Went to a quick in my local pub last night, with Bas, an uncle of mine called Mike, and a neighbour called John L. I like a good pub quiz and have entered a few in recent years, always just for fun. But last night we almost won! We came second in the end, just 2 questions behind the winners. In a weird way it’s almost worse finishing so close behind than it is to wind up mid-table -- you go away cursing the answers you should have got right (such as when the Chernobyl Disaster happened, or the year of the Great Fire Of London). If only you’d thought a bit harder, you could have been top dog!!! True, it was only a small village pub quiz, but I’ve got quite a competitive nature once I get going, and to me it was the same sort of feeling as if one of my books got to second place in a chart but only sold a few less copies than the top-placed book. I was pleased to climb so high, of course, but dagnabit, when you get that close, it’s a pain in the butt not to go a tiny bit further and WIN!!!! Oh well -- maybe next time ...

Today I finished editing the third book of my four-book series. I also put together the April edition of the Shanville Monthly, and sent out an email to everyone who subscribes to it. The emails are still flowing out as I type -- there are over 16,000 email addresses in my database, so it takes a LONG time for my system to process them all, at least 12 hours, sometimes a lot more if the system hits a glitch along the way!!! I’ve been doing the Shanville Monthly for close to 8 years now, and even though the internet has come on in leaps and bounds since I first started (I used to send out the monthly emails using Outlook Express for the first few years!!), and there’s probably a better, swifter way these days to keep readers up to date with all the latest news, I like the old-fashioned feel of the monthly. It’s like a magazine or comic that comes out once a month. I look forward to bringing all the news together and sending it out in one big monthly lump, and I hope you guys do too.

If you read the April Monthly, you’ll see that I mention a new series that I’m tentatively edging towards making a start on. I can’t say anything about it yet, mostly because I don’t know much about it -- hell, I don’t even know if it will come together, if I’ll even start on it at all!!! But I think it has the potential to be a multi-book series, something on the scale of The Saga or The Demonata. I’ve been playing around with ideas for it for a few years, teasing away at the few scenes and ideas which have been knocking around my mind. It’s been slow, hard going, but I think it’s coming together -- in recent months I’ve been thinking about it more and more, piecing together different parts, running various plots and ideas through the mill of my imagination. I have the sense that I’m ready to push it further, to sit down and start putting ideas on paper.

This is the part of the job that’s hardest to explain, and the part that I think is of most interest to other people. It’s the creative maelstrom that comes before the actual beginning of a book. Right now I have scraps of ideas and story-lines which might one day form the core of a long series. But they’re nowhere near complete. There aren’t just gaps in the structure -- there are black holes!!!! I’m going to try to pull enough of those ideas together to get me started, to set me on the path of what will hopefully work out. But I can’t fully explain how I’m going to do that, because I don’t really understand the process myself. All I know is that I have to work on those ideas, bounce them off each other, ask questions of them, sniff around them. What happens if I do this? What happens if I do that? Will I throw in a bit of sci-fi to see what happens? Where do I want to set it?

So many questions. So many ideas. So many possibilities. If I sat down and thought about the scale of embarking on such a project, I’d be terrified and I wouldn’t have the courage to begin!! Something I often say to young writers is "Don’t think too much!" Writing can be a scary prospect if you brood about it. You just have to get stuck in. Of course you can’t actually do that until you have SOME idea of where you want to go. But a sliver of an idea is usually enough. Inever have all the answers to a book before I start it. Getting a few key facts straight is normally enough to get me going -- after that I just have to trust that the story will suck me in and reveal more of itself to me there further along I stumble with it. I said before on this blog that the trigger which made me sit down and write my four-book series was a scene set on a ship -- I saw the scene unfold in the cinema of my mind, and knew I had to start writing ASAP. In this case the trigger seems to be a personal trait about the main character. I had an insight last week, nothing major, but as soon as it flashed through my thoughts, I knew it was RIGHT, and it made me want to start writing. I think a lot of writing is like that. You ask questions, consider all sorts of answers, and wait for one to strike you as RIGHT ... as TRUE ... as MOTIVATIONAL. The answers are different for each writer, and in each instance, but once you stagger across it, you KNOW. I don’t know HOW you know. You just KNOW. And that’s when you begin to write, or at least begin to seriously prepare to write -- because something about a story (maybe a key scene, maybe a trivial detial) compels you to.

