setting the scene in Pitkirtly
I am happy to report that I've just got past 20,000 words in Pitkirtly XXIII ('The Christmas Catastrophe') and the story is progressing more or less according to the very vague plan in my head. This is in spite of a recent blip when I realised I had written a pivotal chapter in a way …
This seems like a good time for an update on my writing projects, as, after quite a lot of months of writing about 1,000 words every morning, I am about to have a short break to go away for the weekend on a train (actually 8 separate trains in all since my journey from Scotland …
THE IDENTITY ILLUSION – Pitkirtly Mysteries 22 Pitkirtly XXII has now been published. Thanks to anyone who has already got hold of a copy. This is the 22nd novel in the Pitkirtly Mysteries series, set in a small fictitious town on the south coast of Fife which is definitely not Culross, though quite close to …
At lunchtime today I reached the 50,000 word mark in 'Pitkirtly XXII' (still no title but don't panic - I've always managed to work something out before publishing, up to now anyway). This is significant because by this stage in a novel I almost always have a good idea of how it's going to end, …
I hope everyone reading this will be pleased to know that I've at last got to the point in what I like to think of as my writing schedule where I can start writing Pitkirtly XXII. I plan to begin a new document for this tomorrow, with the rest of today being spent re-reading two …
I noticed there was an article in The Guardian the other day about the difficulties of writing during the pandemic - here's the link in case anyone is interested (it focusses mostly on writers failing to find anything to be inspired by during lockdown, but there is a mention of a problem I had about …
I was complaining the other day on Twitter about not having anything to write after finishing the two things I had been working on, and someone suggested writing a silly short story in a new genre, so here it is in all its silliness (disclaimer - there is no award-winning children's book and I don't …
I would like to wish everyone reading this the best Christmas and New Year season they can have under the circumstances. Apologies for not being more whole-hearted about it. It doesn't mean my wishes are less sincere, just that I know it's already been a difficult year for many people and at the time of …
I see it's some time since I wrote a new post here. In the months following the previous post I've retired from my part-time day job as a database manager, published the 21st of the Pitkirtly Mysteries and taken part in a mad project to write 14 screenplays in 14 days. Fortunately all these things …
Thanks to NaNoWriMo, in which the target is set to 50,000 for everyone, getting to 50,000 words in a novel always feels like almost the end. Actually 50,000 words or even 60,000, which most of my mystery novels conclude at, is fairly short for a novel these days. My writing session this morning has just …
