Came back on Saturday with a camera full of photographs after a 12 hour round trip with friends and dog to Scotland. Stopped at Tebay services (M6) on the way up. Must be set in one of the best locations in the UK with a view of the Cumbrian hills and a large pond with ducks right outside the window. The coffee was good too.

Drove through floods and ... (more)

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Had the best night’s sleep last night that I’ve had for well over a week. Still feel tired though (dammit), but serious bliss, nonetheless. I was beginning to think I’d lost the ability to sleep properly at all. Mind you, the fact that the cold seems to have all but cleared up and I can therefore breathe again does help.

Had a wonderful, but bizarre, dream too: I was part of a husband and wife private detective team (with me being the man, as ever …) in a fantasy setting. We’d had to move from Paris (a city I’ve never enjoyed, but never mind – it was perfect in the dream) to London because of my job but, although the work was good, it wasn’t as enjoyable as before. I don’t think the cases we were getting were as exciting. Anyway, on our latest case we had to take a trip back to Paris to try and solve it and, once there, everything fell perfectly into place. The streets and buildings were beautiful and – for the first time – I could hear the song of the voices in the city in my head, in a way we never could in London ...


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It looks as if my mother will be given the all-clear to return home after cancer surgery ten days ago. She's had a rotten time of it despite the operation being a success (as far as we know at this stage), but I'm hoping she's turned a corner at last. Adding to the stresses of last week, I've been wrestling with the revisions to the novel. Thanks to the input from the agent I know what's right and wrong with it but the more I edited, the more it slipped away from me.

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Find out and experience the difference between internal and external thought by getting one of the last three places at the next Unleash the Book Inside workshop on the 20th & 21st of October - near Guildford, Surrey - UK
You will experience at least three different modes of consciousness and thinking that will transform your world forever … as well as …

… experiencing what happens when you integrate mind maps directly into your neurology

… experiencing the difference between internal and external thought and how to channel

… finding out how you can access all past emotions with detachment and disassociation

… learning how to become inextricably entangled with the future version of yourself who has achieved success as a published author

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Just seen the voting chart wossname of what people thought of my short story, How Do you Solve the Cube?. And it's pleasing, though I did have a typical writer moment; when I saw there were a fair number of 'Wows' I thought: they must be from people I know. Well, whether they were or they weren't, they're great to have. Thanks to all who read and who voted. I'm really happy you enjoyed it.

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Angry? Try furious. That was something I never want to repeat; listening to a priest pontificate about religious politics during a funeral service. This doddering old man wandered across the scriptures to give himself a jumping-off place so he could rant about the credit crunch and how greedy people were for wanting more and more money - what did that have to do with Anne's life? I think he mentioned her twice; some of the family missed it!


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The US agent Nathan Bransford asked his blog readers what was the worst writing advice they'd ever been offered. His comment trails are always long - it's a consistently interesting blog - but this one made a python look stumpy. After I'd recovered from quotes like "Remove all your commas; editors don't like commas and they pull the reader out of the story" and "Any sentence that uses 'was' is written in passive voice", I was interested to see that the bad advice quoted which most resonated with other commenters was "Write about what you know".

I'm not the only writer who'd be well and truly out of a job if "Write what you know" became too universal an orthodoxy. My bookshelves would be pretty empty too. But it comes up time and time again, doesn't it: Aren't you supposed to? Wouldn't you be wiser to? What do you say to the command to? And not just with festival questioners facing a panel of historical or sf/f novelists, or men writing women (women writing men don't raise nearly so many eyebrows, but that's another blog post altogether). A writer friend horrified her agent by saying she was going to set her second novel in 19th century Canada: it was part of the reason that agent is now her ex-agent and the Society of Authors contract-demons have yet another fan. Her new agent loves the book.

As so often, I suspect it comes about from writing teachers - agents, editors - being faced with writing which is basically a watered-down version of the current Big Names.

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Managed to get myself to work today, hurrah – had almost forgotten what the office looked like. I’m okay, if weary, just as long as I don’t walk very far and don’t make any sudden movements. Hell, that about sums up my life plan then. And at least I’ve managed to sort out the crowd of outstanding emails in my inbox, though I feel there will be more problems on the way soon. The refresher talks timetabling is proving a sticky wicket – to say the least. Ah well ...


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Today's main feeling is definitely one of fuzziness. I'm not feeling particularly well and I'm not feeling particularly ill either. Weird really. It's as if I'm on the cusp of feeling ill but not quite there. Much like treading water would be, I suppose, if I could even swim. The cold is a little better though and I'm rather less husky than I was yesterday. Though when I attempted to go for a lie-down this afternoon, I didn't get very far due to Snorty-Nose Syndrome. Ah well. I can only hope I'm better at breathing tonight when I try for the sleep option. Perhaps a quick Lemsip is called for ...


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So, last night I went along to the UK launch of Harry Owen's new poetry collection, Five Books of Marriage. And it was great. The room was filled and everyone, it seemed, enjoyed his reading and his talk as much as me. And what a great collection it is.

I was also able to meet some cool people (Harry, obviously, included), but also the lovely Joy Winkler again, and for the first time, the truly cool Jo Bell (who, as well as being a top poet and former county laureate, is also the coordinator of National Poetry Day - as mentioned here on Thursday - lucky I did, eh!).

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