Update

Okay, while in Chester I obviously didn’t keep up my word count and prior to that I was checking the final sheets of Zero Point so now, after ten working days of not doing any writing, I must get back into it. Yesterday I was still knackered. I could put that down to the unaccustomed walking we did but I suspect the heavy red wine consumption played its part too. This post, by the way, is me warming up my mental motor.

So where am I? The Penny Royal thing now stands at 77,604 words, at (about) chapter 10 of 20. I still haven’t reached the initial piece I wrote – it getting perpetually pushed ahead of the growing text that started out as back story and is turning into a book by itself. This, incidentally, is a meeting between one of the main characters and the drone Amistad. When I do reach this it will have to be completely revised, if not completely dumped (rather like the section I posted on the message board workshop, which I dropped when I redacted The Voyage of the Sable Keech). Now it’s time for me to reread the last chapter, insert another chapter break, and just get on.

What else? I’m sitting on a computer chair that keeps tipping over since, when leaning over to peer out the window yesterday, I managed to snap off one of the caster feet (I’ve ordered a new steel base for it through ebay, superglue having lasted about 5 seconds). My waffling about Mars has now appeared on SF Signal. I’ve finished my morning reading, which consisted of 14 science articles. I’m still waiting for a pdf or jpeg of the cover of Zero Point so I can post it here. And I’ve heard no more about the possibility of the whole Owner trilogy being published in America.

Right – to work.