Been making some edits to my story for the Don't Open the Door anthology, no spoilers but hell, of course they open the bloody door! Hoping to finish that off tomorrow and then give it a final brush on Sunday and get it to the editor. Should be a tighter story when I've finished it.

Had a bit of sad news that I didn't get selected for the Pulp Idol final. It was a bit of a shame, but, after the IT cock-up meant I never got the invite to the heats, I was expecting it anyway. I'd recorded a reading of the first three minutes of the first chapter and put that up on YouTube for a judgment to be made, not ideal but hey, beggars can't be choosers. Doesn't change anything about the novel, and once I've got the Door story sorted I will get back on to it and finish it. I want to know what happens in the end after all.

Considering some alterations to the website, with a new section or two. Should get at least one of the ideas up and running this week. Watch this space (or maybe the menu bar).

Talking of the website, of course tomorrow the weekend starts, so it's time for the Seedling Challenge. I've been religiously putting it up each week so that it's been there to be used by anyone who wants to, but I know I need to push it a bit more. So be prepared to be pushed - at least if you're exposed to Twitter in any way.

At some point I'm going to start writing some songs, now that I'm playing the guitar more regularly. I'm still surprised that the songs that I've been playing aren't known by the other guys at the open mic. But they are all of a type I suppose, and if I write in a similar style (or at least perform them that way) then there's every chance they won't know what's mine and what's someone else's. We'll see. If I start doing my own stuff then I can pop along to the Monday Night Club at the Cavern and play a tune or two (they only allow people playing their own stuff). Now that would be cool, wouldn't it?

Currently reading 'Crome Yellow' by Aldous Huxley, which I bought last week as part of a charity shop haul. I've only read Brave New World by Huxley before (which I loved), and this is so very different but enjoyable. It's my fifteenth read of the year, which puts me on track for the forty.

What with website updates, short stories and novel writing, reading, guitar practice and songwriting, it's a wonder there's time for anything else. Then there's football tomorrow night and Tuesday and then next Sunday (not to mention an important match on Monday night). Oh, God, and there's Line of Duty on Sunday. Clearly there's not enough hours in the day or days in the week. If any of the political parties yesterday could have promised to sort out the 'not enough hours' issue they'd have got my vote.

Anyways, ta-ra for now, I'm getting back to Crome.

I've not finished writing 'The Wobbly Odyssey' yet, but I've gone a wee interesting side step with it by submitting the first chapter of it to Writing on the Wall: Pulp Idol. It's the first time I've entered this annual competition.



This is open for submissions until Sunday midnight so if you're an amateur writerer from the Liverpool/Sefton/Wirral area and you have a first chapter already written there's still a bit of time left to submit it. If it's already written then why not, what have you got to lose?

Well, even if not this is a little boot up the arse and may help give impetus to the characters to get to their goal (with a little help from me); I've completed seven chapters and have about four to go. That's a month if I can do one a week…



It's the first time I've submitted anything to WoW for several years - I think since the very scary Dragon's Pen.

As I said the other day I have decided I am going to finish the story from last year's NaNoWriMo - 'The Wobbly Odyssey' (aka Project Jaipur) and I've set myself the target of the end of March. I'm not entirely sure how many words it will be but I've updated the Project Goal in Scrivener from 50k, which it was for NaNo, to 80k and set a Daily Goal of 1000 words. Both seem very reasonable. Reckon 1000 words will be between an hour and an hour and a half - but that depends on focus and any time spent researching bits - or wasted getting lost in Twitter and Google nonsense: the most important rule for writing on a computer MUST be turn away from Twitter and limit distractions.

In addition to setting the new project targets I also wrote my quota of words today (1083 to be precise) -Huzzah! And I am getting back into the minds of Bill, Colin and Sandy again. They are not big minds so that helps. '.... other than the BDSM thing.'



It'll be good to get more practice with Scrivener too. Maybe after finishing a novel and some other writings on it I'll get around to giving it a review.

Been doing a little planning for next month's NaNo attempt. Unlike in 2016 when I just used Pages on my MacBook I'll be using Scrivener. It'll be interesting to see how it helps. It certainly should as far as planning and sketching out some ideas and the view for distraction-less working is nice.

This morning I transferred some background info about the settings into the 'Places' folder in Scrivener. So far that is basically some headline words rather than any detail - in fact I haven't put anything in yet about Unique Features, Sights, Sounds etc but the standard sheets in the folder could prove quite useful to consider to help focus on the writing when it comes to November rather than looking things up on the inter web and all that (and the inevitable distractions that will bring).

Talking of distractions I'm hoping it's not bad timing for me being in charge of the words for #VSS365 in November. It may well mean I can't read and reply as much as I would like to all the contributions, which is a bit of a shame. I may also have to find another automatic Twitter timetabling programme as I currently use Buffer to upload the link to my daily song every morning (Class Song of the Day). If I use this then I will have to log in and put the links in every five days instead of ten (you can only schedule 10 messages on a free basis), which will be a bit of a pain. Will see if I can find another free (and easy) way of uploading the message each morning - of course I could go 'Old School' and just type it out each morning when I get up... How old fashioned? But then the messages would potentially go out at rather random times.