I don’t know how much sense all that makes to you guys -- or even how much sense it makes to me! Writing is both very simple and very complicated. When I try to go beyond the most basic advice, I always feel as if I’m skating on hair-thin ice. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, I’ve a germ of an idea for a new series, which may or may not happen, depending on how much mileage I can wring out of the idea over the next few weeks or months. Once I know more, you guys will too. Until then, like myself, you’ll just have to wonder.

I started editing book 3 of my 4 book series yesterday. (I often work on Sundays. I used to stick to a Monday to Friday routine years ago, which I liked, but I do so much travelling these days that I need to maximise my time at home and work whenever possible.) I was grinning all the way through the first few chapters. They’re an exceedingly dark part of the storyline, but feature a couple of twists which I know are going to have readers smiling BIG! It’s always nice when you can work in an unexpected but, in retrospect, perfectly obvious twist, something that will make readers gasp with surprise, but, when they think about it later, kick themselves for not seeing it sooner.

Edited more of book 3 today. I’d planned to finish it, but lots of other stuff popped up, not least of which was a photo shoot for a newspaper interview. It will be appearing in the Irish Independent this Saturday, April 5th (fans outside Ireland will probably be able to find it on the Indo web site, at http://www.independent.ie/ -- although I can’t guarantee that). I did the interview a while ago, but the photographer only came today. I normally don’t like photo shoots but this was more fun than usual -- the photographer was fast and efficient, and came up with a few unusual shots. Most cameramen take the same old shots -- Darren at his desk, Darren with a book -- but, in their defence, that’s usually what they’re asked for. This guy did the normal stuff, but some artier pics too. It will be interesting to see if the editor in this case goes with a few of the more experimental shots, or with the regular, standard type snaps. I know where I’d be placing my money if I was a betting man ...

I’m back home from my short holiday to Krakow. Had a nice final meal, and did a bit more sightseeing on our last morning there, before flying back to Shannon. We had to go via London Gatwick, and wait a few hours there for our connecting flight, so it was a LONG last day, but everything was on time and it didn’t drag too much. Still, it was nice to fall into my own bed at the end of it!

I received the following email from a guy called Tim in America, who has got wind of the fact that I will be coming to the States on tour in October:

I’m the Teacher-Librarian at a Junior High School in the state of Arizona. At the start of every school year I book talk 3 novels to each English class (we have grade 7, 8 and 9) to create a book buzz on campus right off. Last fall CIRQUE DU FREAK was a smashing success on our campus! Our school district is the largest in the state and our Library has the most copies of your novel: 20. We have a ton of the follow up books as well (more than anybody in the district too)! Last August the wait list for CIRQUE hit over 80 students long and stayed steady clear till February -- that’s astounding! Anticipation and word of mouth-peer recommendations created an awesome buzz.

The students loved CIRQUE DU FREAK. I promoted it because I loved it as well, and I recognized -- near instantly, like page 3 -- that it would be great for reluctant readers, which are what I’m all about. The cartoon vacuum cleaner, and then, the real vacuum and the real tarantula, what a sweet hook -- you hooked me! With this novel you have enticed a lot of Fremont boys to read! THANK YOU! Teen boys are hard to pair up with a book they’ll like. Don’t fret though; you’ve plenty of girl fans too!

I understand you’re visiting Arizona next October and I talked with Arizona people setting up your visit. My initial conversation with them severely disappointed me in that I think you and my students would get on so well -- I mean, you have a cult following on campus! The problem seems to be numbers. Your publisher wants you to meet 500 students minimum. Even though we’re the largest Jr. High in Arizona, we only have an auditorium that fits 450 people, but if you include teachers and book club we could nearly make the quota. You’ll miss the excitement your novels bring to our campus if you don’t visit. So PLEASE, consider requesting a visit to Fremont -- in fact, how about a pizza lunch with 10 prize draw winners before or after your talk? You have to eat at some point of the day anyway!

