My influences

Pretty much for the last 30 years or so there have only been two writers of fiction whose books I would buy in hardback immediately I saw them on the book shelves. They are George MacDonald Fraser and Terry Pratchett. MacDonald is a master of adventure story writing. Pratchett is the greatest conjuror of ideas I have known. I don't want to (and indeed, lacking the skill, cannot) write like them. But more generally they are what I aspire to. It doesn't matter if I fail. The aspiration is enough. Then of course there are all those adventure writers of the Victorian age that push me on and defy me to do better - Jules Verne, HG Wells, Rider Haggard, Kipling, Anthony Hope, Conan-Doyle, Jerome, Chesterton, Bram Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson and so many others. I like to think in the dark times that I have a cheer squad in heaven rooting for me to write the next line.

About Scene 4

This introduces the Ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet Club. To be frank, I didn't actually envisage them when I first thought of the story. They sort of elbowed their way into it. I do really enjoy writing them. I hope that most reasonably well informed readers in the English speaking world will by the end of this scene have identified at least 3 of the ladies in terms of their provenance. The end of the scene is a bridge to how they will get them selves into the heart of the story in Chapter 2

Scene 4 Part 2

This is the bit that follows on from the last scene I posted It shall be the one I read at the next meeting of the writers's circle on Wednesday. If I haven't said already the size of these readings is limited to 10 minutes. hence I try to keep as close as I can to 6 pages.

Here it is

(Scene 4.2 - The Kensington Gore Ladies Croquet Club)

A bump and the oak panelled room had arrived at its destination. Another turn of the curious key and the door through which they had entered opened again onto a large round room ceilinged and walled with glass panels. It was more a dome than a room. It was the secret observatory atop the Albert Hall. Everyone had thought the idea preposterous when Vivie Raffles had requested it. Nothing could have been more outrageous. But then one person spoke to another person and that other person spoke to another, each personage more shadowy than the last, and eventually the word arrived at the Palace. And at the Palace there was a nod. Under the guise of maintenance, Royal Engineers secretly appended the clubhouse of the Kensington Gore Ladies Croquet Club to the structure of the Albert Hall. Fine and strange it was. Huge telescopes pointed at the stars. Glass and mirrors, contraptions, devices and mere gadgets all gleamed in the electric light that Vivie Raffles now clamped into being.

‘Well, here we all are, show us! Show us now.’ said Alice.

Vivie opened the Gladstone bag and carefully pulled from it a glass ball about eight inches in diameter on a rim of gold in a setting of garish jewels.

‘Has anyone seen this before?’

‘Yes, certainly’ said Gwendolyn, ‘it is the crystal ball that old Mrs Jacobs uses in her sham séances. The gold is paint the gems are paste.’

‘Look,’ said Alice, ‘this is the one you press to get the smoke effect.’ She reached and pressed what, in a more opulent object d’art, would have been a ruby and blue smoke streamed and coiled into the globe. ‘Ta dah!’ she cried.

‘It’s inky baby powder, isn’t it?’ said Gwendolyn.

‘Johnston’s finest, yes,’ Alice nodded. I sat with Mrs Jacobs and read to her when she caught the flu last winter. I know how she makes the table rise up and everything. I could teach Harry Weiss a thing or two, trust me.

‘Right,’ said Vivie, ‘now watch this.’ She screwed the bulb off its base and wiped it clean. She spilled out the powder. She reassembled it and put it back on the table, tapping twice with a letter opener. What you are about to see sent Mrs Jacobs into a real tizzy, let me tell you. She called me straight away. She was chalk white when I got there, ready to call for an exorcist, she was, until I said I’d deal with it.

The four women stared at the fake crystal ball beginning to feel a bit foolish as the clock ticked on. Each looked sidelong at the others.

‘Perhaps we should all hold hands,’ said Alice.

‘If you like,’ said Vivie.

‘Would it help?’ asked Alice.

‘No,’ said Vivie.

Irate, Vivie tapped again and this time the air in the ball darkened.

‘There look now’, she said.

Within the globe, tiny lightning cracked and sizzled.

‘This really shouldn’t be happening,’ said Eliza. The ball is just fake.

‘Oh, but it is, my dear, it is happening’, said Vivie, ‘watch closely’.

‘Something certainly is happening before our eyes,’ said Alice, her eyes transfixed by the globe.

The frost in the glass cleared. They saw four figures in a desolate winter. One was apparently ranting but if there was a voice it was silent as was the wind seemingly swirling in the crystal ball.

