akyar had just been dropped - quite literally - in it. And you have no idea what I’m talking about and so lets move on…

The trip also enabled me to start building up content for the website when I’m away in New Zealand and so there will be something here even if I don’t have internet in the hotel. I am of course hoping for internet as part of the fun of having a blog is posting about one’s travels:

Weymouth itself was nice. Pretty much your standard English seaside town. It has a fantastic beach that runs right round the bay and a front that is lined with Georgian guest houses giving the town a pleasing sense of history. There are a couple of interesting memorials including one to Anzac troops who fought at Gallipoli and convalesced at Weymouth.

The weather was pretty awful on Saturday but I still ventured out as I’m quite partial to walking along the coast. I was glad I did so as it gave me a chance to see some of the most incredible sport - parasurfing - and some of the coolest stunts I’ve witnessed in ages. Parasurfing is basically where you attach a parasail or kite to a surf board and use the wind to surf along, it’s faster and more agile than wind surfing allowing awesome jumps. That’s one I wouldn’t mind giving a go. In warmer weather.

On Sunday the weather was much improved and I found myself enjoying the local chips on the beach in the sun and then it was back to the smoke for work - where I am now.

I also did a fair bit of reading and so you can expect some reviews to parachute in here over the next few days. For now I’m going to imbibe my own body weight in coffee.

Short update…

This week is proving mental. Work is quite busy as I’m trying to get things cleared before I head - quite literally - to the other side of the world in a few weeks. Meanwhile we’re trying to get everything co-ordinated for the kitchen install in late May/early June; plus there’s birthday parties and trips to Weymouth as well as planning the afore mentioned trip to the other side of the world. It’s been a lot of fun reading about New Zealand and I’m now quite excited. Oh and I went back to Wales last weekend.

So a bit on.

As a result I’m quite pleased that I’ve managed to write every day since around the beginning of March, sometimes it’s only around five hundred words and others I’m merrily steaming away at 2000 words plus. But I’m doing it and I’m enjoying it. The Woodsman’s progress has slowed as I’m now into one of the heavy rewrites, having to refer back to notes and research material but I’ve also managed to finish another short story. That’ll go out to market in the next few days. Once I decide where to send it.

And now to work once more.

A quick update and then bed

I’ve not really done much save work (rather harder than I wanted to at the moment) and work on The Woodsman.

The latter has been fun as it’s going rather better than has done in a while, I’d pretty much ground to a halt around hitting the point where the second draft encounters the first of it’s major flaws but as fortune would have it this happened around the time of Eastercon. A number of interesting panels and some-pretty-good-advice-on-where-to-direct-my-research later and I’m flying again.

Of course it’s got very dark as expected. The decapitation scene I just wrote may need toning down.

Anyway, other than that not been up to much. Oh and I’ve started to think about my trip to New Zealand to see long time friend C and hubby M (her hubby not mine, that would just be weird). That’s only a mere five weeks away now.

Bed now though.

Eastercon: China, Neil and Charlie oh my…

So over at Nostalgia for the Future, Justin has an excellent write up of Eastercon and nicely distills China’s keynote. China was a bit of a revelation. A fascinatingly literate and erudite speaker; I spent a lot of the weekend coming out of his panels with a list of words that I hadn’t known existed.

But that’s a little flippant, and something you can work out from reading his stuff and/or searching on youtube for footage of him speaking.

The other thing I learned is that he’s a thoroughly nice man. Over the course of the weekend I saw him taking time to speak to various fans, even when he was trying to grab a quiet five minutes in the bar. And showing remarkable patience. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak you should take it.

Then there was Neil (Gaiman - I’m not talking in the third person again). *coughs* You may have noticed that I’m a bit of a fan. And there seems to be an ongoing strange phenomena where by our paths pass very close to each other but we never actually meet or exchange words. This happened all weekend to the point where I believe if we ever met it would cause some kind of causal break in reality, you know: You must never cross the Neils or the universe will end.

Anyway, I’ve seen him speak a bunch of times therefore I was concerned that I’d just hear a collection of anecdotes I’d heard in other sessions. I was wrong and it was good. The Graveyard Book sounds great, very dark and possibly something fairly different from what he’s done to date. His panels were fascinating and it was cool to see him get all fanboy over Hitchhikers.

And he was very kind to the moderators, some of whom were understandably quite nervous.

Charlie Stross was fascinating. Smart in an entirely different to China but equally compelling manner and a fellow alumni of Bradford university. Although I struggled to keep up in places - I’m really more of fantasy guy than hard SF - the panels I attended were just engrossing. And I love that phrase “the rapture of the geeks”.

And a good time was had. Save for the whole bleeding thing.