F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 34

Me, Writing, in 2017

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In my new novel, there’s a character I really adore. This week in rewriting, I reached the chapter where he first appears and to say I love writing for him is an understatement. I have a physical tingle of pleasure writing for him. His dialogue has a flourish, his arrogance comes with an entertaining sneer, there’s something about him that pumps up every chapter he’s in.

So much so, that I’ve got to be careful I don’t let him take control of, and then capsize, the whole book.

I do have plans to write a whole spin off series of short stories centring on him, so hopefully I can restrain myself in this instance. There will be plenty of time to write about him after all, but it is something to think about, to bear in mind.

It can happen to the best.

Dumas obviously falls so in love with Milady in THE THREE MUSKETEERS that for a large chunk of the plot he forgets that there are even such things as musketeers and just focuses on her; while his contemporary over The Channel, Dickens clearly likes all the characters in OLIVER TWIST much more than he likes Oliver Twist.

In my head, this novel is so damn good and I want it to be that good on the published page. As such part of the process is finding all my flaws as a writer and eliminating them; while at the same time kicking away all my normal writerly crutches so I can surprise myself outside the comfort zone.

Identifying that I could favour this character if not careful is a good thing. Save him for another day. I now just have to figure out all the other things I might do wrong..

Doctor Who Reviews (Extra) – Diamond Dogs by Mike Tucker

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Reading the ancillary material so soon after the series ended does offer a different perspective on the development of the last twelve weeks of TV my viewing.

The guys who wrote 2017’s selection of spin-off novels (and they are all men, disappointingly) would only have had chance to read the early versions of the first few scripts and nothing else. It’s no surprise then that all two of the three books seem to be Doctor/Bill focused. Nor is it really a surprise (though it’s always commendable) that Mike Tucker here manages to capture Bill so well. Even if he probably wouldn’t have seen Pearl Mackie’s superb performance, it’s clear a properly realised version of the character was already in place.

And how well her character stands up on the page, just throws into contrast how weirdly off the portrayal of The Doctor is.

Much different to the kindly, sympathetic figure we actually had in the last series, this is very much the aggressive cantankerous Doctor that Clara had to deal with back in Series 8, He even wheels out the insult ‘pudding brains’ (and does it with such frequency that it starts to smack of laziness on the author’s part).

If I had to guess, I’d say that the opening scripts – and this novel – were written before P-Cap decided to leave the role. Once it was clear he was going, the character was softened in the scripts to make him a more sympathetic character as he headed towards his denouement. But because publishing operates on a different timescale, there wasn’t quite time for the books to do the same and so the other grumpier version of the Doctor remains.

(I am quite prepared for the other books to blow this theory out of the water, by having a proper Series 10 Doctor in their pages).

Wrong-ish Doctor apart, DIAMOND DOGS is at its core a moderately enjoyable yarn about mining diamonds from the atmosphere of Saturn.

Now I love mining stories in DOCTOR WHO. They are a staple. They’re practically their own sub-genre, like ‘base under siege’. So, I was all set to really like this one, and as such was surprised me at how indifferent it left me. The story is fine, it has a good sense of action and crams a load of incident in. But it’s also fairly mechanical, with poorly defined villains. There are also way too many characters. A head-spinning amount of characters. Not everybody needs to have names, particularly when their personalities are so poorly defined.

It’s a forgettable book then, a disappointing book even – made doubly so that in a novel called DIAMOND DOGS, there’s only one other obvious David Bowie reference (a character who has ‘Queen Bitch’ etched on her back). That really is a missed opportunity. If I was writing a DOCTOR WHO novel with the same title as a Bowie song, the editor would have to beg me to stop including Bowie references, and even then, I probably wouldn’t.

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But hey, even though I don’t read the comics, it does give me a chance to include this brilliant cover. I actually squeaked with glee the first time I saw this.

The Dark Tower by Stephen KIng

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Dear Stephen.

First let me say, thank you.

I’ve finally come to the end of the road to The Dark Tower and I just wanted to express my thanks for the path travelled. I’ll be honest with you, it was a path I resisted for years and years. In my childhood I had a bad experience with fantasy (hobbits, if you ask. I know, ironic since it was hobbits which inspired your opus) and so have always run shy from the fantasy end of fiction. I’ve read a lot of horror (including a great deal of your work), some science fiction, but have determinedly avoided fantasy. This year I decided to change that. This year I decided to tackle THE DARK TOWER. And I have to say that cramming all seven books into one year’s reading has been intense, it has been a long ride. There were some periods better than others, some books better than others, but I’m glad I made it.

