One Little Month...

(As Hamlet says in the play!) till publication day! The first draft was finally finished last night - or, more accurately, in the early hours of this morning - and I'm now embarking on big revisions to slim it down and sharpen it up. Not sure what to make of it yet... just pleased I found a way to knit all the bits together! This is the bit I really love - it's much more fun editing than writing! The publicity machine kicks in next week and I'm merrily telling everyone there will be a product by June 21st so I'm going to have to get my head down! Another ballet packed weekend, with Birmingham Royal Ballet in Durham for 2 days - off to King's Lynn on Saturday to catch them there too! Stunning performances of two of my favourite ballets and an introduction to one I hadn't seen before. They're magnificient! Frantically reading Donna Leon's Brunetti books at the moment - devouring them on the commute to work! Having only recently come back from Venice I can imagine it all vividly and her 'hero' is a really lovely bloke who (as a refreshing change!) has a reasonably stable home life and a family who aren't entirely disfunctional! Really admire her pared down style! Half term looms on the horizon - thank goodness for holidays! Best cake: going to cheat - it was a pudding - Rhubarb and Gooseberry Fool at Oldfield's restaurant in Durham. Divine...

The Countdown has started!

Yes! I'm about three thousand words from the end and so I've bitten the proverbial bullet! 'SCOTCH PINE' will be available from midnight on June 21st - the 'longest day' of the year in the UK seems to be an appropriate birth date for a book that is the longest in the series and which has been so long in the writing. Having a countdown timer works wonders for focusing the mind: forty days doesn't seem very long at all! There's a lot still to do, but I'm confident we can meet the deadline. Keep checking back for the latest information! Had a brilliant day on Saturday, managing more than 5,000 words and then going out in the evening to see Eddi Reader in concert - she was wonderful, accompanied by the amazing John McCusker and Boo Hewerdine - a real treat. Her Robert Burns CD was partly responsible for my Burns fixation back in 2005 and her music has been playing in the background while I've written all three books. Her new album is lovely. I left feeling uplifted and recharged! Best cake of recent weeks was the cherry and almond scone - still warm - at Milkhope in Northumberland. It pains me to say it, but it would've given Mary Enbryte's offerings a run for their money...gorgeous!

Woes and Triumphs...

Since I last logged in, I've been ILL! Very nasty chest infection picked up, I suspect, before I went away and which has lasted two weeks. I am getting better but I found myself totally incapacitated from last weekend, getting breathless from just putting on my shoes - and this from the woman who walked round Venice for eleven hours for four consecutive days!

I've been off work - I can't remember the last time I was away this long- and only ventured back today. HOWEVER: there has been a pay off. After the reasonable success of the Easter holiday writing and the work I've put in from my sick bed this week (literally!) I am pleased to report that I am one chapter away from finishing the first draft of SCOTCH PINE! Given that this weekend is a bank holiday in the UK, I'm pretty confident that - by this time next week - there'll be an ending!

And it's stopped feeling like toothpaste squeezing. In fact I've enjoyed the last three or four chapters as much as anything I've ever written, maybe because it's taken my mind off my aches, pains and wheezing chest! (Or perhaps the cough medicine has had something to do with it! ) There's still lots of work to do with cutting down the word-count and tightening up the plot - I like to think of it as the book going into traction - but with my 'editor' able to read again, all systems are go! Best cake? Sorry - I've been off food as well! But you can't have everything...

Venice

I'm just back from four magical days in Venice, with my mum - we've both had 'significant' birthdays this year and this was our way of celebrating them! We've walked and wandered and sauntered and looked and strolled and photographed (this is one of mine!) and generally meandered all over the city, enjoying the sunshine and the cappuchinos and taking in the occasional bit of culture and art as we stumbled across it. It really is an amazing place, and once you get away from San Marco, very quiet and uncrowded. We've had a brilliant time and I didn't want to come back! I'd forgotten how much I loved it last time I visited: you can look at pictures but they don't give you the complete sensory experience of being there, smelling the salt water and hearing it lapping against the stones, feeling the sunshine and hearing the birdsong and the church bells. It is paradise. No wonder so many people over the years have been captivated by it. I've already started saving up for next year: there won't be another G&P NOVEL for a while after this one, but I'm planning some short stories, maybe even taking Partridge and Marmalade to Venice for a short break... That way I can justify it as research!

Sadly, it's back to reality with a bump and back to work tomorrow. I've written quite a bit this holiday, although things haven't flowed easily at all - sometimes it's been a bit like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube which is really just about empty! I'm hoping the spring sunshine and the Venice vibes will have done the job when I resume the task tomorrow evening. I promised my readership(!) a spring publication date and the end of spring approaches... The story is almost complete. There's just a final push to get the last few scenes completed before the big edit begins. Maybe May? Or am I being too optimistic?? Can we pretend June is still spring????

