While Unrequited gets to see New York and Sydney (mainstream reviewer requests!), I get to sit and forge ahead with the increasingly obese new novel. Have to say I’m a little green with envy about the novel’s journeys, but pleased at the response so far.

If it continues, I may have no choice but to write a follow up. I have an idea. You have been warned…

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Trogged through today, not really functioning on all cylinders. So no changes there then. Didn’t get much sleep last night and felt wiped out, which probably explains it. Must attempt to get an early night at some stage – sleeping hours are becoming distinctly squeezed. I must say all this isn’t helped by the irritating and long drawn-out focus on the wretched Children in Need charity on Radio Two. Bring back a normal Terry Wogan slot – please! Very sorry and I know it’s totally non-PC these days, but I can’t abide all the talking about bids and children – it’s soooooo dull. I’m having to listen to Classic FM or Radio Three – whichever plays the nicer tunes …

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I finally got to the doctor on Monday morning. I actually tried to get an appointment on the way home on Friday last week. I said they had a three-days-in-advance thing, didn't I? Despite the fact I felt like shit and should be given priority because I am asthmatic, the earliest they could get me in was Monday morning at 9.30. I did mean to go into work straight afterwards but, having been told I have a 'viral infection', plus the fact my throat was sore and my head felt like it had ten tons of rock rolling about in it, I realised as soon as I left the surgery that I really couldn't face the office. So I turned round and went home. Spent the day snuggled up on the sofa with a quilt and Cat and daytime TV (Loose Women. Bargain Hunt - quite sad really). I felt a bit better by Monday evening so wrote my scathing criticism of Sky, but then went into work yesterday morning feeling really rough again. I must have looked it, too, the amount of comments people made.


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Rushed around this morning sorting out papers for meetings and changing agendas until my brain imploded. Mental note to self: it is a bad thing to arrange two very similar meetings within two days of each other, particularly with the same Chair. I am guaranteed in such circumstances to get the wrong papers in the wrong meeting or worse – have two lunches turn up on one day and none on the other. Sigh. I can see I’m going to have to stock up with my Rescue Remedy spray for the end of November, not to mention Quiet Life pills ...

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I've been writing for the last 3 years or so. I run a website for WAHMs (work at home moms) and I began writing to provide content for the site. I fell in love with writing and have been working to learn the craft since.

Just this week I learned that I'd sold my first non-fiction article to a magazine. YAY!

More to come....

Jill
xxx

Busy morning today – rushed around doing lots of glorious copy-typing (I really do love it – you can take the girl out of the typing pool, but you can’t take the typing pool out of the girl …) and hardly noticed when the Magical Monday Time of 12noon appeared. Astonishing! I also discovered that the boss’s wife has much better handwriting than the boss, and so documents she’s commented on are far easier to read. I did suggest that he might like to think of dictating his thoughts to the wife (a la Milton dictating to his daughter) so I could understand them in the future, but I’m not sure that suggestion will be taken up. Thank goodness I’m the right side of review time, eh!

Meanwhile, Ruth is having strange dreams about gutting fish on a fish farm. Does this say something about our student care approach? The mind indeed boggles …

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Torpid in mind this weekend apart from a spurt yesterday. On Friday, while washing my poor father, I poured conditioner over his head! The reason? Thoughts raced through a story line. And I had to judge the Flash Fiction. But it's done. This early morning, outside with my cuppa, watching the stars, I heard an owl. Saw her drift above the Silver Birch. She's a frequent visitor but no one hears her because they're in bed still fast asleep. Before dawn is my favourite time of day. As the day grows, I feel it becomes abused by some sights and unwanted sounds.

Lord H and I were organised enough to attend the Remembrance Service at St Mary's today. I took two extra poppies in case there was a disaster, but the original two held firm and all was well. I shall have to add them to the growing poppy mountain in the drawer after tonight. God but I'm anal. Anyway, the service was very good, and the sermon particularly moving. Jenny (the vicar - or one of them) mentioned one of the verses of the old hymn, "Oh Valiant Hearts", and made the point that, after the crucifixion, God linked himself to all suffering of all people, for all time. Certainly an interesting point - one I've heard before, but well worth the retelling. I also enjoyed the fact that after the service, we walked outside to the War Memorial in Shackleford and had the actual Remembrance Service there. Sometimes it's good for the traffic to be held up for a while, I think. Another good thing - which I haven't experienced before - was the fact that they handed out small crosses with the names on of all the people from Shackleford who'd died in the two world wars and, as each name was read out, the person holding the particular named cross walked up and planted it in the soil near the memorial. Highly appropriate indeed ...

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Just finished Steph Swainston's No Present Like Time and am eager to get my hands on the next volume in the Castle series The Modern World. These books have seriously impressed me. Absorbing myself in the world of Swainston's immortals has equalled how I felt when reading Stephen Donaldson's Covenant series for the first time. Boy, does Swainston know how to write - it's quite formidable!

I'm currently reading some more Lovecraft, another noted favourite. I find Lovecraft highly inspirational in terms of my own writing, at least in the sense that he has the uncanny power to motivate me to write, and I always appreciate authors who can do that.

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I'm about half way through this rewrite (10,500 words out of a little under 20,000) and as such I don't have all that much to report.

(Actually I wanted to blog about receiving my copy of Cover the Mirrors by Faye L Booth, how much I appreciated her sending me a bookplate and how much I loved reading the prologue but I'm just not going to have time.)

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