Monday 20 July 2009

After the thunderstorms

I've done half a dozen posts on the RNA conference at Penrith and that's enough, I think; here's one last view of a few people talking and waiting a for lecture to begin.

The rest of the world goes happily on. Weather has been so variable lately with brilliant sunshine one day and vicious rain and thunder storms the next -
the river Tyne is in flood again - in July! - and yet the insects keep working the flowers in the intervals.


I've finally finished Reluctance. Just over a hundred thousand words, give or take a few as I weed out the repetitions and unnecessaries, which should not take long as I've done about three serious drafts of this story. I used Doc-u-map to track the Chapter Headings and the date line of the story - and found it really useful and a speedy way of getting around the pages. Took me an age to figure out how to do it initially, but now it is worth it.

Interestingly enough, after sixteen months of total and utter silence, I received a request for a ms from a publisher in the US. They are interested in Shadows, the story that got tangled in the Triskelion shambles. It is out for consideration with another publisher at the moment, but it is nice to know someone else is interested.

Now I shall begin re-drafting a story the M&B girls at the conference thought was OK if I tweaked one or two things. My prologue was "a bit grim" and would be better used as part of the Black Moment further down the story. The things Jenny said made good sense, and I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself.
At home we are doing a bit of re-organisation. Late spring cleaning, you might say. For one reason or another, our bedroom has never seemed to be "finished." The other rooms, fine, but the poor old bedroom must have felt like Cinderella. It is now receiving Attention.

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