The Work-In-Progress Blog Tour

Late to the party as usual, but I've been invited to participate in a blog tour by the lovely and talented Elizabeth Brooks... I just hope all the other participants haven't gotten bored and gone home. :)

The rules of the WIP blog tour are as follows: provide the link back to the post by the person who nominated you, write a little about and give the first sentences of the first three chapters of your current WIP, then nominate four other writers to do the same. Piece o cake, right?

I hit a snag straight away, in that I'm not at all happy with any of the first lines of my initial chapters. In point of fact, I'm currently at that wondrous stage of the writing process where I'm unhappy with pretty much every damn line, and am two glasses of wine away from binning the whole thing.

But, since temper tantrums are only advisable and/or tolerated when you're a proper artist, here's some bumf about my current Work In Progress.

Okay, so, I love crime novels. Apart from Horror, Crime is my favourite genre to read in. I have a long and illustrious history of stalking crime authors and fan-girling at them until they sign something so I'll go away (in fact I did it just today with the fabulous Alan Bradley, who was launching his new book, The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches... but I digress).

So I figured I'd have a go at writing a crime novel. In typing that last sentence, btw, I can feel a thousand crime writers wince, because it must be infuriating for someone to blithely announce they're "having a go" at the thing you do for a living. ("Oh yes, I'm taking a swing at being a nurse, how hard can it really be?")

And I've also discovered, crime novels are flipping difficult. I'm not cut out for suspense. For a start, I have a lousy memory, so there's no real point in peppering chapters with carefully laid clues, because by halfway through I will have forgotten their existence, or at least their purpose. The second problem is, I get overexcited when I write (enthusiastic is the term I like) and am terrible at keeping secrets, so I keep trying to tell people who the murderer is every ten pages or so.

Then there's the issue that the first draft of my carefully plotted novel came in at 45,000 words, which even for me is a bit skimpy. So I had to go back and add a whole second strand, resulting in the story now being told partially in the present day, and partially in a (very extended) flashback.

The plot (tch, it says something about my writing that I've only got to the plot after four paragraphs, doesn't it?) concerns Daniel, who returns to his home village after a seven year absence. Naturally, when he left he did so under a cloud, and no one is happy to see him back, least of all his family. His timing is lousy as well - he arrives in the middle of the spring floods, when a major river has burst its banks and the whole village is washed out, so the only people remaining are the very determined or those with a substantial collection of sandbags.

Things get worse for Daniel because, on returning to the family home, he finds his brother murdered. Dun dun DUN. Concealed around the house, he also uncovers an unexplainably large amount of cash. He's anxious to find out what the hell happened, but finds himself implicated in the murder.

With the village cut off by the floods, there's no way for Daniel to escape from either his wrathful family or the true murderer... and no way for the police to come save him.

Okay, it sounds fairly passable when it's set out like that. :) The novel is called Fourth To The Devil, and these are the first lines of the first chapters:

CHAPTER ONE:
To return to Stonecrop, Daniel was forced to sprint across the closed road bridge while the police officer wasn't watching. In another few hours the bridge would be impassable even on foot. The river was still rising.

CHAPTER TWO:
The Crossed Swords public house benefited from its location at the junction between the high street and the road out to Westbridge Farm.  The land there was slightly higher than the rest of the town, and the pub now sat on a tiny island some fifty feet wide.

CHAPTER THREE:
Samual eyed the cup of coffee on the table.  His need for a warming drink was apparently less pressing than his wish to stay out of obligation to his younger brother, and he pushed the cup away untouched.

As I say, I am unhappy with these lines, and they will hopefully be prettified to some significant degree at some point. :) They do, however, hit on several important parts of the novel - floodwater, pubs, coffee, and the two main characters. So I guess it could be worse. :)

Ok, that's enough from me. I nominate:

Sonja Perrin
Matthew Baugh
Charles Phipps

Manx Litfest 2014

This year's Manx Litfest took place last weekend and was a huge honking success. We had so many wonderful events and visiting authors, and everyone was so delightful, it's difficult to even pick a top three moments from the festival.