That last bit made me chuckle -- Tim’s obviously heard that I’m an easy man to bribe when a few slices of pizza are waved around under my nose!!! But, seriously, as I told Tim, I don’t get directly involved in the mechanics of my tour schedules. It’s a complicated process -- it costs my publishers a lot of money to bring me over, so they’re always looking to create a tour that will maximise my impact -- and because I’m never in the States more than 2 or 3 weeks, they also have to look into flight connections, how to get me from A to B, what will physically work and what won’t. In an ideal world I’d go to schools in every state that wanted me -- but the reality doesn’t work that way. The most important thing, I stressed, was not to lose his temper, to persist gently and politely, and keep trying to make his case as persuasively and temptingly as possible. Publishers, like most people in life, respond best to polite enthusiasm -- rude pushiness can sink even the best of pitches.

Once the tour is at a more advanced stage, I’ll be publishing contact details for my publisher, so that other schools, libraries and shops can "pitch" for me. I’ll also be providing more advice and info about how you should try to arrange for a visit. But the schedule is still in the VERY early stages, so please don’t write to me about it until I announce more info in a few months time. I just wanted to use this opportunity to give fans in the States advance warning that I AM coming back!!! It will be in the second half of October, and will maybe run into early November. We haven’t chosen States or cities yet, although it looks like Arizona will be on the itinerary!!

The way these things work is that my publicist will put together a rough tour schedule, based on requests that have come in to her in the past (which is why Arizona is currently being considered so early on), along with recommendations from the LittleBrown sales team and other people out in the field. Then, when we have a better idea of where I’ll be going, I’ll provide a window of opportunity for schools, libraries and stores to make a pitch and argue the case for why I should pay them a visit. I’m not sure when that will be -- you’ll need to keep an eye on the Shanville Monthly for updates, and be ready to act swiftly when I make the announcement!!!

I've been in Krakow in Poland for a few days holiday with Bas and my Mum and Dad. It's my first time here, and we've tried to see as much as possible, although as with any city, there's only so much you can cram in over the space of a couple of days!!! The weather has been VERY changeable -- lovely and sunny one moment, then furious snow storms the next! But for the most part, although it’s been cold, it’s been good for getting around, so we’ve been able to make our way around the tourist sites without too much hassle.

We walked around the main square on our first evening here, and had a yummy Polish-type meal. On Wednesday we went to the castle and Jewish quarter, and had perogi for lunch -- one of my favourite Polish dishes! In the afternoon we went to the famous salt mines on the outskirts of Krakow -- they were outstanding!!! Beautiful and funny sculptures, all carved out of salt, along with a full-size cathedral!! I always enjoy trips below the surface of the earth, and this was one of my most impressive subterranean adventures yet.. Hugely recommended!!!! We finished the night by eating in a local shopping centre, and this time had the more globally recognised food of KFC!!

Today we went to Auschwitz -- and there ain't nothing funny to be said about that! A grim reminder of just how brutal, sickening and viciously inventive we humans can be. We visited both camps, Auschwitz, which was a concentration camp -- the prisoners were mostly worked and starved to death there -- and Berkenau, which doubled up as a death camp -- that's where the Nazis offloaded people (mostly Jews) by the train carriage load, and then gassed and cremated them. The vast body of the exhibition is in Auschwitz, but Berkenau got under my skin worst -- the sheer size of the place is staggering, and when I looked at those infamous railway tracks running into the heart of the complex, a shiver ran down my spine, and not a shiver of the delightfully scared kind, but of the "Thanks the gods I didn't end up in a hell like this" kind.

