Otherworlds

Just a short update on my current work. I’ve completed my novel The Crow Journal and sent out samples with query letters to a small number of agents in the right genre market (and choosing that was difficult – is a novel set in 1850s London, that involves elements of mystery, magic and teen angst defined as Fantasy, Historical or Drama?) and now I wait to see what happens. I’m pleased with the novel, having started it way before A St ep Beyond Context and then put it aside, rediscovering it more than a year later and seeing the potential there before redrafting the whole thing. It tells the story of a young man in the early Victorian era who travels to London to seek the truth about his mixed Faerie/Human heritage and becomes embroiled in a plot that may tear apart the secret order of Magi that dwell in the capital. I’m pleased with the background setting, and feel it shows glimpses of a wider world than is required simply to serve the need of the story, and I think the narrative vo

The pen scratched on the page.  The words crawled slowly in the wake of the nib.   They were weak and empty things, and there was no life in them.   I looked down at what I had written and sighed.   “It was a dark and stormy night…” A trite sentence, the latest in a series of trite attempts.    In a sudden rush of anger I tore the page from the notebook, perforated margin ripping away and leaving a gap toothed strip of paper confined behind the enclosing spring. What I would not give to be able to reach into the ideas and images that teemed in my imagination and bring them into the light.   What I wouldn’t give to be able to make the words on the page soar and breathe and live in the vivid colours and dynamic action of my dreams.   I yearned for that with a physical gnawing hunger in my being.   The imagination is the gateway to worlds undreamed of, a doorway to endless potential, yet from my faltering pen there trickled only thin rivulets of diluted sediment. I screwed up the torn-o

NaNoWriMo is a great idea. A community supporting its members in writing 50,000 words of a novel throughout November. It helps deal with one of the big issues about writing, that of the primary task being getting the words on paper (or screen etc) without letting second guessing or procrastination get in the way. A great idea, but I’ve never been tempted, and the reason is entirely down to me and my understanding of my own psyche. It’s the same reason that I stopped setting myself speed goals on the treadmill at the gym. I went through a period of setting a distance target rather than a time target during my workouts and spent a good three or four weeks noting the constant improvements in my speed. After that time though I plateaued. I’d improved my time over the distance by about 20% and that felt good, but suddenly I was hitting the same time or (horrors) slightly worse and coming off it exhausted. And all of a sudden I wasn’t looking forward to the treadmill. All of a sudden I c