So what did I think? Well, I enjoyed the journey. And that’s what it’s about more than anything else, isn’t it, Stephen? For you, for us, the important part was the hard ground and many wheels of mid-world we travelled. That’s fine, as sometimes it’s the journey rather than the ending which is the most important part. For instance, I’m a great fan of Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW and that is a film all about the journey. (However that isn’t true of Joseph Conrad’s HEART OF DARKNESS, which has a more realised ending). The same was of course true of TV’s LOST. Now I was one of the people who watched LOST right from beginning to the end, and I must admit that I now regret it. When I was still struggling on and those who had dropped out of the LOST experience wondered why I was persevering, I used to defend myself, convinced it would all work out. Obviously those naysayers were right. There was no ending, there was no idea where we going to, there was just some interesting shit thrown into the air and seeing where it landed. Really, it was a waste of time. I don’t feel that about THE DARK TOWER series though.

I just wish though, Stephen, that when you were nineteen and came up with this idea, that you had given some thought to the ending. Clearly at nineteen years old the notion of an ending to this project would have seemed so far away, a distant eventuality for the future – that there was no need to give it huge amounts of consideration. And I’m sure that over the course of the various books the notion of what the ending might look like changed again and again. Good ideas were had and then discarded and then bad ideas were had and discarded and then good and so on and on. (I was tinkering with the endings of the two books I wrote endlessly. I can’t imagine how it is over a seven novel epic.) And yet when you got to the end of this project – no matter how many good ideas you had, no matter how long you had to ponder it – it’s clear that you still had nothing. The opening of your coda just gives away that you know this ending doesn’t work, that it’s insubstantial and weak. Maybe there was no better ending, maybe that was the best you could manage, but if so you could have tried to sell it more, Stephen. You didn’t have to introduce it with an apology for its lameness. I know for a fact that you’re a better writer than that.

In short (ha-ha!) I was profoundly disappointed with the ending. This final book, as you must have known, was going to be judged to a huge degree by the ending. The weight of expectation may have made a satisfactory conclusion almost impossible, but I still think you could have tried a bit harder.

Other flaws in this volume, Stephen:

(And if anyone else happens to be reading this correspondence, the below is really spoiler heavy.)

Well, your sense of pacing seems off for one thing. Events like the end of Eddie’s narrative are pushed through swiftly, while others such as Roland and Susannah’s interminable final trip towards The Dark Tower are just – well – interminable. Just because the journey is difficult and long and hard and boring, it doesn’t mean you have to replicate that experience for your readers. Elsewhere since it was The Man in Black Roland originally pursued, he should have met his death at Roland’s hand – rather than Mordred’s. And really, all that Mordred stuff went nowhere, didn’t it, Stephen? A great confrontation was built up to, but never really came. And a final gripe, you really shouldn’t insert yourself so prominently into the narrative, Stephen, you’re not the kind of writer it sits comfortably with. I know that road accident must have been traumatic, but naked autobiography doesn’t meld well in fantasy. I particularly didn’t like the three Stephen King doppelgangers, nor the inclusion of the plot and characters of INSOMNIA. I must confess I’ve never read INSOMNIA (my sister put me off by telling me it was indescribably boring) and I feel even less inclined now.

So I wasn’t the greatest fan of this volume, but I did enjoy the trip. I did enjoy the road to The Dark Tower. Even in this volume you hit the emotional beats and created heartbreaking moments (as well as a later profound sense of relief). But, this last volume was often rushed where it should have been slow and slow where it should have been rushed; confrontations that had been signposted were just ignored, and you were forced to wave the white flag of defeat when it came to the ending – sorry to harp on…

But still overall, I did enjoy it, Stephen. Certainly it’s not like LOST where I regretted it afterwards. Let me say again that I don’t regret reading THE DARK TOWER series, I’m happy I did so. It was a rewarding experience, I just wish when you were nineteen, and through the many years afterwards, you had formed a clearer idea as to what the hell you were building up to.

Thanks again.

Kind regards.

A Constant Reader.

Me, Writing, in 2017

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I finished the first draft of my Welsh story!

First drafts, particularly really rough initial drafts like this one currently is, are as much about what isn’t there as what is.

