One of the many moments which made me lose my heart to my Mexican hosts happened just after I'd finished my second lecture, in Cuernavaca. It was packed: a 150 seat lecture theatre had another fifty people sitting on the floor and in the aisles. I'd talked, pointed, edited as I read to suit the audience, even got a few laughs, ended with a suitably uplifting idea, smiled sweetly at the applause, answered long and interesting questions, signed posters, shaken hands, been stood next to, smiled again at mobile phone cameras, answered more questions, shaken more hands, retrieved my notes and my memory stick, and departed in company with my host, Leonor. And there, coming the other way, was her assistant, with a large, flat box. 'When you've been lecturing,' Leonor said, 'You need sugar.' And in the box were doughnuts.

How right she was: I don't think a doughnut has ever tasted so good. But why? All I'd been doing was standing up and talking for an hour or so. The talking bit, as you can imagine, comes very naturally, as does the standing up since the demons in my lumbar vertebrae have been reduced to manageability.

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Hi

We are just now launching a new networking website for property, construction, services, homes and gardens, etc.
We have a forum to start so are keen to here from anyone with interest, knowledge and time to contribute.
Right now this is not a full-time or paid position so it would really suit someone with an interest in property and related industries.
In a few months we will reavaluate everything, so it could well develop into a good opportunity.

Please check out http://www.enska.com for more info.

Thank you,

RB

Am feeling strangely inspired (it can’t last, obviously …) this week, so I actually wrote my first ever horror short story yesterday. Well, subtle horror, but horror nonetheless. No idea what I’m going to do with it, but hey at least it’s there. Lurking. And, talking of writing, here’s this morning’s bible poem:

Meditation 8

Fasten my robe
with pomegranates,
blue, purple, red.

Listen.

Place next to them
the golden bells
that sing of heaven.

Listen

So let me taste and hear
the coming salvation.

Listen.


Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the hot water is working again and Lord H and I both managed baths (hurrah!) though the heating is rather dodgy ...


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Over this past week or so I've had loads of emails from people, some I know, some I've never spoken to before, telling me that they like my work. Usually I get that kind of mail now and again and it's lovely. It's really great. It's fab to hear that my work's enjoyed by people - it's something I'll never get tired of hearing. So to all those who've taken the time to read what I've written and then taken the time to tell me: Thank You.

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Lots of coffee this morning to celebrate 61,035 words written over the last twenty four days. Now to begin the slower process of shaping it into something resembling a novel. I know I know, Kerouac didn’t edit his [... more]

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I sized him up. He’d be in his mid forties, I guess, the same age as my daughter. He was too young to remember the TV ads of the fifties - ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’ - or those Bacall and Bogart films where you could hardly see the stars behind the clouds of cigarette smoke. Not to mention Jack Hawkins and his pipe in ‘The Cruel Sea’. Didn’t he know that medical practice has its fashions, like education? They must keep the historical aspects from them in training.

So I said nothing, but, as R’s mother would have said, ‘I thought the more’.



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I’m hung-over because last night I was up into the mid-morning hours struggling with the follow up to 'Clear History.' I pace the living room ranting at Cheryl because she is locked into her laptop and is therefore here but not here.

“They’ve got me over a barrel. They’re playing me like a puppet. I really want to just say ‘screw them’ and write what I want but they’re dangling this second book contract over my head and I’m jumping for it like a fat kid for cake and it’s embarrassing. It’s just such a horrible torturous process fighting to put a few hundred words a day down because my heart’s not in it and I haven’t got any ideas and everything’s horrible. But it’s the only chance I have of getting a new contract so I have to show them something definitive soon and it has to be good and…”

“Christopher,” Cheryl says, surprising me by looking up from the computer. She summons a sheepish, compassionate look. “I don’t think they’re going to offer you a second contract...”

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Still chilly round these parts, Carruthers, as the boiler has decided to give up the ghost entirely. Please send blankets and soup – we may not last long otherwise … Last night we went to sleep with the help of two hot water-bottles, the electric heater, extra blankets and a dressing-gown. Just like the war years. So I’m told. Not only that but one of the smoke alarms chose 3am to start its intermittent beeping as a low battery alert. Quite addictive after a while. However neither of us could stomach the thought of actually getting out of bed to investigate, so we just grinned and bore it. The bulldog spirit remains undaunted, you know. Bizarrely, this morning the beeping has stopped so we’re still unsure which alarm needs feeding, dammit ...


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This is a piece of art by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller commissioned by Modern Art Oxford and the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. 5,000 books glued together as bricks to make a house you can step inside. The smell inside is wonderful, of starch and paper. But I wanted to take it apart and READ. Today I wrote four pieces of short fiction in just under three hours. I'd pledged to write three pieces within three hours. All four stories were written to prompts provided by a writer's forum. The prompts were excellent, thought-provoking and meaty. The forum is pledged to write a total of 100 stories within two days and looks set to achieve that target. Each story is posted anonymously and then commented on by the other writers. For each story you post you must comment on at least three stories by others.

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Joined WriteWords today after recommendations from Neil, and it looks rather good, seems worth the £35 a year, and it's a nice official place to put up all my work.

Submitted my first piece and had an idea while perusing the various sub categories of the fiction section - why not challenge myself to write something for each one? I pride myself on being able to create anything out of the blue so why not give this a go? Of course I can't do every single category, some are a bit vague:

- Contemporary (how does one go about specifically writing contemporary?)
- Gay/Lesbian (couldn't you have a gay crime drama? or a lesbian science fiction? Attack of the 6-foot lesbians!)
- Literary
- Popular (again, very vague, either this requires some very acute precognition or it's referring to popular series or something, help me out here?)
- Relationships (...are a part of a every good story, right? So how does one write a fiction story about relationships? doesn't that come under "romance"?)
- Short Story (but doesn't every short story have a theme/genre?)
- Translation (seeing as English is my first language and I could be better at that, I don't think I'll be touching this one, besides, translation isn't original work)
- Underground (I've always seen people or groups who openly refer to themselves as "underground" as being a bit pretentious. Surely being "underground" means being off the radar, underappreciated or niche... not claiming to everyone you meet how you're "underground")
- Women's (is this fiction that caters specifically to women or about women's issues? Throw me a bone, someone)

Complaints over, I'm looking forward to working with Black; Children's; Erotic; Horror; Noir; Romantic; Suspense & Thriller (isn't there Suspense IN Thrillers?); War and Westerns. I don't normally work with this stuff so it'll be interesting what I can come up with. Science Fiction and Fantasy is my home normally, so we'll see what happens.

I think I've rambled on enough for now.

Ja ne~