Best cake? That's a tough one - although we didn't sample them all, the shop windows were full of confections which looked as if they might be the best cake in Venice. (and therefore, probably, the world!)However, I think I'd have to go with the croissants with crema (confectioner's custard!) which were served up every morning in our hotel as part of breakfast. Seriously nice!

All up in the air...

I'm on holiday at last!! We started off in style with a weekend visit to Manchester and the Lowry at Salford to see our 'team' Birmingham Royal Ballet. Three performances of Sylvia in March hadn't been nearly enough so we did the Saturday matinee and evening and even managed to squeeze in company class. On Sunday we explored Manchester - the first time we've ever been - and I found myself agreeing to a trip on the Manchester Eye, a giant ferris wheel in the centre of the city. I'm not quite as bad as Grouse when it comes to heights, but I don't mind admitting being rather terrified. I was fine as long as the wheel kept turning, but when it stopped and we were just about at the top - and our pod started swaying in the breeze... well, it was an experience! I'm glad I did it - I felt very brave for the rest of the day - and really rather silly that I'd been so scared. And it might make a good setting for a short story one day. Yesterday's outing was a much more frightening proposition - the opticians. I don't mind the eye exam but choosing frames is a nightmare. It's like choosing a new nose or a different pair of ears! The fact that I'm practically blind without my glasses means my long suffering 'editor' had to make the decision for me: I'm useless when it comes to choosing with the webcam pictures either - I can't get past how dreadful I look! On the whole, it's an ordeal I could happily do without. Came home and engrossed myself in writing for a few hours: Hamish Bolph and Drover are all in a spot of serious bother at the moment and I'm considering the prospects for their rescue. Hoping the next few days will move things along a little!
Best cake? Manchester City Art Gallery where a giant piece of delicious cinammon and carrot cake was shared to push down one of the best cappuchinos I've had outside Italy. Speaking of Italy... but not just yet!

The Acorn, a wiffle lever and some progress...

Excellent writing weekend - managed over 3,700 words and a substantial amount of editing. With a holiday from work approaching, I'm hoping to be just about finished by the end of April. At the moment, it's an unwieldy 340 pages so there'll have to be some trimming, otherwise cost and weight will be prohibitive! Left Hamish tied to a chair at the end of the session on Saturday. It ought to keep him out of mischief for the week... Music on the stereo for the last three days has been The Acorn's album - 'Glory Mountain Dreamer' which is gorgeous. They were support for Elbow when we went to see them a couple of weeks ago and they were really good, but the album is sublime - a bit like Fleet Foxes but more mellow, lots of banjo and guitar and some Penguin Cafe type rhythms. The words are heavenly. As for the wiffle lever...well, since January, I've been indulging in a childhood obsession, working my way through boxed sets of the BBCs 'Blakes 7' on DVD and I came across the intriguing 'Wiffle Lever to Full!' book by Bob Fischer which is funny and nostalgic and really made me smile last week. Bob Fischer has a brilliant blog - I'll find the link and post it - in which he is currently serialising his 1984 diary with 2009 annotations. If you were a child of the 80s or indeed a lover of tv sci-fi, please check it out! Best cake at the moment is probably Costa coffee's breakfast loaf which is packed with carrot, apples, sultanas and pumpkin and sunflower seeds. It feels very healthy which is just as well as the accompanying latte you need with it most definitely isn't!

Now the Ballet-hoo is over...

I'm settling back down to writing. We managed 6 performances in 4 days, plus various activities which the Friends of Birmingham Royal Ballet organise for our delight. It has been an amazing week but I am exhausted today! I can honestly say that I haven't given the novel a thought since last weekend and I am aware of time ticking by... So tomorrow night I'll get going again. (Best cakes this week were found in Starbucks. So were some of the company, which definitely made the cakes even tastier!)
Ballet has been an inspiration for poetry for about ten years although I've never really done anything with the poems I wrote. However, I'm considering 'lulu-ing' a slim volume of the ones I like the best, just for the pleasure of seeing them in print. Once you've published one book, it really does become an obsession. Maybe, once Scotch Pine is finished, I'll bite the bullet and have a go! BRB are an amazing company, talented and individual and so exciting to watch.
I'm also toying with replacing my beloved laptop. I've had it almost six years, some of the labels on the keys have worn off and several of the keys stick or need to be hit twice (strangely, P, M, and most of the vowels, but not E...?!) The battery hasn't worked for years. There's probably enough shortbread crumb under the keyboard to make an entire Petticoat Tail, and the cracked cover is beginning to resemble crazy paving. It's as slow as a tortoise working to rule, and it crashes at the most innopportune moments, but I love it dearly: we've been through a lot together and I have a (quite ridiculous and throughly sentimental) desire to finish SP on it. After that... well, maybe it's time to retire it!