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.