I've decided to give NaNoWriMo a go this year. Hoping I can make enough time to do it It's one of those things where you've got to keep going at it, as 1667 words a day sounds fine but if you miss a couple of days you've got 4800 words to find, so it can suddenly get quite daunting if your not careful.


I've only tried once before and I found it okay with a relatively straightforward format. It was totally linear and in effect by compartmentalising it I could write it in ten bite sized chunks as if I was writing ten 5000 word short stories. I managed it anyway and 'Fergie Time' exists. I've had a couple of people read it and it largely held together pretty well considering it was written in a month. It does have fundamental issues though - it includes real people in imagined situations, which may have legal issues... Anyway, we'll see I do intend to finish it, even if it only every gets read by a few friends and family. But in the meantime I have NaNoWriMo 2018 to be getting on with.

This one will have only fictitious people and venues (albeit in real cities) so I shouldn't have any of the potential legal considerations this time. I had a couple of options for running with including Project Jaipur and Project Sarah Hughes or even expanding the short story from the recent DeadCades short story into a full length story. In the end I've opted for Project Jaipur now as 'To Hull and Back: A Wobbly Odyssey'. It's set as an epic comic odyssey across seven towns and cities and in some ways can therefore be similarly compartmentalised into effectively 7-10 sections or short stories.

So now I'm in the process of planning the chapters and set pieces and identifying the main characters, though once the story telling gets going next month heaven knows where it will arrive.

Here's to 50,000 words in 30 days. And a fun time.

Today started badly. Up for work then get a text saying 'there's not enough routes, stay at home'. Been promised work for rest of week, so not the end of the world - just like to pick my weekend (today's my Sunday I guess (after last Sunday was my Saturday)). The damn gig economy.

On the positive side it's given me time to get my Infernal Clock Questionnaire finished and sent of to Steph ready for DeadCades. It'll probably need more editing than the actual story did - sorry Steph.

It'll also give me time to type up my edits from the weekend for Project: Jaipur - yes, Jaipur is still alive, write a blog or two (including this) and get stuck into more writing (probably on Jaipur) and yes, I will manage a bit of guitar strumming.

Last night I rushed out a quick Fantasy Footy team, naffly named the Anfield of Dreams. May have time to revisit it today to swop a few players - and maybe rename. Starting point anyway is:



Keeping faith in Salah and Firmino though think it'll be hard for them to repeat last year's heights. Not a Man Utd player in sight - which is nice.

I haven't yet decided whether to run with Project Jaipur or Sarah Hughes yet, but I have done a little more thinking about Jaipur. It is (expected) to be a buddy road (well probably rail) movie with beer - okay an epic pub crawl across many miles and days. It would like to grow up to be a comedy, but who knows?

I've already set out the nine chapter headings, which are largely geographically based, and I've the three main characters (and the princely sum of 2769 words down in Scrivener for it).



So it's basically the story about a pub crawl. I should be on firm ground here, right?

I started of thinking I should use real pubs, to almost produce a travelogue that could really be followed. There are several issues with this. For a start I'd need a week or two off to 'research' this which would be costly (if fun) - and the notes each day would get progressively more patchy and scrawly. Of course the way the pub business is things change so fast that by the time the story was finished a couple of the places would probably be closed, have their names changed or at the very least refitted - and the people change all the time - making any focus on real life descriptions pretty pointless.



While as a real ale fan and even more a fan of actual pubs it was quite attractive to make these places real. But in reality it is the story and the characters which matter most. The settings will be important, but they can be totally fictionalised. Should the finished article ever get read by anyone the important thing will be the story not whether the pubs and bars are real places and they could in fact distract the reader if I did a bad job of it.



So whilst I may use some real pubs in my head to set the stories in I'll change the names in all the cases to protect the innocent (and the guilty). This will mean less worrying about getting descriptions 'right' and more focus on getting the story right. When I wrote 'Fergie Time' I had a few real named places in it, but there were a lot less of them than would be in this story and the settings were less important than the narrative.

In summary, with Project Jaipur I have decided that while I will have lots of real venues in mind I'll change all the names. It'll be important to evoke the sense of these venues be they genuine or totally fictitious. Of course there will be plenty of real named places in Jaipur - just not the pubs - let's drink to that.

Over the next week or so I'll be deciding whether to run with Jaipur or Sarah. Looking forward to making the decision and then going with it.

Well I downloaded Scrivener 3 the other day and have had a couple of days using so far. Not got to grips with all it can do yet but I am liking it so far. I didn't use it on Friday for Microcosms, I just stuck with Pages. Nice to get a quick story out and today it got a Honourable Mention from the first time judge Vincente Ruiz. Thank you Vicente!



Yesterday in forty minutes of writing I completed the first 700 words on Project: Jaipur. That works out at about 1000 words an hour; I can happily live with that for now. Not sure how long I wrote for today but it was another 1400 words or so - (so maybe an hour and a half) and I also wrote a quick story for Flash Feed, where I am currently ranked as a St Bernard. Woof! The prompt is the grinning bearded man above. If it strikes you as interesting then there's still time to get on over there and get a story out.


That's me on the right.