Having said that: Driving around with the Mobile Library and Neil Spring (when I grow up, I want to drive a bus full of books). Heckling the Poetry Slam so hard I lost my voice for a week (it's only just come back now). Shoe-envy with the gorgeous Sarah McIntyre. Berating Mark Grist for using the word "rat" in a poem, resulting in him changing the line for the following performance, even though "longtail" didn't scan properly. Hot chocolate and ghost stories in Castle Rushen. Persuading Mark Billingham to hug-tackle my shy friend. Samantha Shannon and my sister fangirling about Harry Potter. Coming home with a car full of signed books, empty Monster cans, and a CD of rap-poetry.

So, yeah, it was amazing fun. I am so happy there's something like this on the Island, and that it's continuing to be a success, and that I got to be a part of it this year. Hugs!

(And check out the brilliant photos at Steve Babb's website.)

HOME GROUND ebook edition

Good news everybody!

My third novel, HOME GROUND, is getting an ebook release! I'll post the link as soon as I get the thumbs-up from the publishers, but for now, if you would like a sneak preview the first three chapters are available to view here.

nice day for a white wedding

Weddings are always historic events, to a greater or lesser extent. Their dates are the ones we record, remember, recall fondly, and occasionally panic over forgetting. Each anniversary is a new milestone in our lives.

Last week my best friend KT got married. It was historic for a number of reasons, not least because none of us had properly appreciated that, beneath her hard and cynical exterior, there beat the heart of a Disney princess who wanted nothing more than a perfect wedding to the man of her dreams.

It was also the first wedding to take place in the grounds of Peel Castle on the Isle of Man. We're currently trying to find out when the last wedding was conducted at the cathedral in Peel Castle (if any ever were), but given that the cathedral has been in disuse since the 1800s, it's fairly safe to say this was the first wedding at the castle in at least a century.

And it was also one of my first outings as a newly-trained Registrar for Ceremonies, and I am utterly delighted that I could be the one to pronounce Adam and KT husband and wife.

Congratulations, you pair of wonderful, beautiful freaks. <3

cheesy-chorizo pizza muffins

There're about a dozen things I keep meaning to blog about, but for one reason or another I'm always putting them off (ah, procrastination, my constant companion). So, in an attempt to get out of my bloggy rut, here is one of my favourite recipes: savoury cheesy-chorizo muffins.

The original recipe came from a woman's magazine years ago, but since then I've lost the original copy and also adapted the recipe quite a bit, so this is kinda fudged together (you can probably tell that from my haphazard measurements). On the plus side, it's a pretty forgiving recipe, and doesn't mind a bit of fudging.

300 gm self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 ml vegetable oil
300 ml milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon mustard
1 tablespoon tomato paste
150 g mature cheddar
200 g chorizo (or more if you want)
1/2 teaspoon crushed black peppercorns
Big pinch of oregano

(A few notes on ingredients. Fresh oregano is lovely, but I never have any in the house, so I use dried. Also, if you can get the amazing black-pepper-mature-cheddar that some supermarkets do, use that and don't bother with the peppercorns. You can vary the amount of oil to personal taste, as the chorizo makes the mix quite moist anyway.)

Sift flour, paprika and salt together. Mix oil, milk, eggs, mustard and tomato paste together in a separate bowl, then add to the flour. Smoosh it all together.

(At this point, opinion is divided as to whether the mixture should be kneaded. I rarely bother, but if your mix is dry enough and you want to feel like Paul Hollywood, turn it out onto a floured surface and give it a minute of kneading.)

Chop up the cheese and chorizo into fat chunks and stir into the mix, along with the black peppercorns and oregano.

Spoon into a muffin tray and bake at 200 degrees centigrade for about 25 minutes (my oven is a bit slow sometimes; in a better oven they might only need 20 minutes). Should make about 12-15 muffins, depending on size.

Eat 'em either hot or cold (but not straight from the oven because the melted cheese is hotter than the sun).

