Season’s greetings

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 …

Here we go again…

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 …

Reaching 50,000

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 …

Surprise Insights

I had a really pleasant surprise when I looked at my Twitter feed yesterday and noticed the word 'Pitkirtly' lurking in among all the politics and name-calling. I don't mind getting into an argument about politics on occasion, in fact as I worked on the family history book I've been writing this month while I …

The Heir to Nothing

Although not ideal in almost every other way, I'm finding this a surprisingly good year so far for writing productivity. As mentioned in a previous post, after finishing Pitkirtly 20 in mid April, I went on to finish my draft of The Heir to Nothing and found myself racing on ahead with another novel in …

Why do I do it?

Even by my standards what has happened this month has been a bit strange, to say the least. I would like to blame Camp NaNoWriMo, another of these writing months that I like to sign up to, but actually this time it is mostly my own fault. Unfortunately I went into April with two unfinished …

Plot-wrangling

After leaving 'The Heir to Nothing' unfinished for a month while I got on with other stuff ranging from short stories and Christmas letters to trying to get the sills on the Panda welded, an unexpectedly lengthy process, the Christmas break has at last meant I've had time to read through the story so far …