setting the scene in Pitkirtly
Because I have a day off work and I should spend part of it writing up the minutes for a meeting, naturally I decided it was time to write a new blog post. Once again NaNoWriMo has worked its magic and I've suddenly got about 40,000 words written altogether in Pitkirtly 18, for which 'Screenshot' …
An innocent-looking notebook Now that I'm approaching what I hope are the final stages of writing The French Heir, something odd has happened. I had to update my work password yesterday, and my thoughts were evidently not stuck in the present but had jumped ahead, not for the first time, because I found myself concocting …
The title of this blog post may be slightly misleading. I am physically in my usual writing spot, the conservatory, looking out somewhat apprehensively to see if snow has started to fall yet, which I'm very much hoping it doesn't, although there was suspicious-looking low white cloud over the Pentland Hills, which I can more …
Once we get past the Winter Solstice, I find things begin to look up again with the gradually extending hours of daylight. Although I often indulge my tendency to hibernate during the festive season - and indeed this year I've stocked up up with an unfeasibly huge quantity of food that might last until Doomsday …
I thought I had better take this opportunity to confess that instead of getting straight to work on editing and publishing 'The Unexpected Suspect' (Pitkirtly XVI) I've irresponsibly returned to something completely different which I've been working on as a background project for over a year. This is quite unusual for me these days, because …
Yesterday I sent off the latest in my 'Quest' series, 'Quest for a Father', to have it made into what I think of as a proof copy in paperback, which I will decorate with sticky notes in time-honoured fashion to mark up the places where there is still some editing to be done despite the …
As I write the closing scenes of the novel I really meant to finish by the end of April, my mind has already moved on into June, when (in my imagination anyway) I will have published it, which means I will then have time to go back to the historical novel on my computer and …
Today I welcome back Matthew Drzymala to my blog. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since I last invited him here in (eek! It can’t be that long ago) December 2014. He has just released a new novel, ‘The Fantastical Gregory Shortbread’, and it’s set in his fictional village of Bumpkinton – …
This post will have a certain ring of familiarity about it, as I attempt to explain why I'm not yet writing 'Pitkirtly XVI' but instead getting caught up in all kinds of other stuff, some of it to do with writing and some not! First of all, thanks again to everyone who has so far …
First of all, the very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to anyone reading this. Thank you as well to anyone who has sampled any of my books. I hope there will be more of them during 2018 for your amusement. I recently asked for opinions on Facebook about a cover for the …
