Have been battling (sorry!) away at Hallsfoot's Battle again today, this time focusing on Ralph Tregannon and what's going on in the Lammas Lands. Well, I don't want to forget him entirely. He is key, after all. I suspect the encounter with the mountain dogs will strengthen his resolve somewhat - we'll see ... Anyway, it's another 1000 words in the proverbial bag, which brings me to 55,000 or so, so that can't be bad. After finishing the Ralph/evil dogs scene, I'm going to have to think about the Elders again. Not to mention the snow-raven's opinion so at least I'll have things to worry away at. Which is always good. And that damn bird always has an opinion or three, I can tell you ...


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Happy birthday to the terrific, the insightful, the wondrous place that is The Short Review. It's a great site. It really is. It's where I discovered Aimee Bender, and believe me, that'd be enough to make me love it on its own.

***

And this writing lark's a funny thing at times. Yesterday (or was it the day before?) I got three rejections in a row. Splat, splat, splat in my inbox. Bit disappointing because they were all from Good Places, but they'd come back quickly, they were polite and they were helpful (one even had readers' comments - brilliant). Still, you can't help but feel a bit miffed with three in a row. And then I got an acceptance, from another Good Place; it was the sort of email that'd brighten up anyone's day. The editor said she cheered when she got to the end because she liked it so much. It made me happy. Of course, I shall let you know when it's up.

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Faced with a long list of changes that (in theory) will take my book from 'good' to 'brilliant', I poured myself a large glass of Cab Sav and wondered again why I want to be a writer.

Because seriously man, this itch to write is like a curse. On days like today, I feel sure that I could choose to do anything else: cake baking, hat-making, belly dancing...even cleaning fish and be more in control of the time it would take to deliver a satisfactory outcome.

I mean, here I am with a head full of words, characters waiting to be written, stories aching to pour from my finger tips to the lap top, yet this running-about-town busy-busy living makes it so hard. I am running into coffee shops, sparking up the laptop to tap out fifty words then going on to something else. Lord knows why I'm not the fittest person I know with all that nonsense. Even with a team of foot masseurs and secretaries I'd still be exhausted.

But what's the alternative? I've tried the full time writing gig and it don't work. The only good thing about that period in my life was, the amount of time I was able to spend with The Child...but then I began to worry about cash....

Still, life is full of choices. And I choose scribbling. Morning, noon and night. I just need an average of 5 more hours in the day to write and do my job properly. It's not too much to ask for in the general scheme of things. Some people want botox and boob jobs.

Really, there should be a law against anything that stands in the way of someone's dream. There should be a law and a prison sentence. Hell, there should be cruel and unusual punishment involving, chilli and eyeballs,jeering crowds and wild drumming, grandmothers begging for forgiveness and new mothers swearing to protect their babes from such evil....

Someone on WW, who is way smarter than me, put it very eloquently: Writing is all about Time Time Time. That and a thick skin. And patience. And a gift for story telling. And writing. And reading. And you know what? When I'm in the zone and the words are arranging themselves so that the story plays out like a film with life-like characters and every single detail in sharp relief? Hooyah! When it's as good as that? Then writing is da bomb.

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This is the final cover for Changeling that has been created by the wonderfully talented Kev Walker (who also designed the covers for, among others, the Artemis Fowl books). He seems to have looked inside my head, and drawn the werewolf that lurked in among the shadows there, and I LOVE that hand that is holding on to the ledge.


I think that it is absolutlely tremendous, and was even more excited when I discovered that the background is to be on a foil, while the werewolf will be embossed - surely a cover that is going to be difficult to ignore.


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Two things happened in the last forty-eight hours which, of all the strands of the writing life, came from the two furthest apart threads you can imagine.

On Wednesday, just before midday, I put Radio Three on while I trundled through a pile of self-employed administration. I was knee-deep in receipts for coffee at Goldsmiths ("subsistence for professional training"), and packing up copies of A Secret Alchemy for all the members of the Richard III Society who ordered them after my talk ("stationery" "postage"). And then some gorgeous vocal music - brainy and sexy in the way only Baroque music can be, and Latin American baroque in particular - came to an end. The presenter quoted some of the text they'd sung, and there in her words was the new title for my new, nameless novel. These things arrive, something ordinary which is suddenly not ordinary at all. Sometimes I liken it to a halo, a mandorla, the glow round the Ready Brek kids. But that's not how it feels, that's just a language to explain it. I grabbed a pen and pressed Rewind on the radio.

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I've been keeping it in for three months and now, finally, I can announce: I am the European regional winner of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association's short story competition........

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Dear me, I must be getting old - I actually slipped and fell in the bath today, which is something I've never done before. And, goodness me, but my shoulder felt it - though, luckily, the pain soon wore off. And it did have its exciting side - I've never seen such a wonderful tidal wave effect so nearby. Not that I'm built like a blue whale preparing for its winter hibernation, I hasten to add. We just have a rather small bath. That's my theory anyway, and I'm sticking to it ... Anyway, no harm done, and I'll try not to repeat the experience. (Makes mental note to go easy on the bath oils in future.)...


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One* or two people keep asking me this every time I see them and I’m not quite sure what to say. I mean, no one has told me my book has ‘flu, or has broken its leg, or is waiting to hear its exam results, so I don’t know what to report.

For a start – which book? The one I’m in the middle of writing? The one due to come out next year? The haunting Booker-winning epic I’m going to write some day? The futuristic dystopian YA fantasy I’d forgotten about until the baby pulled it out from under the bed and I sat there thinking i.) blimey, my handwriting was neat in those days and ii.) this is not that bad, so why did I abandon it and contemplate slitting my wrists over how awful it was?



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Spent the morning sorting out the meetings this afternoon and the one I’ve got to do on Monday, so I am now the Meetings Queen of the office. Always good to have an aim in life, you know. Meetings are like buses – you don’t get any for weeks and then suddenly there they all are at once, cluttering up your diary and demanding attention, dammit. Hey ho. Plus I had to send the minutes out twice to everyone – no, three times, including the combined papers package – as there was an error in the first set. An error – shocking! I must be losing my touch …


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It was my writing group's reading night/book launch last night, and I'm pleased to say it went splendidly. Everyone read stories and poems and everything that everyone read was great. I was really pleased with both the quality of the material and the way it was read. They did good.

It was also a good opportunity to announce that the little volume we put together for our local British Legion has raised just over £500. Although I spent an age putting it together, editing it and doing other such things, the real legwork was done by Jenny (the Legion Member) who throughly deserved her applause.

A few of things that I read were caught on video, and I may well put them up here, if I can work out how to get them from camera to computer. It is proving tricky.

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