12 Thursday May 2022
Posted in Books, Scribbling
A week and a day to publication!
Eight more days, and the Road to Murder will be out there… It’s an exciting time – full of last-minute dds and ends together with the people at Sapere Books – and also a slightly terrifying one… Continue reading
08 Friday Apr 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Because I’m busy tweaking things, and filling gaps, and this sort of things in TW2*, yesterday I up and asked my mother’s physiotherapist what the best entry point would be for a stab wound in the back.
“I want it to quickly give the victim breathing trouble,” I explained – and, having spent half the morning poring over medical journals, even spouted that I probably wanted a bad case of tension pneumothorax… Continue reading
01 Friday Apr 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Midnight – and rather later, in fact, because it was half past three in the morning when I added the last word to Draft 1 of ATP, Tom Walsingham’s second foray into espionage and sleuthing. Hooray!
And then it wasn’t really the last word, of course. You all know how it is: as soon as I’d saved the thing and done a back-up, I had to open it again and add one more little paragraph, and then a little later an idea occurred to me, and I jotted it down in the notebook, and by then I was wide awake anyway, far too excited to sleep, so I could have gone another hour without great difficulty – but the fact was, Draft 1 was finished, and it was well past four, so I went to bed, and found that I could sleep after all… Continue reading
24 Thursday Mar 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Tags
deadlines, Emma Darwin, overwhelm, rachel aaron, theatre, wordcount, writing
I didn’t post last week.
I found myself on Thursday morning with no post ready and no good idea… Continue reading
10 Thursday Mar 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Tags
book 2, deadline, draft 1, draft-0, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing, writing experiment, writing schedule
Well, no – this is not to say that I have finished Draft 1… I’m about halfway through, though, and it is not an entirely bad place to be at this point. Oh, I do have almost daily bouts of How Will I Ever Meet The Deadline, but it is a common disease, and actually I’m pretty much on schedule, so what does one do, except ignore the bouts and write on? Continue reading
27 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in History, Scribbling
Tags
Historical fiction, languages, names, naming characters, research, spelling, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing
Yesterday I spent a good deal of time perusing lists of names of Guild members in 16th century Bruges. It’s one of the many wonders of the Internet that you can find this sort of thing for the asking… and, as I said, I ended up spending a good chunk of the afternoon going through list after list, copying the promising ones in my notebook – one column for given names, one for family names – trying them out for size, and even involving a Dutch-speaking friend for a sense of how a few of them would be pronounced… Continue reading
20 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in Scribbling
I’m not sure whether it truly qualifies as stepping out of my comfort zone – but I’m definitely trying something different with what we’ll call, for now, Tom Book 2 – or, even shorter, TB2. Something I’ve never done before. At least not the way I’m doing it now… Continue reading
06 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in Scribbling, Things
So here we go – New Year and all… and let me say that I’m slightly surprised at myself. And I’m slightly surprised because, for once and for a wonder, I don’t seem to be suffering from January Blues – or at least not much.
More than slightly, perhaps, especially when you consider the times we are living in… but still. Continue reading
02 Thursday Dec 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Theatre
Once upon a time, December used to be a rather non-writing month, all given to Christmas preparations. Crafting ornaments and decorations, trimming trees, baking Lebkuchen, making the pudding, searching for presents, listening to carols… this sort of things.
I just believed – in all naive honesty – that there was no time to write in December… Continue reading
30 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories
Tags
I’m sure you know how it goes.
You are working on a project. A long term one. Longer than you planned at first, perhaps – but sometimes things have their own way of stretching into something else, and… and… oh, you do know how it goes. Continue reading
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