‘That one’, Alice said pointed to the raging man, ‘he is very handsome, isn’t he? There seems divine fire in him’.

‘Almost beautiful,’ said Gwendolyn, ‘could it be a woman in man’s clothes?’

‘No,’ said Vivie, ‘it isn’t. I’d know.’

‘Yes but what of the other three?’ Eliza asked. Do we know any of them?’

‘The puffy pink one is the mountebank Crowley, I’m sure,’ said, Vivie Raffles. I neither like nor trust him. He will be a danger to the world and himself one day, however foolish he looks now.’

‘I think the one with the fierce moustache might be the mesmeriser George Gurdjieff’ said Gwendolyn. I met him once in Paris. ‘His eyes gave me a creepy feeling so it stuck in my mind; you don’t forget those eyes in a hurry. He does it deliberately, I’m sure.’

‘The other I do not know but have decided not to like him for his grubbiness alone’, said Vivie. ‘He is some purveyor of foul magic from the Balkans I expect. The place is full of them.’

‘And then there is the handsome one,’ said Alice.

‘Yes he is the puzzle, isn’t he?’ said Eliza.

The scene evaporated and the glass cleared.

‘Oh,’ said Alice, ‘is that all?’

There was a silence and then Gwendolyn spoke. This device is a fraud. What happened isn’t possible.’

‘But all of us have seen it,’ said Vivie, ‘and our eyes are clear. That is our purpose, isn’t it?’ Her voice became more solemn. ‘We see things as they are without dreams or fancy.’

‘Yes our eyes are clear. That is the trouble. It is what binds us four together, is it not?’ said Gwendolyn. ‘We see things as they truly are, an uncommon affliction. We each faced the giddy illusions of mankind, our feet on the ground even as we flew past stars.’

‘Yes we all swore the oath, we shall not forget it, but what is it we have seen, really?’ asked Eliza. ‘Must it signify at all?’ It seems just to be four men arguing, doesn’t it?’

‘One of whom is very handsome.’ smiled Alice.

‘And three of whom, I, for one, would not care to share a railway carriage with,’ said Gwendolyn.

Eliza leaned forward ‘But does it matter and is it any business of ours?’

There was silence.

‘I think,’ said Vivie slowly, ‘that what matters is that it was impossible for us to see it in a fake crystal ball.’ Whatever, is happening in the universe out there must be powerful beyond our knowing. Such things must be a worry for us, surely’.

Gwendolyn spoke quietly, ‘and if not us...who else?’

Thus the matter was settled. Something had to be done but what? Eliza went to the ice cabinet and produced a bottle of champagne. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘a triple toast this time, to commerce, may we profit; to mystery, may it know its place; to adventure, here we come!’ She handed around frosted glasses and popped the cork, one handed with a flick of her thumb.

‘Yes,’ said Vivie Raffles thoughtfully as she took a glass, ‘you are right to ask that Wendy, who else? Who, other than we, has this disturbed? That is where we must start’. She raised an eyebrow at Eliza. Eliza rolled her eyes.

‘Oh alright, I’ll do it then,’ she said without conviction but not truly displeased.

Copyright

I doubt it will ever become an issue. Nonetheless I assert copyright over any of my writing that appears on this blog.

Scene 4 and progress

A better day today, I now have rough first drafts for Ch 1 Scenes 7 & 8 and feel a bit closer to having a decent first draft of Chapter 1. I have a fair bit of rewriting to do because the early scenes have changed as my mind has 'discovered' the plot. There seem to be two really difficult aspects of creativity in writing a story: the scene and the plot or structure. Up to a point you can learn how to write a scene. I found the Sydney Writers' Studio a great help in this - it is the only formal training I have had in creative writing and I reckon it to be well worth the fee.

www.writerstudio.com.au/

Ok a long way to go, I acknowledge, for any of my English friends who might happen to read this :)

The Writers' Studio has a prescription for writing scenes that I certainly believe in even if I can't always apply it well (I shall describe it another day). The plot, however, I find much harder.

The first half of Scene 4 which I posted earler is, for the moment, as good as I can get. Perhaps I lack the skill to improve on it. But anyway I enjoy writing the Ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet club. One thing is for certain, at least for me, if I don't enjoy the process of writing I may as well give it up immediately and take up stamp collecting!

Scene 4 Part 1

I didn't think when I started this blog that I would put drafts into it. But I can't really discuss the writing without doing it. Things will be a bit topsy turvey though as I have to revise some early scenes because I am inventing the plot as I go. No I'm sure this is not the ideal way to proceed. But for now here is the last scene I read to the Richmond Writer's Circle. Discussion tonight!

