It might (as well) be spring

It’s a good idea to be cautious about the arrival of spring, as most Scots are only too well aware! But with two lovely bright weekend mornings having happened one after the other, I’ve definitely got the feeling that it might be time to crawl out of hibernation. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that it could still snow around Easter time, of course. In fact, I’ve discovered recently during my research that it actually snowed on the first day of the Scottish National Exhibition of 1908, which was early in May.

By now, according to my plan for the year, I should have finished the novella I’ve been working on and I should have some idea of the plot for the ‘Quest’ novel I plan to write in April and May. Unfortunately the past few weeks have been a bit of a trial but yesterday, maybe because the morning was so bright and filled with promise, I wrote a bit more, and I now have a slightly adapted plan to get to the end of the novella by the end of the month and leave it to simmer for a while until I’m ready to have another look at it. Also, although the plot for ‘The Coronation Quest’ is still a bit hazy, somewhere in the secret writer’s cave in the back of my mind I seem to have mulled it over while I wasn’t consciously thinking about it, and the result is that I do have somewhere to start on the 1st of April and also somewhere to finish, leaving only the bit in the middle to fill in!

So far, so good. If only I hadn’t been rash enough to put forward an idea for a paper at a conference in June, and if only I could stop myself from putting forward another one for an e-conference in August, everything would be fine and I would have plenty of time to spare… Do people ever learn from their mistakes? [cue hollow laughter]

Thanks to everyone who has purchased a copy of ‘A Tasteful Crime’ – I have been thrilled to see it climbing the ‘cozy’ charts even though it is falling back a little now. I hope to embark on ‘Pitkirtly VIII’ in July.