So…

Sofas safely and successfully sequestered in storage, my stay in Leicester has ceased, and the city sinks slowly beneath the skyline as I set sail (so to speak) to sunny York…

A quick update on what I’m doing with my writing at the moment, in the spare time that I’ve got –  my immediate aim is to finish off the three short stories that I have kicking around in various stages of completion:

Hamlet… In Purgatory – Is the closest to completion. Now on its third draft, I want to add a bit more narrative and tune up the characters a little, and then it’ll be done.

Chocalypse – Next up; the sugar-coated destruction of mankind. What I have at the moment is a bunch of scenes running from the beginning to the end of the story which need tying together. I also need to write a few paragraphs to give the feel that the world really is coming to a sticky end.

The Director’s Vampire – My third story, first of all, probably needs a better title. It has three chapters written and finished, and I want to find a way to wrap the story up over another three chapters or so.

When these are out of the way, the path to Nocturn will be clear and I’ll throw myself into the city of blood and stone once again, going through editing and rewrites, and tying things together more thoroughly in the story. I honestly can’t wait. It’s been too, too long.

Advertisement

Dagon (It’s Nearly Tuesday)*

Today however, is Cop-Out Monday! Nothing to report aside a craving for curry that’s verging on apocalyptic, and an evening spent reading teaching notes and H.P. Lovecraft, so in a tie-in that’s looser than Paris Hilton’s knicker elastic, here’s a cartoon I drew of fish-god Dagon and his favorite Eldritch Pillar™ from the Lovecraft story ‘Dagon’ (no really). Plus the French History of Art lecture-notes doodle that I based it off. It was a long lecture.

He looks shocked, because although they are not depicted here (due to their description-defying awfulness sending all those who gaze upon them careering into the frenzied abyss, gibbering through untold mental chasms of mad, cyclopean terror, and all that Lovecraftian hoo-hah), all the other Great Old Ones are making fun of his pillar. The sense of humour of unspeakably ancient and terrible universe-destroyers is, as one might guess, particularly mean.

.

* I know, I know; I deserve to be shot for crimes against the punning community. I don’t even know if one exists, but if they do I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ever mention me to their Lovecraft chapter.

Issue #2 of the Fifthwind Forum Newsletter has been let loose!

[Link]

There are a few of my scribblings in there, printed under my forum nickname ‘Mister Bubbles’ (long story), as well as a host of other great articles both fiction and non-fiction for anyone interested in the writing world, or just in reading a few well-told tales.

———–

Oh, and for those curious, the ‘Grimmsgate Incident’ / MedPro thing was an experiment to see how well it would work creating a sort of meta-environment in the blog, with various ties to real-life, to some of the ‘murder mystery’ events on the Forum a while back, and what have you.  I think it’s fairly safe to say it didn’t go all that well, due to an overly subtle build-up and lack of real context, but I quite enjoyed it 😉 So thanks for your patience while I tried that on for size!

The Unfinisher

I have no trouble writing. No problem at all.

It’s in finishing pieces that the difficulty lies, waiting for me to stroll innocently past its dark little hole. I’ve had Hamlet… In Purgatory lingering ironically in limbo since before I started this blog, The Chocalypse is not so much approaching with thundering strides as pottering along hiding behind its mummy’s legs, and I’ve not worked on Nocturn editing  for weeks.

I’ve started and finished a load of little short pieces, but they count for naught until I have enough to do something with them. So, in the interest  of kicking my arse into touch a bit, here’s my plan:

1. Hamlet… In Purgatory – Deadline: 15th October

2. The Chocalypse – Deadline: 1st November

3. Nocturn – Deadline: 15th December

If I can sneak The Director’s Vamp in there somewhere too, that’d be a bonus, but I think that’s going to have to be one for the new year.

Meanwhile, In The Real World…

In the midst of all my stupid ideas and rambling, I’d forgotten to mention I’d found a school to do my three days’ French class observation. Well, happily I did, and today I had my first day at the Manor School in York!

‘Observation’ is a bit of a misleading term though, as from the moment the classes started I was giving presentations about myself in French, answering questions, helping with activitites etc,  so it was a lot of fun. Being on the other side of the education fence is fascinating, though being referred to as ‘sir’ is strange. Very strange.

Tomorrow I also get a free reign with all the  Modern Languages department’s resources and intranet, and while you probably aren’t jumping out of your seat in excitement at the sound of that, for a languages person it’s pretty cool 😉

On the writing front, the other day I sat down and wrote a thousand words of a novel that comes three books further down the line from the series that Nocturn will be a part of. It felt like a glimpse of ‘what is yet to come’, and it was a stirring kind of feeling knowing that there’s still so much to be unwravelled!

Also went to see the film Brüno earlier this evening. There are definitely certain… images… I wish I could scrub from my mind, but it kept the laughs coming. His line to an Al-Qaeda chief that Bin Laden should shave his beard because ‘he looks like a dirty wizard’ was cracking. Borat was a better character, and I wouldn’t ever watch this a second time, but it was worth one viewing.