At the start you have the notion of a plot, or a story, or of themes you want to explore. You have some characters. Maybe you’ve got some brilliant looking dialogue that came to you at an inopportune moment and you had to scribble down frantically. But you don’t know how everything will coalesce until you attempt to get it down on paper. It might be that it all falls apart within a few pages of writing, that flaws you’d masked by your enthusiasm for this NEW IDEA, suddenly become horribly and insurmountably apparent.

Or you might end up with something that might possibly, if you work on it hard, turn out to be good.

That’s where I am right now.

It’s a long short story (about 12,000 words, I’d guess) and at the moment it’s quite shapeless, but I can see that a good shape is somewhere within reach. I have the characters, I think. (Even a major character who wasn’t there in my scribbled synopsis and just burst her way into the narrative.) But the dialogue is rubbish and will need to be completely rewritten. I also haven’t got the tone right. It needs to be more sardonic, to have a kind of dark humour that gets so close to the bone it’s nearly snapping the damn thing in half.

There’s a lot there that has to be changed, a lot that has to be done. Yet I think I can see how to do it. Sometimes a first draft is so far away from the great story/book you envisaged in your mind as to leave you feeling hopeless. But that definitely isn’t the case here. I think I can see a way to make this damn good, and that cheers me immensely.

Angel of the Abyss by Ed Kurtz

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Undoubtedly, it’s because I read too much Raymond Chandler when I was young, before moving on to read too much James Ellroy, but the sub-genre I love most is probably the Hollywood-set murder mystery/thriller.

What I find so fascinating is the mixture of that impossible Technicolor glamour, with tawdry and brutal crime. It’s the tearing down of that wonderful façade – the sound stages, the beautiful women made-up and coiffured to look more incredible than anyone ever had before – to reveal something more far more fragile and damaged underneath. But of course, it being Hollywood you just put the painted backdrop back up, reapply the luscious lipstick to your leading lady (or new leading lady, if the old one was an unfortunate victim) and carry on. No matter how many murders take place, the pretence always wins.

Of course, it helps that I imagine all these stories with noir lighting, but actually ANGEL IN THE ABYSS doesn’t have a 1940s segment. Instead it’s the tale of a film restorer of today leaving the comfort of his projector in Boston to restore a legendary silent film in L.A., and finding dead bodies piling up around him. It’s entertaining stuff, with ‘poor nobody suddenly finding himself out of the depth on the mean streets’ being such a Hollywood cliché itself, that of course it can be played around with in fiction. Here we even have two nobodies out of their depth, taking turns at the investigation, and such are the conventions of this kind of story that you don’t even mind when they both get suddenly quite good at the hard-ass stuff.

The film to be restored is a legendary lost silent classic called (of course) ‘Angel of the Abyss’, and the action in the present alternates with flashbacks to the 1920’s making of the film. This though is where the novel isn’t on such sure footing. Kurtz never quite convinces in the 1920’s milieu like he does in the current day, and there’s an artificiality to these chapters. But then maybe I’m being too harsh, as the characters here are actors and directors and producers filming in front of painted backdrops, and so maybe that artificiality is fitting. It’s a story that hinges on trying to create something real out of the phoniness of Tinsel-Town and so, even though it takes a little getting used to, the artificiality might actually work to its benefit.

ANGEL OF THE ABYSS isn’t Chandler or Ellroy. It isn’t Megan Abbot. It also lacks the playfulness of a Stuart Kaminsky. But actually this is a good, gritty and unassuming thriller written by a man who clearly loves old films.

I love old films myself – and adore this kind of novel – so I enjoyed the hell out it.

Song of Susannah by Stephen King

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In anticipation of the film coming out, here – week by week – are my reviews of THE DARK TOWER novels.

Here’s a question: Does Stephen King writing himself as a character into the penultimate episode of THE DARK TOWER make it more or less epic?

Mid-way through, our heroes Roland and Eddie find themselves in Stephen King’s 1977 home where they chat with the author himself. But where does this take us?

When Martin Amis does it, it can seem like the height of solipsism, an author’s attempt to wank slowly and grandly in public. And yet, the substance of this visit, and King’s appearance, actually brings together all of King’s other books – to a lesser or greater degree – under THE DARK TOWER banner.

Yes, it could be an exercise in extreme naval gazing, Stephen King removing the fluff with pliers and delicately combing the surrounding stomach hair, but on the other hand it turns THE DARK TOWER from a three thousand page novel into a twenty thousand plus page novel. Okay, we’ve already seen big allusions to THE STAND and SALEM’S LOT (and there are probably lots of other more subtle references I’ve missed, my memory is not what it was) but this book is overtly stating the fact that everything Stephen King has ever written (and presumably will ever write) is about this incredible quest for The Dark Tower.