Like I say, I've always found this to be a forgiving recipe, and if you want to add or subtract ingredients it usually still works out fine. I like throwing in a handful of sundried tomatoes instead of the tomato paste if I'm feeling decadent. If you don't have or don't like chorizo, any kind of spicy sausage works well. I'm also pretty sure you could do an acceptable vegetarian version substituting chopped red peppers and/or olives instead of the chorizo (and chilli flakes instead of the peppercorns), although I haven't actually tried this yet.

So there we go, that's how I make spicy cheesy awesome pizza muffins. Enjoy!

declaration

In approximately two thousand days, I will quit my day job and become a full time writer.

This number isn't pulled entirely out of thin air. Two thousand days, more or less (and I'll admit I've not added it up with any huge degree of accuracy), will bring us to my fortieth birthday. As a special present to myself, I intend to get off the treadmill of the nine-to-five day job and instead hop aboard the from-coffee-a.m.-to-why-am-I-still-awake-p.m. rollercoaster of freelancery.

I've given myself this long-date deadline for several reasons. One: I ain't ready to do it now. With two kids and a student husband, it is completely the wrong time to abandon a nice stable job. Two: I like deadlines. I work well to them. Giving myself some tangible date to aim for will make me more likely to stick to it. And three: by making a public declaration, like so, I hope my friends and family will spend the run-up to my fortieth birthday asking me pointed questions about how my quest for job-independence is going.

As prosaic as it is, I also need time to save up a monetary cushion. I'm under no illusions about my ability to pay the bills by my writing talent alone. I'm hoping that in +/- five-and-a-half years I'll be in a position of relative stability (touch wood) where it wouldn't cripple my family if I became a penniless hack.

So there it is--my public declaration. By the end of 2019, I will have quit my day job and become a full time writer. Anyone reading this: I'm relying on you to remind me of this, in case I attempt to wuss out nearer the time. :)

april kicked my arse

Well it did. For reasons I'm still trying to figure out, April was quite an awkward, busy month, which is one reason why I've not updated things here in a while (the other reason is I couldn't think of anything good to say, but shhhh).

So what have I been doing? Well, I've not been working on the second draft of my military sci-fi novel, which is what I'm supposed to be doing, and I've not been reading through the first draft of my haunted-house-plus-time-travel story, which is the other thing I'm supposed to be doing. On the plus side, I've managed to stick to one deadline - I completed Camp Nanowrimo. So, y'know, yay.

Anyone who knows me will know I luuuurve nanowrimo. It's a structure that works for me - I like having deadlines, daily word counts, a little graph that tells me when how well I'm doing, and a certificate at the end. Not everyone needs that validation, and not everyone thrives under an enforced deadline, but like I say it works for me. Camp Nanowrimo is marketed as a more easy-going version of the November event - you can pick your own word count (so long as it's over 10,000 words, apparently), work on multiple projects, or write something other than a novel, like a screenplay or a play or whatever. (Obviously you could do this during November as well, it's not like the Nano police are gonna come after you.)

So, in the spirit of trying something new, I attempted to write a graphic novel. For reference, I know nothing about writing graphic novels. It was all a big fun learning experience... and the most obvious thing I've learned is that I don't work well outside my comfort zone. 50,000 words on a novel? Brilliant, bring it on. 18,000 words on a graphic novel script? Ehhhhh...

I did make my word count, and now have what I reckon is about eighty percent of a graphic novel script (and of course that's entirely a guess because I've no idea if I've got the formatting, pacing, layout, or anything else right). It's a hot mess at the moment, of course, but all first drafts are. It's also (to be entirely honest) unlikely to ever progress beyond a script. The premise is absurd, the plot's hackneyed and ridiculous, and even if I could bribe an artist to draw the panels for me, I doubt it would ever be worth the effort.

In a way, this has been greatly liberating. I've spent a month writing something that no one will ever read, that will never be published, and which I wrote for no other reason than it was fun. And, at the end of the day, isn't that the true meaning of April?