Angel Wedge

Today I got an email from CanStockPhoto announcing their free image for this week. Obviously, it's got a Valentine's Day theme. Normally these emails get sorted into my junk folder, but somehow gmail decided to put this one in "Purchases", so I actually saw it. And it inspired me to write a little flash fiction. Turns out, this fiction is just short enough to fit on the image.


If you are using a screen reader or otherwise can't read the words on the image, the link points to the same story on Google Docs (333 words)

So, this is my Valentine's Day gift to anyone who's still reading.

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And on a more serious note…

( Why I've not been here lately, including some dark thoughts, but also ducks )

Hi folks!

When's the last time I posted here? I'm not sure. I've had a lot of anxiety lately, which is partly related to our broadband going down.

It was working, and then it stopped. A traceroute gets to 2 hops (of which the first is our router) and then stops. We called the provider; they had me factory reset the router three times over the course of a 20-minute phone call, and then sent out an engineer. The engineer tested the line, then said we need a new router. We waited for the new router to arrive, then called the ISP, and they said that the engineer hadn't told them they needed to send one, he'd just mentioned it in his report.

Now we're waiting for a router again.

In the mean time, the whole house is using my phone's 3G data as a mobile hotspot. (I had to disable 4GEE, because with the amount of traffic my household is generating, it causes the phone to overheat and I had to keep powering it off for a few minutes once or twice a day). My phone has a 15GB monthly data allowance; I now have 80MB left to last me until the 23rd.

Still, I'm not doing too badly. I've got the house mostly tidy in preparation for a landlord inspection today. My birthday produced a haul of new books, including The Story Grid, which seems to be well worth reading. It kind of complements the technique I'm going to put in my book if I ever get around to writing it.

Another thought actually came to mind on that front. Would anyone be interested in a video series on how I go about fleshing out an idea into a story? Maybe following an idea from two-word high concept ("Billionaire Butler", thanks to a random character generator that gives me no end of ideas), through all the different possibilities, to a plan, to a first draft, and all the way through editing to the final release?

(I could really do with some youtube activity. Because I'm getting some money through Amazon's affiliate scheme; but the main .com version won't let me make money from my links because I can't show them a page that meets some arbitrary minimum number of followers)

Writing isn't going too badly. Not sure how long it is since I last posted, but (in case you didn't see yet) I passed a million words for the year on Nov 30th, and have so far written 16326 this month. Almost all of that is little/AR/AB fiction; of which I now have 2 up on Kindle; one of them posted complete on Wattpad; two now serialising on Wattpad; and 3 more that I'm bouncing between working on.

Exercise, I haven't managed so much lately because if I'm out of the house, my housemate (and editor) currently has no Internet access. This is a little more confusion. She's also about halfway through the first read of a manuscript which she was going to edit for me over the course of October and November. So no new books released under my real name since Nightmare Season, which has now managed a total of 6 sales.

This means my Author Rank has now dropped past the magic line at around 400k, where Amazon seems to stop sending out new book notifications to people who've followed my author page. So the next time I have a book ready, I suspect it'll be a real nightmare trying to get beyond 1 reader.

Anyway; I should stop procrastinating and go out. I woke early this morning (hope it isn't obvious from my writing that I only managed 3½ hours sleep), so maybe I can get my exercise done before everyone else is awake.

Wish me luck!

I've kind of disappeared from social media lately. I feel like I'm being swallowed by anxiety, and then I can't find time to do the things I want. Or I worry that nobody will want to hear from me, because the only things in my life I can talk about are the writing, and walking. And I don't know if either of those are interesting to anyone else.

I'm on target for nanowrimo; 54670 nanowords, 88755 total words this month. And 977289 total words this year, which seems like an awfully big number.

Most of my work on Soul Trader boils down to this chart, though. I've labelled the main characters in green now, supporting cast in light green, and the antagonists similarly in red/pink. As you can see, I don't have a big bad. He seems to have got bored and escaped from my mind while I was introducing the characters and the world. Ah well :S



I'm really going to make more effort to talk to people, both here and in the real world. But now, I need to sleep.
Hope your week's going well.

Last night I didn't post my nightly recap again. I think I should make more of an effort with that, because the public accountability really helps.



Yesterday, I decided to go for a longer walk. Ended up being 9½ miles this time, a bit longer than the two previous ones. I had a voucher for Burger King, and I think the nearest one to us is in Morecambe. when I was almost in Morecambe, I invited my housemate to join me for lunch. She was busy, I'd forgotten she has a net radio show on Mondays, but she decided instantly that I was going to save the voucher so she could go for a burger in the evening. I agreed, but I really don't have enough money to splash out on eating out twice in one day, so I thought I could wait until I got home and have leftovers.