Which – I don’t know – might be one of the most brilliant sleight of hands ever, even though I still find myself irritated by how meta it is.

SONG OF SUSANNAH is the most difficult book in this series to review. More than any other it feels like a bridging novel, a shifting pieces into place novel, a journey without a clear destination novel. Even more so than THE WASTE LANDS, which at least did get through a hell of a lot of stuff before it abandoned us with Blaine the Mono, this is a book all geared towards an ending which isn’t there – an ending which won’t arrive until the next episode. So the only thing we have to look at is the journey, and how thrilling or gripping it is.

But, unfortunately, disjointed and disappointing are the best ways to describe it.

Forces beyond their control split up the ka-tet (our central posse) as they head once again to New York City (both the 1977 and 1999 versions). Unfortunately this splitting up doesn’t ramp up the tension across the novel, but instead turns out lumpy and forced together.

For a start, Eddie and Roland’s segment would seem to play for a lot less stakes than the rest of the ka-tet. They find themselves in 1977 dealing with antiquarian book seller, Calvin Tower, in an attempt to save the blessed rose of New York which is one of the key symbols of The Dark Tower.

Now this rose, and the vacant lot in which it sits, has been a big symbol for a number of books – but it still just feels like a symbol. The other part of the ka-tet is trying to save one of their own, Susannah – a human being. And no matter how well you describe this rose, no matter how beautiful and important you make it sound, human beings are clearly going to find greater empathy with other people rather than flowers.

It’s Susannah who is the star of the piece, the character around whom it all spins. Roland and Eddie are elsewhere and their plot is actually over half-way through; while Jake and Callahan arrive later with the attempt to save her. So it’s Susannah who carries the book’s weight. And this is problematic, as I find her the least well defined of the ka-tet.

Undoubtedly this is due to the extreme schizophrenia the character suffers. There isn’t one character in Susannah, generally there is at least two and in this book three. It almost feels as if King decided that the female lead in his great fantasy series could do virtually anything, and then proceeded to get her to do exactly that. As such the character of Susannah herself suffers, as sometimes she has the personality of Detta barging her out of the way, while now there’s also Mia jostling for space as well.

To keep the drama going, King lets her have lots of arguments with herself, but after awhile these become tiresome and ever so slightly ridiculous. He tries his best to sell the notion of her disappearing to various fantasy places to debate with herself, but there’s only so much drama a writer can squeeze out of a woman talking to herself, no matter what the stakes. After about the third such argument it all feels a bit like – well – extreme naval gazing.

(King does at least apologise for the “ridiculous Butterfly McQueen’ accent in which Detta speaks. Clearly the charges of racism bothered this liberal white writer. However he then goes to ruin it by including over the top, stereotypical Japanese tourists, which feel like a sudden transportation to a now justly forgotten 1940’s Warner Brothers’ propaganda cartoon).

In the end, well that’s the thing we don’t really have an end.

The danger is increased with a particularly gruesome scene in which King once again stretches his horror writing muscles. But we have no resolution, no pay-off. In THE WASTE LANDS the journey was luxuriated in, it was entertaining while it happened. In SONG OF SUSANNAH, the journey doesn’t flow in the same way, with the narrative voice not really caring, just keeping an eye on the distant ending. But without any knowledge of what that ending is, it’s difficult to see this volume as anything other than insubstantial.

Into the Wild by John Krakauer

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The book of INTO THE WILD feels exactly like what it is: a magazine article blown up large to fill a book. Perhaps fitting for a story about a wanderer, Krakauer heads off on all kinds of diversions and detours from the main story, some of them are interesting and add to the reader’s understanding, others… It’s never a good sign when I find myself skim reading a chapter because I’m bored, but that happened more than once here. Eventually it would get back to its main narrative and I’d be pulled in again, but in a book about an all consuming quest set amid epic landscapes, there’s quite a bit that’s surprisingly humdrum.

At it’s heart, this is the story of Christopher McCandless: a bright, personable young man from an affluent background, who threw it all in to go on a quasi religious pilgrimage through the wilds of America, before dying of starvation in a remote part of Alaska.

There’s part of me that admires Chris, his embrace of freedom and his determination to do things his way; but there’s also a large part that really irritated me, his spurning of other people’s help, his callousness towards his family. There is self-sufficiency and then there’s selfishness – and he’s frequently the latter.

