I live in a ground floor flat in Ealing Common between two of the loudest households in Britain and below a young couple whose chief preoccupation appears to be dropping heavy objects on the floor.

Cheryl and I are sitting in our living room sipping wine and straining to hear our television above the cacophony surrounding us. DVDs seem to be mixed with the dialogue approximately three times quieter than the music and sound effects, and as the plot unfolds on The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and I edge the volume slowly upwards to a comfortable level, suddenly Reggie imagines his mother-in-law as a hippopotamus and the bassoon goes ‘wah-wah’ and the audience erupts in deafening laughter, the room shakes and the baby upstairs wakes up and screams. Oh, did I mention the baby upstairs? He’s one and he likes to run around and bang on windows. And, of course, he has been blessed with the dropping-heavy-objects-on-the-floor gene.

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Sorry, I've been working like a dog all day and there's no space in my brain for a snappy title. I'm ... um ... dog-tired. God, sorry. That's bad, even for me, but I can't be arsed to retype.

Have had my eyes glued to the computer and my fingers glued to the keyboard all day doing Thorn in the Flesh edits for Goldenford. I've done all the actual changes now, but am going through the styles so it's set in the desired format and - at the same time - redoing the traumas of the disastrous "search and replace" mistake I did on the speech quotes earlier in the day ...

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Sunday I went to Cardiff in the hope of buying new shoes. Shoes and I have a love hate relationship. I love high boots with high heels but my feet loathe that elegant footwear. So I trailed around every shoe shop, eyeing up the goods, knowing that none were suitable. Fed up, I found myself in Waterson's and there, stretching out in front of me were books, books, and more books. "Buy 2 get 1 free," tags screamed at me pinkly. So I bought 6 and returned home shoeless but happy.

Lord H and I have spent a marvellous day admiring the birds at Dungeness. Which were stunning, I must say. New birds spotted today: a smew (they're sooo lovely - all white with tracings of black. Wonderful!); a goldeneye; a hen harrier; Bewley's swans; possible divers, though it was hard to say; and a barn owl. The latter being an extra special treat as I navigated us along the wrong road on the way out and we saw it as we turned round. Goodness me, what a star I am indeed. It was all planned of course ...

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ust a quick note to say that my story, Go Away , is Every Day Fiction's story of the day today. Comments welcome!

Also, I was delighted to receive an email last week from Riptide, a new UK literary magazine, saying that they'd like to publish my story North Cold. The UK short fiction scene is really hotting up, and ...

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Up at the crack of dawn today - or almost - in order to get myself ready for the Goldenford booksigning at Book Boyz in Farnborough. I set off an hour before I needed to be there as I live in utter fear of driving to strange places and getting kidnapped by aliens lying in wait to pounce on weary travellers. Yes, my brain is like that. However, I managed to find the right carpark and even got myself onto the levels which provided cheaper parking (hurrah!). I must admit to being rather spooked by the fact that, at 10.30am on a Saturday morning before Christmas, I was the only one there. However, I soldiered bravely on. As one does.

I even managed to find the bookshop without too much trouble and set up half an hour before we were actually due to start. Um, not that anyone was waiting for us, I'm sad to say. And even when Jennifer arrived to liven up proceedings, the situation remained unchanged, thus proving that the Curse of Goldenford holds sway over Hampshire, as well as Surrey. I did do a lot of smiling, however, with the special plastic smile (the one formed of despair and faint, fluttering hope) that I keep for these occasions ...

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Log in to http://www.narrativesonline.com each day and pick up my tips for the day. Treat this as a sort of writing gym, limber up your writing muscles and race successfully to the finish with 50,000 words completed.

Find ways to:
1. enhance your creativity
2. build your imagination
3. write faster
4. maximize your time
5. produce more words than you ever imagined
6. banish blocks
7. stay motivated

That’s just for starters.

When the November rush is over there’ll be lots more to come. We’ll be working on completing your novel, re-shaping and structuring, developing characters and a whole lot more, including preparing your manuscript for publication and even looking for agents.

May you all write like angels - or even like the devil!

------------------------------------------
Shahrukh Husain is a highly experienced writer and teacher who has
written 20 books, for both adults and children. She has also written
plays and 11 screenplays and one of her films was nominated for the
Oscar. Shah's advice has helped many beginning writers to fulfill
their dreams of selling their manuscripts. For more information,
please check her website on: http://www.shahrukhhusain.com



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Today is the anniversary of the death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. It doesn't seem a year ago that everyone in London suddenly developed an irrational fear of sushi bars. Especially sushi bars with men speaking Russian in them.

I thought I'd check out the view from St Petersburg. The British security services' only suspect remains the multimillionaire Andrei Lugovoi, also a former KGB agent, and currently a candidate in the forthcoming Russian parliamentary elections.

Apparently the charges against him are making him something of a celebrity; I imagine they won't hinder his candidature.

He is not very impressed with the evidence against him, saying "they have no proof of any kind" and dismissing the allegations as "raving and barking from across the channel". As for Britain, according to Lugovoi, “Britain has always been a country that allows all sorts of bastards to seek refuge on its territory.” Wow. There's a politician who knows how to give sound bites.


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Early golf today as Marian had another appointment at 12noon, but it was actually fairly quiet as we hacked our way around. No great scores, though I wasn't bad off the tee and Marian's putting was top-notch. We've found out that if I stand behind the hole and shout aim at me legs, missus! then her putts are straighter and tend to go in. It's all psychological, you know - though neither of us were sure whether we should count the ball that rebounded off my foot and only then went in the hole. It's not quite golf as the PGA would have it, I fear ...

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My agent, Sid, says this to me over the phone as I'm crashed out on my sofa, shattered and eating a duty free-sized Toblerone. I have called him for a pep talk, a pick-me-up from the man who believes in me more than anyone else alive because his pay check depends upon it.

Sometimes, it seems, he forgets this. I am merely talking aloud about my dream of being included in some magazine article called 'Britain's Best Young Authors' when he cuts me off mid-sentence. "You're too old to be a young author."

There is a stunned silence on my end and the sound of running water at his.

"Are you... flushing your toilet?" I ask when I recover the power of speech.

"No," he replies after an unconvincing pause. The water stops with a glug.

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