While there, listening to the stories of what the victims had to endure, faced with the very real evidence of how they'd been tortured and beaten and frozen and starved and executed and experimented on ... I found myself wondering if I would have survived. I think it's one of the reasons people are so fascinated by horrors of this kind -- it's human nature to put yourself into the position of others, to see things from their point of view, to roll play. I did that here and I honestly don't know if I would have made it through -- or, worse still, if I would have WANTED to survive. In a way, the luckiest people in these places were those who were killed quickly. Survival was a horrific, brutal, heart-rending affair. I can only begin to imagine what life must have been like for those who came through it. To have to suffer for months or even years ... to see those close to you murdered and fed to furnaces ... to live in freezing cold conditions, starving, treated worse than animals, no hope, no certainty that this would ever end ... It would have been a lot easier to let yourself be shot, or throw yourself on the electric fence, or ... I like to think I wouldn't have done that, that I'd have fought for every breath and clung to life no matter how bad things got, but I truly don't know. I don't think any of us can, not for sure. And I hope none of us are ever put to that horrendous test -- some questions in life are better off not answered.

A couple of emails came through over the past day or so which I felt worthy of pointing out, along with a post from one of the actors in the CDF film. First, Richard in the USA wrote to say:

Our family visited New Orleans last week. Our hotel window looked out onto an alley in which "Cirque du Freak" is being filmed. Thus we discovered your books, and my oldest daughter is reading the first one now. John C. Reilly looked really cool in a red coat and red hair. I'm going to read the book after Rachel finishes it, and we look forward to the movie.

I've posted here before about the positive effects of having a book filmed. No matter how the adaptation goes -- even if it turns out to be a REALLY bad film -- it virtually always brings some new fans to the book. For me, writing is all about personal pleasure, creating something unique and intriguing, which will satisfy me -- but publishing is all about trying to take your story to as many people as possible. Writing should be all about creation and inventiveness, but publishing should be all about business -- I'll never understand writers who seem reluctant to help promote their books, who take a stand-offish, almost sneering approach to the people who buy their books, who have nothing but contempt for the selling side of the industry. I'm not saying you should ever write FOR money -- but you certainly should take the business of writing seriously if that's what you plan to do for a living. It's very difficult alerting people to the existence of a book. All publishers struggle with the problem of finding new fans, new readers, of convincing people to take a chance on a writer they've never read before. Movies help. People read interviews with actors, or see the filming take place, or catch a trailer, etc., and go and read the book -- so even if a film sucks, it can still bring new readers to a book!!!!

But according to reports emanating from the set, the film of Cirque Du Freak doesn't look like it WILL suck -- which will hopefully mean even more readers come on board!! While I'm not directly involved with the film, the reports I've been getting have all been positive. Ray Stevenson, the actor playing Murlough, posted this revealing comment on his site recently:

"Filming here in New Orleans is going very well indeed. I love working with John C. Reilly, he's a real gentleman. My character is bringing me a lot of fun. First time I've ever played an absolute bad guy, although I consider him a misunderstood vampire hell bent on complete domination of his world. Paul Wietz is just great to work with. He has a vision for this movie which is very exciting, very dark and carnival like with a palette of fair ground lights and circus costumes. ... Again I feel blessed to be involved with a project that I believe will entertain a lot of people. ... He's pretty unsavoury and not exactly easy on the eye. But I like him and on many levels he's just a bit too hungry, all the time, for anything he can get, especially blood !! (he regards people, especially children, as 'bags of blood')"

Sounds good!! I've been keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out well, even since the start, but it seems like maybe it won't need my good wishes ...

Finally, Emma Foster sent me the following email about the Authors For Autism auction which I'm currently involved with (people can bid to have their name featured in one of my upcoming books):

Great to see you doing so well in the Ebay charity auction already, some of the rest of the authors have no bids as yet, and you already have 10 bidders! I had a look myself, and would have had a bid, but unfortunately the amount is already more than I earn in two weeks, so I will have to wait until I am earning a bit more cash! Excellent thing you are doing for charity though, and hopefully the bidders will get as much as possible for that next gory death.