Add to that the fact he makes more than one idiotic move. He wanted to head into the wilds of America, to lose himself in places which were unmapped. But even in 1991, all of America was mapped, and so to get around this challenge to his ideal, he decided to just not bring a map. As a stupid consequence of which the place he died was remote, but not really remote by Alaska standards. Help wasn’t far away, but he’d arranged it so there was no way he could know that.

Despite the tediousness of occasional chapters, Krakauer relates his tale with compassion and clearly knows the territory and can empathise with his subject’s mindset. It’s a book that asks for understanding for this young man’s way of life, and I think succeeds some way to getting that.

I read this as myself and Mrs Jameson saw the film at Christmas and I was intrigued by it. It’s overlong itself, but did stay wedged in my memory. That despite the fact I came away somewhat irritated by the central character. I think I feel even more annoyed by the protagonist now, but still – despite the flaws – I’m glad I went out of the way to read this. I’m not one of nature’s adventurers myself, I’ll never do the things Chris McCandless did, but it pleases me that there are still people out there who can throw off all of society’s norms and make the world the way they want it.

Doctor Who Reviews – The Doctor Falls

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Written with no prior knowledge of what’s going to be in the episode – I watch the ‘Next Time’ trailer and make sure I see, hear and read nothing else – and written immediately after my first viewing. This is my unfettered, emotional response to this week’s DOCTOR WHO fare.

Most definitely a roller-coaster of an episode – one that was undoubtedly exhilarating, but a story with its share of downs to go along with the ups.

First off, poor Bill. I’m still in the Poor Bill camp.

Actually, it was a so simple, and yet amazing idea to have Pearl Mackie play the character for most of it, showing the actual person behind the cyberman throughout was a work of humanising genius as good as anything in SPARE PARTS. It was affecting, tear inducing and sometimes beautiful – particularly when she was rebelling against it in that sing-song Mondasian cyberman voice, which heard in that context hammered home how much they were made for tragedy.

But it did seem that Bill managed to escape cyber-conversion only to fall into the clutches of a Deus ex Machina.

Obviously Moffat had to find some way to save the companion, and he did seed that tear line in the first episode – but it did still seem a bit unearned, didn’t it? The two of the them had never been a couple, never even been on a date, but now they’re going to spend the rest of their existences together? Bill was so cut up about Heather’s passing that she’s barely – if at all – mentioned her since. (So little has she been a thought of through the series since the first episode, I actually just had to look her up to see whether she was called Heather or Hannah). As such, rather than heartening, it does just feel like a big old plot contrivance to give Bill a happy ending after Moffat wrote himself into a corner. And in a way, that makes me a little sad – as Bill was such a sparky and fun character, that it seems wrong to think of her now as a space puddle. Even if she is a space puddle who might be falling in love.

Similarly the cybermen were a lot more disappointing this week. Gone were the brilliant body horror aspects of last week, instead they returned to clunking robots. Yes, like other fan-boys I appreciated that Moffat tried to make the cyber history make sense – with Telos, Mondas, Earth all having their own kinds, so thus explain the inconsistencies across the years. But really, they weren’t very interesting, were they? They just stomped around and occasionally got blown up. Even the Mondasian cybermen stomped, and as Mrs Jameson pointed out – surely they don’t have enough metal in them to stomp.

Maybe, the show needs to give up on the cybermen for a while, or if it is going to do them just go full body-horror and not worry too much about the ‘army of marching cybermen attack’ bit. It’s been done and it’s getting boring now.

And then there was The Master and Missy.

What was the bloody point of The Master and Missy in this?

I loved Michelle Gomez.

I thought John Simm was fantastic in both episodes.

Yet, if you’re going to have two versions of The Master in the same episode, then surely that should be your absolute focus of the episode. Not something shoved off to the side.

And certainly not something shoved off to the side that has no bearing at all on the conclusion of the episode. They hung out, they flirted, they killed each other – the end.

What was the point of it?

Now, there was that lingering shot of Missy clutching The Doctor’s hand, and if she’s passed him something that has a bearing on the next episode, and if this isn’t the last we’ve seen of her/him, then I am prepared to print all of the above out and eat it.

But if it is the last we’ve seen of them, I am going to be so disappointed and wonder how Moffat could ever have fumbled the ball so spectacularly.

(My bet is that it is leading to something, or at least that’s my fervent hope).

So, a lot of the above was complaints, and yet there was so much I loved about this episode too. P-Cap was genuinely amazing. I’ve thought he was fantastic right through his tenure, but tonight he really raised his game. So noble, so frightened, so desperate for a way to make everything right when he knows his life-force is ebbing away and everything is stacked against him.

