Target Reached.

Today (like, a few minutes ago), I hit 90,000 words with Children of the Resolution. The end is near, I’m over-the-moon with the quality of the writing and, as zonked-out as I am, I can’t wait to continue.

I am, however, going to force myself to have the weekend off. Wouldn’t do to be silly at this stage.

Longer, meatier post soon!

Karma My Arse.

Oh, don’t you just love these brainless Hollywood types who manage to remember one vaguely interesting and “like, you know, spiritual-sounding” word and then insist on letting it roll off their tongues whenever the opportunity arises — like they actually know what they’re talking about?

I refer, of course, to Sharon Stone’s ridiculous comments attributing the recent earthquakes in China to “karma”. To quote:

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma?”

Yes, people, the Chinese (not even the Chinese government — the Chinese) brought it on themselves. Because bad things happen to bad people. Aw, shucks, I’m so glad she cleared that one up for me.

Say what you will about Ms. Stone, however, but one thing I’m fairly sure about is that nothing bad will happen to her. Because she isn’t bad. No, now don’t look like that. She isn’t — she’s simply, and quite clearly, very, very stupid.

Summertime (Yeah, Right!)

Three things I won’t be doing this summer:

1. Watching Big Brother. Enough is enough! People-watching is fun, when we’re talking real people and not hand-picked conflict/fuck droids!
2. Getting a tan. This is England, what can I say?
3. Publicising my new novel. That’s next summer.

Three things I will be doing this summer:

1. Watching Wimbledon in HD and on Interactive.
2. Reading War and Peace (always assuming I ever get Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain finished!)
3. Relaxing.
4. Planning We Are Watching.
5. Learning to count.

What does/doesn’t this summer have in store for you?

Death Off-Stage.

Well, today I reached the point in my novel where I had to, reluctantly, let the character of Johnny — the fictional representation of my childhood friend, GS — die. I expected it to be difficult, whatever I may have said in previous blog posts, but in the end it just happened, much as it did in real life, off-stage and oddly veiled.

I’d thought of tampering with the circumstances — solidly putting the “semi” in the phrase “semi-autobiographical” — and having Johnny die centre-stage, clutching his bosom, so to speak, where my narrator (yes, okay, where I) could see him, but that struck me as crass and intrusive. GS wouldn’t have objected, I’m fairly sure. He liked a bit of drama, and often went out of his way to create it. But I think the off-stage choice is the right one. There’s a dignity about it that I feel is right. Whatever else it might be, I can only be pleased with that, at least.

In other news… I’m taking tomorrow off, and heading out I don’t know where. Possibly onto the moors again — see if I can find out anything more about Austin Wright. I can’t help wondering, Why Fylingdales? What’s he, an ex-remote-viewer, doing out there? It has to be significant.

If you see me on the news tomorrow evening being detained by sweaty military types, you’ll know I’ve got a little carried away with my research

Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag… in Just Three Months.

My jaw hit the floor and I thought, “If a 16-year-old can work it out, how come no one else did?”

Maybe Marks and Spencer will stop charging their customers for plastic bags, now, and focus on the more serious issue of packaging.

Quote of the Day.

“Every time you break an egg, you are doing observational cosmology.”

From Does Time Run Backward in Other Universes? by Sean M. Carroll.

What Doesn’t Kill You…

… just leaves you bleeding and battered on the floor.

I guess today is just destined to be “one of those days”. No sooner had my foot started to feel better than I heard from the Acquisitions Editor at Kunati. As mentioned here, he had passed my novel, The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts, along to his associates with a recommendation. Unanimity was required, however, and, to cut a long story short, it didn’t bloody well get it.

I’m disappointed. I know it’s par for the course, and I certainly don’t hold it against the guys at Kunati, but this was a “close call”, and these are the rejections that are always the toughest to get one’s head around. Kicking something would help, but that probably isn’t wise, what with my dodgy foot an’ all.

Still, Children of the Resolution (a very different novel to Realm) is almost complete so I’ll just pin my hopes on that. I believe it to be a far more marketable novel.

Now, where have I heard that before?

(Please note: I’m not really as pissed off as I possibly sound, so I don’t need the number for the Samaritans. And anyone who thinks it might be funny to send me it anyway can just… well, try it. Go on, I dares ya )

Writing Humour When Life Isn’t Funny — or Me and My Neuroma.

Because I’m not writing this fine morning, due to a sleepless night spent “being brave” as I struggled with a neuroma in my right foot, I went on a search for more writing advice — from the horses’ mouths, so speak — and found this.

 

Nothing all that earth-shattering, but Garrison managed to make an ibuprofen-doped me smile, so that’s got to be good, right?

Vigilamus.

I always find the North York Moors an inspirational place to be. It’s somewhere that always leaves me feeling uncluttered and open to possibility. Today, whilst out near RAF Fylingdales, this was especially true — for ’twas there I “found” the first glinting traces of my next novel, tentatively titled, We Are Watching.

Let me introduce you to Austin Wright. Austin is a quiet guy. Quiet and solitary. He spends time, too much of it, out on the moor… remembering… remembering the night ten years before when his wife disappeared, three days after a remote viewing experiment in which the two of them had taken part… remembering and putting together the pieces… putting together the pieces and planning…

Thematically, I want to touch on faith (Austin never wavers in is belief that his wife was “abducted”) — using stylistic motifs borrowed from thriller and conspiracy-based fiction, whilst keeping it, in effect, a “literary” novel. I have a healthy respect for genre fiction, but that’s not what I’m good at; We Are Watching will at heart be an exploration of the relationship Austin shares with his “abducted” wife, but with a plot that moves, twists, doubles back on itself and (I hope) surprises.

Now, please excuse me while I go finish Children of the Resolution

Sleepwalking — The Plan for a Super Database.

I always tremble with eye-popping rage when I hear talk of ID cards and databases. You quite possibly already know that. But it is especially true when I read about the subject and see it stated that, apparently, the public is “sleepwalking into a surveillance society”. The semi-conscious horde, it seems, is letting it happen.

Aww, shucks, and there was I, eyes wide open, very much awake, thinking that the government was the bad guy in all this.

While a good number of us shout very loudly that such moves are unacceptable, the zombie-like proles are, if such statements are to be taken at face-vaule, giving it their silent approval.

What a nasty (and highly transparent) piece of obfuscation.