As Emma noted, bidding is high -- the auction has been live less than 24 hours as I type this, and already the high bid stands at a staggering £460 -- about $920!!!!! And it isn't due to finish until April 2nd!!!! I'm delighted that bidding is so brisk, since all the money will go to charity. I know it means a lot of you reading this won't be able to take part, which I feel bad about, but the whole point of doing something like this for charity is to raise as much funds as possible. If any of you have a healthy bank balance and fancy your chances (or if you have a rich relative -- the winner can choose any name they want to appear in the book), click on the following link to place your bid: EBAY AUCTION LINK

Took my cousins to the Tower Bridge Experience on Friday -- you get to walk across the two top sections of the famous tower, learn a bit about its history, and see the engine rooms in the basement. The views are great, and it’s nice to wander through, but I wouldn’t class it as one of London’s must-see attractions. The tower itself is amazing -- if you ever go to London for one time only, make sure you make time to go see it -- but the experience is only so-so. But at least it’s short, so you can squeeze it in neatly into a busy day!! We went for dinner at TGI’s after that, relaxed back at the flat for a while, then went to see Avenue Q. We’d all seen it before (I’d seen it 3 times!), but we all still enjoyed it -- easy to see why it’s been such a hit!!

On Saturday we went to see Spurs playing Portsmouth. Not a great game, and it was VERY chilly, with showers of sleet whipping across the pitch every now and then. But we ground out a 2-0 result, which was pleasing. Bas had been on a ski holiday for the past week, and got back to London in the afternoon, so we met her on her way to the flat and helped her lug her bags back. We went for a Mexican meal in the Texas Embassy restaurant just off Trafalgar Square (a regular haunt of ours) with my friend Maiko, then staggered back to the flat, full but happy.

Today we slept in. Then Maiko came over and we went for lunch to the Inn The Park restaurant -- it’s inside St James’ Park, and despite being in a great location to sting tourists, it’s actually a first-rate dining place, with delicious organic food. We ate well and heartily, and once again huffed and puffed our way back to the flat. We tried to work off some of the food by going for a swim and sauna. Then I set my cousins on the train to the airport, popped over to see my grand-aunt Nora, and now I’m going to have a quiet night in.

Oh -- and Happy Easter, everybody!!!!!!

Flew over to London on Wednesday with three of my cousins. After a quick pizza, we went up to see Spurs play Chelsea in the league. We beat them in the Carling Cup final last month, so we knew they would be out for revenge, and as they’re chasing the league title, the points were far more important to them than they were to us. So I feared the worst -- I thought they might put 4 or 5 goals past us. And I was right -- they scored four times!!!! But so did we!!!!!! We went 1-0, then 3-1 down, then 4-3 down ... but we scored an equaliser a couple of minutes from the end, and could even have won it in the very final minute! It was an amazing match, football at its finest. I went through every emotion imaginable, from deepest darkest despair to unbelievable elation. It’s not a game I’ll forget in a long time ... and I don’t think any Chelsea fans will forget it either, though I’m sure they’ll try their best to!!!!! Heh heh heh heh heh!!!!!

Today we went to Thorpe Park for a few hours. It’s an amusement park about half an hour’s train ride out of London. It’s pretty good for the UK, though it’s no match for the amusment paradises of Florida in the USA!!! It was busy today, but we got there early and managed to get on all the rides we wanted, without waiting in line too long. I went to Thorpe Park many years ago when I was a kid, not long after it first opened to the public -- it had no rides back then, just recreations of old villages, Roman buildings and the like!!! I always like going back, as it’s a trip down memory lane, though Alton Towers is by far the best theme park in the UK.

In the evening we met my friend from Japan, Maiko, and my uncle Derek, and went for dinner in the Hard Rock Cafe on Old Park Lane (the very first to ever open in the world), then went to see the musical Wicked. I’ve seen it a few times before, including on Broadway with the original cast, but it was the first time for the others, and I’m pleased to say they all fell under its spell, even my usually quite cynical uncle!!! It’s a play with a weak second half -- pretty much all the good songs are weighted in the first half, and the political element is much more pronounced -- but that first half is so good that you come away not minding too much about the plot holes and the lack of a great closing song. But in truth it’s a pity -- Wicked is hugely enjoyable, as reflected by its success worldwide, but if a bit more care had been paid to the second half, it could have been an out-and-out classic. Oh well, it’s still one of the best shows around at the moment, even with its flaws, so if you haven’t seen it yet, and the chance arises, seize it!!!!

