Just a quick note to say that I finished the Scott Cullen novella "Devil in the Detail" today.  Starting to redraft it, which shouldn't take too long, as it's only 22k.  Very pleased with it; it's an idea I've kicked around for a couple of years and finally managed to get nailed.  It's been an exercise in baddies, action and plotting; I've got a new plot method now, which seems to work for me.  There's no more getting lost in Excel spreadsheets for days, it's a bare bones .txt file.

I'm next going to redraft "Ghost in the Machine" for resubmission to some other agents.  It's a very slow business, seems to take longer than forever.  Writing "Devil" has given me some more ideas, and it's always good to look stuff over again after a period of time.

Final point - I'm conscious of the fact that my site is a bit under-contented, so I'm going to add some of my writing samples up here.  I did a similar doofus thing with music about ten years ago - website with no tunes - so it's no surprise.  Three chapters for "Ghost" v4 once it's done and dusted.

Then it's on with "Beast in the Shadow"...

No major news to report, still a lot stuff in stasis.

I'm ploughing on with Ricochet which is the new title for Catharsis.  It's great writing something unplanned.  When I say unplanned, I mean that Ghost in the Machine had such a high level of intricate planning and this is a story with an end state I need to manoeuvre towards and can seed stuff as I go and pick up later without having to worry too much about the detail.  It makes the writing fun, in a very different way to the fun I have with the planned stuff.  I've got ideas of how to take stuff forward and it'll hopefully influence later writing - over the course of writing and copiously editing Ghost in the Machine, my style came on immeasurably, so it's a chance to let that sort of thing be the focal point.

I'm also writing it on my mobile phone, a Nokia E63 with QWERTY keyboard and Word-compatible word processor (QuickOffice), so it kills time on the train every day and means I'm not a slave to the laptop every night.

One of the big things I've discovered about stress is, as my manager at work told me just before he left, that it comes from within - stress is entirely your own making and is just an inability to deal with a situation.  There are obviously types of stress that are externally-driven, e.g. poverty, etc, but work-related stress is about getting perspective on things.  I've had two bouts of dreadful illness this year and both relate to periods when I've pushed the writing too hard along with the day-to-day rubbish I deal with at work, so I'm trying to use this writing as non-pressure stuff, a chance to get stuff out of my system and maintain a passion for it, unlike the pressure that killed my enjoyment of making music for so long.

Anyway, enough of a rant, would be great to have some news to report.  I think I need to refresh the website layout a bit.