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With 24 hours to spare, I managed to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge 2006 and turn in just over fifty thousand words in thirty days. 'The Hotel Galileo' is far from complete, but the lion's share is in the bag. There are still maybe two or three chapters which need to be added, plus some fleshing out of the middle section before I can truly say the first draft is complete. But right now, I am very pleased with myself.

Hit the 40k word count mark this weekend with The Hotel Galileo . Hopefully, if I can put it in the work over the next three nights, I will achieve the 50k goal of NaNoWriMo and have a finished first draft novel to boot. I have never enjoyed writing a book as much as I have this one. THG is probably the happiest writing experience of my life. And what's more, I am now looking at a follow up - the first time in my life that I've ever considered doing a sequel. Deadline: Thursday Night.

Short Story Sale - 'The Glamour' After many rewrites and falling in and out of love with this little tale, I have finally found a market for 'The Glamour'. Chimaera Serials is a new online magazine which prints both short stories and serials. 'The Glamour' is scheduled to appear in their January issue. 'The Glamour' tells the story of scarred Wendy, who comes across a gypsy glamour - a vial of blood that, when imbibed, makes the owner appear beautiful and irresistible to men. Great for Wendy, not so great for the menfolk of her local town, as there is a dark twist in the tale. Well, I couldn't write something that was just 'nice' could I? NaNoWriMo Update A great deal of ups and downs during the past week. The Hotel Galileo got up to 25,500 at one point, then had to be severely rejigged (lots of adding and subtracting) so that the final word count last night was 26,600. Still hoping to complete the first draft by Nov 30, but I'm not su...

My story 'Deus Ex Machina' appeared in Fourth Horseman Press's magazine Revelation last December, issue 3:2. The people at FHP collect all the stories published in the mag (all dealing with the theme of doomsday scenarios ) into an annual anthology, and Volume III is now on sale -- priced $16.99. That's a whole year's worth of doom! 'The Man Who Ate Planets' is my second story to be published by them and is due to appear in issue 4:1 of Revelation, on sale later this month. NaNoWriMo Update - Day 10 Things are still going well. Day 10 should be yielding a total word count of 16,660, or thereabouts. My total tonight is 17,200. So that's cool.

NaNoWriMo - Day 7 Things are moving steadily forward with 'The Hotel Galileo'. The word total so far is 11680 , which is bang on target for the recommended daily word count. It's amazing. This story is an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery set in deep space, with several convoluted plot twists and a plethora of surprises, and yet I have never written any of the plot down on paper. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I can't write any of it down on paper. It's alive in my head right now, as clear as crystal and bursting to be written. I feel that if I do commit the plot and all its intricacies to paper, the story will die. And I sincerely don't want that to happen. I know where the story is going, I know how each character (red herrings and all) fit into the larger plot, so I'm just going to keep at it. And in theory I should be finished by November 30th. So it's not like I'm going to forget any of it. Unless I get a bang on the head or some...

I've changed my chosen novel again for this year's NaNoWriMo challenge. Who said I was indecisive? I've decided to dust off 'The Hotel Galileo' for a second attempt. This is actually the novel I started during last year's challenge, only to end up scrapping the original idea halfway through the month. This new version starts from scratch - and reads like a murder mystery in space. I realised I could have a lot of fun with this, more fun than I would writing 'Judas Pike', anyway, which is a very sombre and serious work. If I end up changing my mind again tomorrow I will really be angry with myself. I might just throw myself under a milk float. It won't kill me, but I'm sure it'll really hurt . Wish me luck.

Well, in a surprising twist, I sat down tonight to begin my second National Novel Writing Month challenge with supernatural thriller 'The Estate', only to end up switching projects at the last minute to a novel idea I've had simmering away on the back burner for quite some time - 'Judas Pike'. I won't give too much of the story away, except to say that it's an alternate history novel, mixed in with a bit of sci-fi. I'm very pleased with it so far. 1700 words on the first night. Already better than last year. But it's early days and things could go wrong at any point in the next thirty days. Need to keep focused and keep turning out those words every day. The reason for the change? I felt 'The Estate' just wasn't ready. The story was underdeveloped, and the cast of characters were not interesting enough. Yet. A project for the future, though, I'm sure. 'Judas Pike' is just a cracking story with big themes that I can really get ...