Unfortunately, I underestimated the walk back. My blood sugar crashed towards the end, so I was staggering up the hill, just struggling to get to the door with one leg flailing and spasming at random. Ended up opening the door and fell down on the doorstep and couldn't move from there for ten minutes. I'm going to try not pushing the exercise thing quite so hard in future, especially not without lunch.

On a lighter not, I took some slightly silly photos on the way around town. Like a leaning sign that seems to be perpendicular to the edge of a diagonal path when viewed from a particular angle. I thought it made an interesting composition, but YMMV.

I managed some writing later in the afternoon, but had a pounding headache. 3548 words for the day; 2023 on Soul Trader, and the remainder on Lynn's New Daddy, or whatever title it ends up having. Which sounds more interesting? Her New Daddy? Lynn's New Daddy? A Little Break?

This morning (Tuesday), I was back to trying to organise my notes for my nano project. I had a plot in mind, and there's a little foreshadowing. But I got diverted for a long time on introducing my characters to a new school/college, and at the same time filling the reader in on how magic and society works in this world. Now I've nearly got the minimal exposition dump out of the way, I realised I can't remember where the plot was going.

Now, the last time this happened was in 2014 I think (maybe 15), when I started with a Justice League fanfic, ended up writing individual stories for a couple of original characters who could take their placves, and by then had forgotten what the actual plot was going to be. That time it worked out well; I threw the characters into one situation after another, and a beautiful plot appeared as if from nowhere that wove all the strands together and tied up all the loose ends, explaining that their disparate origin stories (Atlantean priestess, alien orphan, vigilante martial artist, African prince with ancestral powers, military test subject) all actually had a common origin for their powers if you look a little deeper.

So, maybe if I keep going with these characters, a new plot will; emerge. At 47500 words in, I certainly hope so. I've been trying to keep my character diagrams up-to-date. At least this will help me to remember the names of characters who were thrown in on impulse.





Today so far I've added 1875 words to that story, 1283 on The Big Little Bus, and some notes on a potential board game provisionally titled L00T TREK. 3723 words total, so I think I have some leeway to go to a quiz this evening, and fit in another 2500 steps to bring me up to 10k today.

How's your day going? Everyone meeting your own goals?

Not such a bad day. Not eating well though. Lunch was a pack of 20p instant noodles, with flavour from the last of a jug of stock, and rinsing out the last of the sauce from a bowl of leftovers my housemate had. Dinner was leftover fries (KFC) with cheese and hot sauce, in a tortilla. So lots of carbs, but not much in the way of other nutrients. i really need to improve my diet.

I went for a slightly longer walk today (7½ miles) to see if that improves my mood. Will probably have to keep it up longer to see if it makes a real difference, though.

As far as the wordcount goes, I just about hit my targets. 1975 nanowrimo words, and 3649 total (mostly on The Big Little Bus). Can't believe I've got this far into the month with only one slip.

Also found that KDP and Bookreport had been failing to show this month's sales. Logging out and back in again fixed it; so I can now see that A New Experience has managed 3 sales; not the complete flop I thought it was. I'm still wondering if I should make it cheaper, though. £1.99 for a 20k novella might be reasonable, but I think maybe people won't pay that much for an 8k short.
I really don't understand prices.

What else did I do today?
Oh yes… a new silhouette selfie; wondering about putting that up on my author page. I don't like having my photo taken, so I tend to do one like this when the sun is suitable. What do you think about this for a profile pic?

Hope you have a good weekend too :)

I've not posted here in a while. That's one bad habit I really need to break.
Somebody needs to poke me, because telling people what I've done is a real sense of motivation to do better.

So, half way through November (please don't call it "the ides of Nanowrimo", because the ides of November is the 13th). Words written so far 57802, of which 38148 on Soul Trader. My target was 1667 words per day for nano, and 3334 words per day total. So far this month, I've missed both of those targets once.

Keeping up with penpal letters on Slowly... not so well. Regular exercise, mostly staying on top of that.

How's the first half of the month been for everyone else? Hoping the second half is the same, or different?

Yesterday I didn't go out at all. I'd promised myself I was going to try to walk ten thousand steps every day, so I decided today that I would do double to catch up. In the end, I covered a little more than that, which I think is fine. Got to Crook o' Lune for the first time in quite a while; but the cafe wasn't open because it's no longer summer. Still, it proves that my legs don't mind walking a dozen miles or so.