I received the following email from girl called Amy today:

A long while ago we wrote short stories in my english class. I wrote this really cool story that I really liked and enjoyed writing. Then when I got it back, the grade was okay, but I decided to do a rewrite on it. I talked to my teacher about my story before I set out to rewrite it. She told me she liked it, but wanted me to change my entire story! Well, except for the characters and the vampires and stuff. But anyway, I was kind of upset when I found out that in order to get a higher grade, I would have to change just about everything!!! I almost didn't even do one because I was offended by what she wanted me to do, but I decided to do a rewrite, and see how it would turn out. Well, I have done my rewrite now, and my story has improved a hundred and ten percent. I changed the whole thing, while keeping the basic outline of it and the characters. Do you ever feel offended or upset when editors tell you that you need to change things in your stories? How do you manage to revise without losing the things that you like most in the story?

This is a question every writer will face -- how do you react when somebody tells you your story isn't working? It's never a nice thing to have to deal with -- I think every writer wants everything they write to be brilliant, to be met with gasps of awe and lauded to the heavens. I doubt if any of us sit there, when we've sent our work off to an editor or agent, thinking, "I hope s/he really hates it and tells me I have to re-write it entirely!!!!"

When you're starting out, it's very important that you take on board the views of people who read your work, whether that's a friend, parent, teacher, whoever. If you choose to show your work to somebody, you need to listen to what they say. If there's something they don't like, look at the story again and see if you can see what they see. Don't make the easy mistake of dismissing their comments automatically, of thinking they just don't see the brilliance of what you've created. In most cases their criticisms will probably be justified.

I've always been of the opinion that, if you can see lots of flaws in your work yourself, it's probably not a good idea to share that work with other people. I wrote a long blog about this just a while ago, about each of us having to choose to show our work when we feel ready to show it. If you know your work is flawed, I don't think you can gain much by letting other people read it -- they'll only confirm what you think, and that can be depressing!! But if you think you've created something good, and you're ready to show it to someone to see if they agree, you have to be realistic and accept their negative feedback if there are elements about it that they don't like. You might not like what they say, but if you consider their comments fairly, and go away and do a re-write on the basis of them, you'll probably find, as Amy found out, that you'll do a better job next time.

But of course, you won't always accept the criticisms. If you're serious about being a writer, a situation will almost certainly arise where you disagree vehemently with another person's view of your work. It happened to me with Cirque Du Freak. When I first tried to get it publish, loads of publishers turned it down and said very negative things about the book. I didn't agree with what they said, so I ignored them. Sometimes as a writer you have to do that -- you have to stick to your guns, stay true to your vision, and stand by your work no matter what. Sometimes people just don't share your vision. That can be lonely and frustrating and heart-breaking, but if you're convinced that your work is good, you just have to keep on fighting and hope somebody finally takes your side.

But the most important thing is that when somebody does take your side, when an editor expresses interest in your work and wants to take it further, but has some reservations about it, you need to consider their reservations very seriously. You have to be able to recognise your friends from your enemies, to separate constructive criticism from plain negativity. For instance, I have a great agent, Christopher Little. I always respect his opinion, and even if I don't share it, I will always make the effort of seeing his point of view. When I first sent Hell's Horizon to him (the second book of my D B Shan trilogy), he said he didn't like it at all. So I re-wrote it and sent it in again. He didn't like it that time either. Now, I could sense a really good story. I was certain this could be a good book. There was no way I was going to let it drop. But Chris wasn't seeing the quality that I could sense, and I figured that if he couldn't see it, other people wouldn't either. So I went back and did a third complete re-write, trying to help Chris see what I could see in the story -- and this time he loved it.

It's very easy to get lost in a story, to feel so close to it that you stop seeing its weaknesses. You need people you can trust to tell you honestly that they can't see what you see. It's then your job to try and help them see, by improving your story, by re-writing and editing. I'm not talking about making changes to please other people -- I'm talking about making changes that will please the story, that will help it shine for others the way it shines for you. Writers can sometimes have the same view of stories that parents have of children -- we struggle to see their flaws. I always think that parents sometimes need to be told when their children are doing wrong -- and writers need to be told when their stories aren't working.

