My life simply is drama..

So Not What I've Been Doing

Amongst the emails lately there have been several people wanting to know when Lucifer's Stepdaughter will be out.  Sorry folks, it's delayed, again.

It's probably worth saying why.  In the past 5 years, we've seen more drama and trauma than most people want to see in a life time.  In the past 18 months alone, my husband has been carted off to hospital by emergency ambulance three times.  In the past two months, I've been on two consecutive courses of anti-biotics to try and clear a strep throat that nearly had me in hospital.

In the past week, the car failed it's MOT, the dvd player died, the washing machine threatened to, the oven stopped working properly and my hubby's wheelchair required major maintenance.  I had to find a new second hand car that's an estate that takes my husband's wheelchair within three days.  (I picked it up today.) Yesterday, we had plumbers stripping out the central heating to fix something upstairs, went car shopping and had appointments at the opticians.

Tomorrow, I have the usual run of Saturday activities for my son.  I actually use them for writing!

All this, and run a family, be a director of a national charity, be a lactavist and manage to not do much housework, and spend too much time online wasting myself by having social contact.   I have something like 5000 sheets of paper to print stuff onto, fold into packets and post out over the next few days for a conference I'm running for said charity.

I'm also going away for three nights next week, to Pittenweem (yes, THAT Pittenweem) to have a short respite break with the family.  Where I have to do all the care and all the packing and unpacking etc.  So it's lovely, but a wee bit tiring.

I have two more weeks work to do before Bedlam Maternity goes to the beta readers and then the editors.

However.

However.

I have cleared my workload down in other areas.  Hopefully, the drama is slowing to a stop.  And I'm very actively writing on Lucifer's.  Yesterday I did nearly 3000 words, on an important scene that opens up the whole first half of the book.  (As the last third of the book is written, this is A Big Thing.)

So, with a fair wind, no more drama, and no one interrupting me for Other Stuff (tm), Lucifer's will be finished by Christmas.  Then ti's just beta reading and editing.

So, soon people, soon.  All good things come to those who wait & if ti's worth it, it's worth waiting for.

:-)

I'll stop now, and go back to work.

The Dreyfuss Sleeping Challenge

Can you sleep with the book anywhere near your bed?  Apparently not, for some...  

The things that cheer up writers!  I suppose, I better finish Lucifer's... tap tap tap tap....

Olympian Ideals

Loads of people, including me, expected London 2012 to be a write off.  After the superb opening by Danny Boyle, simply the best television show ever made... I felt differently.

I felt we might have a chance, to show who we are.

This made me wonder why I'd doubted it in the first place.  The answer was quite simple: the Millennium Dome.  Everything about the Dome project was a complete, utter, trite failure.

Yet it was supposed to display the best of what it was to be British.  And it was toe curling bad.

I expected the Olympic Opening ceremony to be as bad as the Dome.

Instead, it was superb.  What was the difference?  I suspect it's rather simple...

The Dome - designed by committee to tick boxes on how to be really good as a Brit.

The Olympic Opening ceremony - designed by a film maker with genius, vision and the guts to make people do it his way.

Risk factor on getting it wrong on the Dome?  Low to minuscule.  Done by political discussion, loads of tick boxes, loads of places to blame and cop out on individual responsibility.

Risk factor on getting it wrong on the Olympics?  Huge.  Massive.  End of career for a couple of decades.  Financial ruin as an individual, years of being mocked.  Probable move to other side of world until fuss dies down.

And yet... the individual with vision, wins through.  warms the cockles of yer heart, don't it?