This evening, I managed to fit in an hour on Soul Trader before dinner, then a few hours playing Pandemic and Cards Against Humanity, and two more hours writing (this time split between nano and The Big Little Bus. 3540 words in the end, of which 1914 on nano. That brings my totals for the month to 32k and 22k, which I think is slightly ahead of where I need to be.

So, I was a bit lazy, but I call that a success.
Next challenge will be waking up at a good time tomorrow.

The one I'm writing for NaNoWriMo. Today I started writing a light BDSM scene for a story which needed a missing chapter to be filled in before publication. 197 words in nearly an hour, and I felt completely drained afterwards. All my other writing today (3751 words) was for nano. Now I'm up to 28k words for the month, of which just over 20k are on the nano project.

I'm seriously considering pushing myself to both write and publish it this month, but that would probably mean finding a volunteer editor willing to read behind while I'm still writing, and make sure that all the continuity adds up. Given how hard I always find it to persuade a friend to edit for me, that could be a challenge.

The problem is, a 'quick' flashback of how my main character learned she's a mage has drawn out to be 6k already, and I'm not sure I like having so much told about the past. It isn't really necessary, but the words keep flowing out and that bit of backstory is growing in the telling.

Dinner today was a quick one, at least. Corned beef hash: 1kg of potatoes, 1kg of mixed root vegetables, all cut into half-inch chunks, boiled for 12-15 minutes, and then a can of corned beef stirred in. A little light on the meat, but at least it's cheap and nutritious.

Yeah, that's all I achieved today. Everybody else managing more?

This morning wasn't a good start on the writing front. I went for a walk, came home, and made a curry risotto for my housemates:



It was really nice :) And probably helps me not to lose weight again.

In the afternoon, I had an idea for a short story. Wrote it out; that came to just over 2k. But I hadn't done anything for nanowrimo. Still, that's not a problem. It was the first write-in of the year in Lancaster, which meant going to a coffee shop and sitting staring at a blank page for around 2 hours, before I finally figured out what the next scene should be. 591 words there, and some more when I got home. By midnight, I'd added a chapter of 1896 words to my nano project, a new short story for the Hope City universe, and a few little bits to bring my writing total up to 4497 words.

In case anyone's curious, here's an extract from my NaNoWriMo words today. Pretty rough, needs polishing up, but it was kind of fun to write, and got me over a bit of a roadblock.

Simone took a deep breath, staring out of the window at the chaotic bustle, and tried not to feel completely lost. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was in an actual mage city for the first time, and there was nobody here to guide her. But as the train finally halted, she looked through the open doorway that connected this room to the corridor, and she could see others looking just as confused as her.

“First day at school,” she told herself. Saying the words aloud made it easier to believe them, and that was the first step on a path to calming down. “Everyone’s scared, everyone’s alone. I just need to make some friends.”

That didn’t make it easier to cope, though. That didn’t make it any easier to step out onto the platform, rather than shrinking into the corner of this little room. Maybe she could–

“–A SHAAARK!” a male voice bellowed, and suddenly the space which had been so quiet a moment before was filled with flailing limbs, yelling, and a bag scattering its contents across the floor. Simone shrieked and backed further into the corner. It was a real test of determination to keep her eyes open, and there was still too much movement for her to see what was going on, except that there was now a boy around her own age lying on his back on the table, while someone else appeared to be attempting to throttle him.

Simone stopped her breathless shrieking just long enough to take in a proper breath, and to let out a proper scream. The action stopped in an instant.

“What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” a fifth person slid in from the corridor, hands on her hips and looking absolutely furious. “You better not have touched that girl, either of you, or so help me–”

Her voice disappeared under a babble of boys all talking at the same time. Simone couldn’t hear a thing they were saying, save that they all speaking in variations on the same accent, so she did her best to calm down. She forced herself to take a deep breath, and not to let it go until her lungs were full. And with each breath, she looked at one of the people in front of her, thinking that if she carefully committed their descriptions to memory, she could speak to the police later, or to station security, or a wizard.

So, 5 days in a row ahead of target; on both the nano and total wordcounts. I think I'm going to keep my daily output above 3333/1667 for as long as I can, even though I could relax a little and still make my targets for the month.

Still need to get some editing done and get either Unusual Vacancy, Lynn's Escape, or Hunter's Gift ready for release. I hate that I can't relax and let writing come at its own pace anymore; and that everything has to be generating money. But that's the downside of making ends meet, I suppose. And after last month, I know that I can do better, if I'm just a little lucky.

How's your day been?

[As usual, my "current music" is a line transcribed from the radio, where I can't quite work out what the lyrics are actually supposed to be]