Having said all that, there will also probably be times in your career when you've done everything you feel you can do with a story, when you're delighted with how it shapes up, when you feel you've worked on it as hard as you can and are totally content with the results -- and yet your agent or editor still doesn't like it!!! In that case you need to hit them over the head with a blunt instrument, dump their body in the river and push ahead regardless!!!!!!!!

Happy St Patrick’s Day, everyone!!! I’ve had a quiet one this year. I did my little bit of drinking on Saturday, and today was just another work day for me. I finished editing Book 2 of my four book series -- it ends even more bloodily than most of my books, on one of the biggest down notes I’ve ever finished up on -- but I suspect it will leave fans howling to find out what happens next!!!! I always love a juicy cliffhanger, and while this isn’t one of my absolute favourites, it’s not far off my most nerve-jangling finales!!

Also did some work on my web site, adding some new covers. Add in some office bits and pieces, and it’s been a busy little day -- it’s flown by! I’ve started to watch season 3 of Battlestar Galactica, and I’ve seen a few films over the last 3 days. Infamous was one of the highlights -- it told the story of Truman Capote and how he came to write In Cold Blood. This film suffered because the exact same story was told in the more high-profile Capote, but I thought it was in some ways even better -- it certainly felt a bit lighter and was more fun to watch. Another highlight was an interesting little film called Bubble, one of Steven Soderbergh’s more experimental movies. I was dubious going in, but it really caught my fancy. Filmed with non-actors, it reminded me of certain Italian films like Rome, Open City, which also utilised normal people instead of professional actors. Bubble was a downbeat, gloomy work, but an unexpected gem -- recommended for those who don’t mind something a bit different to the usual Hollywood blockbusters.

Finished my first edit of the first of my four book series. That’s quick, even by my standards!!! There were three reasons why I sailed through it so swiftly. One was that I think it stands pretty well for an early draft and didn’t need a huge amount of re-working. Another was that the story is one I’m truly fascinated by, so I was keen to push on and keep going, even at the point where I would normally stop for the day. The third reason ... it’s short!!!! I always feel a bit guilty when one of my novels comes up a bit shorter than normal. I do like giving my readers value for money, especially since my books are released in hardback in many countries! But it’s important never to push a story any further than it needs to go. I never write to a word count. Many writers do -- they accept a commission to write a book and then deliver it at the length required by their publisher. I can’t work that way. I tell a story until it doesn’t need to be told any longer, and then I stop. Most of my books are of a similar length, but if one is longer or shorter than the others, so be it. There’s no point in shoe-horning extra sections into a short book just to make it longer -- that will do more harm than good. The other three books of this series are longer than the first, but that doesn’t mean that the first is in any way deficient -- I was simply able to tell this section of the story in a few less chapters. But, logccal as that all is, I STILL feel a bit guilty!!!! Oh well, I’ll just have to keep telling myself, "Quality, not quanity. Quality, not quantity. Quality ..."

Saw a decent little thriller tonight, called Severance. It’s a recent British horror flick, with a humourous undertone. My hopes weren’t high, but it surprised me. No classic of the genre, but it’s better paced and structured than most, with the laughs nicely balanced with the thrills (for the most part). I also saw the last episode of season two of Battlestar Galactica -- I’m flying through it! It’s not my favourite sci-fi show of all time -- something about it just doesn’t sit entirely right with me, though I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that I don’t fully like -- but I’m certainly enjoying it. Dark and gritty, it’s a long way from Star Trek, and it’s good to see something different. I’m always interested in sci-fi that’s done well. In fact, I’ll even watch or read sci-fi that isn’t done well! A lot of my influences come from old sci-fi shows and movies, books and comics. I’ve even written a couple of full-on sci-fi books in my time, one of which is one of my own personal favourites out of everything I’ve written, though I haven’t yet taken either of them anywhere near the point where I could even think about getting them published. And maybe I never will -- some projects are fascinating to work on, but don’t exactly scream out to be taken to a wider audience. But my sci-fi roots do show through in my books, in the latter stages of both The Saga and The Demonata, and I suspect there’ll always be a hint of The Time Machine and Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and Star Trek and 2001:A Space Odyssey and Philip K Dick and Moebius and Star Wars, etc, etc, etc, in everything that I do.