The adventure continues...
Life’s a funny ol’ thing. It’s been more than a few weeks now since I last wrote a blog. Other than being ridiculously busy with family commitments etc., the main reason I haven’t been able to write as much as I’d like is because I’ve started a new job!
In August I accepted the job working as a Writer / Journalist for EK Communications – a dental PR company based in Whitstable. It’s certainly been a big change from my time spent working the games industry, but it’s been interesting and there is hopefully the chance on the horizon for me to bring more of my technical skills to the table, beyond my general research and writing work which should be good.
The Darkest Hour
A few blogs ago I seem to remember mentioning that I hoped to have the first draft of TDH done by the end of the year. While I was initially on course to easily complete this by October time, I recently had something of an epiphany as far as my new book goes and have made the rather tough decision to cut over 10,000 words from my work-in-progress manuscript and totally change the direction of my central plot arcs. Essentially I decided to cut out the dragons and the overly “emo” bits which I don’t feel quite did my work justice. The result is that while I now have a heck of a lot of work more to do, but the end result will hopefully be a far more focussed, far more powerful book. The first 50% is pretty much done, and I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with it.
Catch-22
The lovely people at Vintage were recently good enough to send me a copy of the new 50th Anniversary edition of Joseph Heller’s classic Catch-22. If you haven’t read it already I strongly recommend you do. Considered by many to be one of the great books of the 21st century, Catch-22 is a stinging criticism of military bureaucracy and the madness of war.
Limebird
Among other projects I’ve been busy with these past few weeks, I have agreed to help out on Limebird – a blog site for aspiring writers with the tagline “let your creativity fly”. Though I admit I’ve only just had time to write a short autobiographical article on how I got started writing my hope is Limebird will help inspire me to get motivated with my writing again. To learn more about Limebird, please visit the Limebird blog.