Just been cleaning up the house after Saturday night’s impromptu Halloween gathering. Had lots of fun and not a bobbing apple in sight (although there was a couple of pumpkins and a glowing ghost!)

Here’s a dodgy mobile phone picture of my housemate’s attempt at a Jack O’Lantern. Not bad, I thought.

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Rushed around attempting to do some cleaning this morning, thus earning valuable Wife Points which I can cash in later, ho ho. I also had a request from the wonderful Rhian of the It's a Crime review site, asking me to provide a book review for her Christmas crime books round-up. Great idea, Rhian! And thanks for asking. So I've done that and emailed the result off accordingly. I only hope it makes sense.

I've also been worried that I haven't written any poetry for about three weeks, so have come up with something about not being able to write (Lord, how pathetic!) ...

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I must say that the Glyndebourne Touring Opera production of "L'elisir d'amore" last night didn't quite have the charm, colour or general pizzazz of the Opera South (Haslemere) production we saw earlier in the year. Nor the acting skills either. But it was a nice night out with some good tunes, and the famous aria at the end was beautifully sung, so a pleasant enough experience. I am thinking of writing to Glyndebourne though to ask why they insist on doing everything in shades of grey - is the costume department trying to tell us something? Really, it's a mystery. I would have thought that something with the punch and life of "L'elisir" is just crying out for reds and oranges, purples and greens, but not last night for sure ...

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I was looking for something else, (which I was later told was actually in The Guardian) but came across an interview in today's Telegraph with Judith Kerr, creator of Mog the Forgetful Cat and author of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit: two of the most beloved inhabitants of my children's bookshelves. Making great picture books is extraordinarily difficult, so it's an interesting piece for any writer to read, but today a couple of things rang particular bells.

"I've always drawn from my imagination," she says, "rather than from life. I think that's why the pictures come out the way they do. Of course, when I got to art school I realised how much I was getting wrong."

Kerr' s picture book world is a delicious combination of the warmly domestic seen at odd, slightly subversive angles. A 'write about what you know' world, I'd have thought, and yet obviously it's not as simple as that...

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Well, tonight was just the usual humdrum. Got all dressed up, went to a bar, met some chick. It didn’t matter that I told her I was gay; it only seemed to increase her affections. She just kept going on and on about how great she thought my book was. Nice to have a fan I guess. Can’t remember her name for the life of me – M something?

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Yesterday in No place for the muffins I said that the scholarly endeavour is the opposite of the endeavour of fiction. It was another of those things I didn't know I thought till it appeared under my fingers, and I've been wondering since what, exactly, I meant.

Yes, it's true that in academic writing you have to show your working, make your theoretical position and reasoning clear, own up to your forerunners, credit any words/ideas/opinions that aren't your own. And no problem of punctuation in creative writing gives me as much grief as getting the commas right in the references. But that's just the housekeeping part of the job. It's actually surprisingly hard to make a watertight definition of the difference between writing history, and writing historical fiction. Both are about choosing and connecting facts into a web of imaginative narrative which helps the reader to understand and experience the past. The novelist is allowed larger imaginative leaps in connecting historical facts, but even we have to anchor our web to them. And, I realised today, with neither history nor fiction would the original characters have recognised the narrative we put them in, because you can only see the shape of a life - or an era - after it's over.

So what is the difference?

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Hmm, there's a title to conjure with. This morning, I have played golf with Marian for the first time in about six zillion years (I've been away, I've been ill, she's been away, she's been ill, etc etc ...) and we were total rubbish. Understandably. Though the day was lovely and the colours on the trees are surely as near to heaven as we're likely to get this side of the Grim Reaper. Mind you, I was pretty shit-hot with my tee shots, which went straighter and further than they ever go when I play regularly. But the rest of my game was pants. I'm sure the ruddy holes kept moving. Even while I was putting, dammit ...

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Had a fantastic time at Scottish country dancing last night - completely non-cool (whatever that means), I know, but it was great. Mind you, I was shattered after ten minutes, and the class was an hour and a half, so you can imagine what my muscles are like this morning. Not having a partner wasn't too bad either, and there were even numbers (more women than men, of course, but more men than I'd expected, and not all old!), so I could do most dances - one bloke sat out for a couple, but the tutor kept including me when I was least expecting it. While my mind (and everything else) remains something of a blur, I think we did four or five dances, all new to the class, but I can only remember the names for two of them: Dhoon, and the Devil amongst the Tailors. Which is a wonderful title so I just had to use it ...

(PS: Click through to the full post to see ex-WW member, Nell Grey's marvellous artwork for Thorn in the Flesh - due Spring 2008!)

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I can't quite believe this day has come. I've had trouble sleeping all week. Who would have thought November 1st would be so auspicious? First, Nanowrimo kicks off today, and all those of us around the world who signed up begin our 2000-words a day towards that 50,000-word target at the end of the month. I got up this morning and didn't do any of the things I usually do. No email, no switching cell phone on. I made tea, I turned the radio to the classical channel, I started up my laptop, and for an hour, I wrote. 2051 words. And NOT a short story. I think I might just be able to do this.

Then, and only then, did I allow myself to do the other Big Thing for today: I launched my new venture, The Short Review . .....

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I am happy to say that my flyers finally arrived for my promotional mailing yesterday. They came out better than I hoped—very cute! But then I also had an amazing designer, Jill Ronsley, create them. Now I have 10,000 flyers sitting in boxes in my living room which I need to ship out ASAP. I’ll post a picture of the flyer on my flickr page: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/14451336@N05/?saved=1) so you can see it. They will be going to librarians across the country. I’ve never tried a promotional library mailing before so we’ll see how successful it is. Wish me luck!

Amber
http://chrysalispress.com