In A Strange New Room

Four years.  Four years since the last post on here, and, no, Bedlam isn't finished.  It's not that surprising, given the demands life makes of us, that some things will fall by the wayside.  The trick is not to lose them, to remember where they are and pick them up again later.

While Bedlam isn't finished, something else is:  Exercise One.



A collection of seven short ghost stories, some of which may be familiar to those of you who have been following my Scribd page.  Nothing was written especially for Exercise One, but everything was edited and "remastered" for publication.  As the title suggests, it's a technical test for self-publishing and there will be more to come later.

I'll also try and get back into the habit of posting here on a regular basis.  In the mean time, I'll probably try and clear up some of the old projects, too.

Let Us Go In...

For once, I've managed to deliver.

Here is 'The Fog Is Rising,' a ghost story for Halloween.  Halloween doesn't actually feature, but it is pretty scary.

The Fog is Rising

I asked for suggestions and I damn near used them all.  I think there was only Owen Wilson and The Sixth Sense that didn't make the cut.

Over the last two weeks, I've got into a nice routine of writing which I intend to stick to and not only are the ideas coming in thick and fast, but they are taking shape as something useful.  I'm also making good progress on the Teratogenesis edit which looks like it will take an even twelve months to finish.

Next year is beginning to look quite macabre, too:  This story may be first in a series based on a common theme, I intend to finish a serial I started several years ago and I might even dust off something I set aside as too dark, something beginning with S...

Grinding Exceedingly Fine

That's probably the best way to describe the drafting process for Teratogenesis.  I'm pretty sure that it will take just as long to edit the first draft as it did to write the damn thing.  But progress is being made.  Slowly.

With Halloween coming up, I plan on posting a new ghost story on Scribd.  I've said it now, so I'm committed. In this case, I'm actually fairly interested in peoples input, so let me know in the comments what you're interesting in reading.

I've actually had a bit of a clean up of my Scribd account.  Everything on there is now mobile formatted and I've removed the duplicates  I'm pretty impressed with the way things are going with Scribd.  Unlike Google Docs, which seems to have been "upgraded" so that it's harder to format documents.

Some thought is being given to projects for next year.  It might include revisiting something that I've had locked away for awhile.  Something deemed so horrible, it was never to be unleashed.  Or it could be something a bit more light hearted and considerably different from everything I've put out so far.

Lacunae

So, today is the first of March?  What happened to February?  And wasn’t it Christmas the other week?

This year is flying by.  Maybe I was just keeping closer track of last year with the schedule I had set for the Teratogenesis updates.  Maybe it’s all an elaborate joke and everyone is moving the clocks back a minute at midnight every night.

“Escalation” was to be my watch word this year, but I suspect “consolidation” might be closer to the mark.  The Wicked Steeple, the latest, first and only new short story this year, has taken me two months to write.  Or one sixth of the entire time I’ve spent so far on Teratogenesis.

It’s taken almost exactly two months, because it’s based on a nightmare I had in the early hours of New Year’s Day.  This is third longest writing period I’ve ever spent and actually finished the piece.  The other two were my final project for university (six months) and Teratogenesis (a year.)

Why has it taken two months?  I’ve been distracted by Twin Peaks, the cat and conquering aliens (on the computer.)  I need to step up the pace.  But in the meantime, I’ll be reorganising and redrafting the other short stories on Scribd and looking at MobiPocket editions.