M-Lu too, without much of a hint beforehand, seemed to go on an epic character arc in this story. From man with a limited mission to serve The Doctor, to the hero and saviour and protector of a whole society.

The direction was superb, the dialogue was great and – despite all my moans above – it did lead to a conclusion so breath-taking in its tragic grandeur. The Doctor dying on a battlefield, not regenerating, instead sacrificing himself completely to save the children.

Obviously he was going to be revived somehow, but still in those moments he lay on the scorched earth surrounded by cybermen, DOCTOR WHO gave us some of the most beautiful, heart-rending (both myself and Mrs Jameson were choked up, Baby Jameson laughed – she’s such a trooper) scenes in its history.

And that’s why this episode was frustrating, because at its worst it really annoyed me, and yet I’m keenly aware there is absolute, undeniable brilliance here too.

End notes

So, the First and Thirteenth incarnations together at Christmas. I did text my sister to ask what my eldest nieces – ten and twelve years old respectively, and massive Nu-Who fans – made of it, and they were apparently baffled by the old man at the end. It may be a bit of a problem that most of the audience will be as totally unfamiliar with Hartnell era DOCTOR WHO, as they are with – say – CITIZEN JAMES. The BBC is clearly going to have to educate the audience somehow. As an old school fan however, I desperately hope they can make it work and am already buzzing with excitement. Roll on Christmas!

 

Here are all my reviews for the series, sometimes contrary, but always honest to the moment after I first watched the episode:

World Enough and Time

The Eaters of Light

Empress of Mars

The Lie of the Land

The Pyramid at the End of the World

Extremis

Oxygen

Knock Knock

Thin Ice

Smile

The Pilot

Free Short Story by F.R. Jameson

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A tale of madness or, perhaps, a tale of monsters….

 

Me, Writing, in the first half of 2017

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Crumbs! Halfway through the year already.

It feels, in many ways, to have gone so quickly. But in others, the Thirtieth of June seems like a whole other world from the First of January.

For in that time, my entire mindset has changed.

Six months ago, I was just pootling along, going nowhere.

Now I’m striding towards a goal. I’m feeling more positive, more fulfilled. Overworked certainly, but I’m happy for it.

For such a long time, my creativity was at a low-ebb. I’d start on things, feel wildly enthusiastic about them, but lose momentum and whatever I was writing would grind to a halt. A new idea would come along, and when your approach is basically lackadaisical, then a new idea always looks more enticing.

Somewhere along the line I had lost my spark.

Okay, in January our baby girl was three months old, so we were just coming off the first intense twelve weeks of sleeplessness before we settled into a kind of routine.

I can’t really beat myself up too much in that period for not being creative though. Towards the end of last year, three-shot Americanos were my best friends. I wasn’t going to get much in the way creative done.

But by February, I was still just pootling along and I knew I had to change. I knew I had to do something. My approach of just carving time out at the weekend wasn’t working. It wasn’t working at all. I had sunk myself into a rut, and if I didn’t want to condemn myself to a lifetime of frustration (and, of course, I very much didn’t) I had to somehow pull myself out.

I knew I had to change the way I lived my life. Change the way I wrote. Focus more.

Instead of allowing myself to be easily distracted, I had to use my time smarter. I couldn’t lose myself in a magazine anymore, crap TV had to be jettisoned, and even books had to be rationed,

(It has actually made the practice of reading all the more precious.)

Time is valuable and I really needed to use it wisely.

So, rather than read on trains now, I now write on trains.

Rather than just getting some fresh air lunchtime, I sit in cafes and I write.

Every opportunity I get, I write.

And it’s working.

At the end of February, my plan was to just write some short stories on the train to work each day – see how that went. But the idea that came to me on the second morning swiftly blew up into a full novel. (More than that, I now have in my head a trilogy of novels.)

It’s now just over four months later, and I have written two drafts of that book and am now rewriting it again.

Furthermore, I have published two short stories on Kindle – FOLIAGE and THE STRANGE FATE OF LORD BRUTON.

I have another collection of shorter fiction almost ready to go for September.

On trains in the morning I am currently working on a Welsh short story/novella, and have an idea for a Christmas one that will hopefully (crosses all fingers) be ready for the season in question.

As my brother-in-law said to me at the weekend, I seem to have got my writing mojo back.

And it’s an incredibly satisfying feeling.