(Scene 4 Part 1 - The Kensington Gore Ladies Croquet Club)

Kensington Gardens on a morning bright with summer. Of all the places on which the sun never sets this is the most golden. Radiance lingers longest here.

With gritted teeth gumption, Mrs Frederick Eynsford-Hill urged her bicycle in an arc across the lawn. Even on grass mown, watered and rolled over the centuries pedalling was hard work. She had almost to stand up in the stirrups to gain any traction at all.

‘Hold on,’’ she called. Her voice, unlikely as it may have been at that moment, was viola stroked by moonlight. Turning she struck out hard towards the tasselled croquet hoop, whirling her mallet overhead as she did. She had perfected the knack of keeping gears and crinolines unsnarled for everyday locomotion but her recent invention of bicycle croquet was altogether more demanding.

Looking up at her target, she shouted, ‘Have you moved the bloody hoop, Ally?’ She corrected the line of her front wheel just enough for the rubber tire to connect with her wild swing. At once she dislodged the tire from the wheel, snapped the mallet and lost control of the bicycle. She twisted into the path of the oncoming Miss Alice Lutwidge, herself hard pedalling to put on speed and holding her mallet outstretched for balance. Each making a final effort to remain in control by pushing harder down on the pedals, they brought both bicycles in a tangled heap of ironmongery on the grass.

Bonnets askew, in rumpled gowns and corsetry, the two women burst into laughter.

‘I did tell you it wasn’t going to work, didn’t I?’ said Alice.

‘Well, perhaps, we just need wider wheels or something like that. And for you to look where you’re going, too, Ally!’

Then the sun was blocked out and they looked up into the smiling face of Miss Gwendolyn Darling, framed in a broad brimmed hat.

‘You’d have been better off with the flamingos you had in the story, Alice,’ she said. ‘At least they could have kept their heads out of the wheels.’ And that started them laughing again. The laughter subsided towards panting giggles on the arrival of a fourth cyclist, Mrs Vivie Raffles. One hand on the handlebars and another holding her parasol raised, she made it all look rather easy. Dismounting, she took from the pannier a Gladstone bag.

‘Well, ladies, I’m so glad to see that we’re all having such fun on this lovely morning. But I come bearing a puzzlement for us all that will certainly offer a distraction. It may well turn out to be something altogether more sinister that will lend itself to entertainments unimaginable.’ She posed like a conjuror announcing a new trick.

‘Oh tell us immediately,’ said Alice, ‘please. You must!’

‘Yes do, please,’ said Eliza Eynsford-Hill, disentangling herself from her machine, ‘anything at all that will give me a chance to abandon my bicycle while retaining my dignity.’

‘Well, it is a show rather than a tell, said Vivie Raffles and we need to do it somewhere very private. Let’s go up to the club room. Now shush’, she said, ‘all explanations will be forthcoming in but a few minutes.’

There was hardly any traffic on Kensington Gore, just a couple of hansom cabs, a horse drawn bus, a delivery cart or two and some of the new motor cars that were being seen in ever increasing numbers in that part of London. The women crossed quickly, walking their bicycles. They paused for a moment for a Wolesley and a Daimler that looked to have to been speeding at least at twenty miles an hour. Then they weaved their way on across the Gore. Alice gazed for a moment after the passing cars.

‘Oh Alice,’ said Gwendolyn, noticing her, ‘they’re just mechanised hooligans not knights of yore.’

‘’The rozzers will have you for racing,’ Eliza shouted after them, laughing.

‘Eliza, you really shouldn’t scream like that in public, it does draw attention,’ said Vivie Raffles.

‘I’m an actress; we have a certain licence.’

‘You can stand over on the steps of the Albert Memorial and sign autographs for all I care,’ said, Vivie, ‘but please try to remember we have good reasons not to be overly conspicuous’.

‘You could offer a kiss with every autograph,’ said Gwendolyn, ‘a queue would be guaranteed.’

‘Right as far as Harrods, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Alice, putting on her most innocent face. ‘Your notices are excellent they say. And since it unaccountably pops into my head, how is Mr Rassendyll?’

‘Soon all the bicycle manufactures will have turned to motor cars,’ said Eliza, ignoring them, ‘think of the noise.’

You’ve just turned against automobiles because no one would take you on the Paris to Madrid run’, said Gwendolyn, who rather liked the American sound of “automobile”.

Eliza nudged Alice as they reached the curb, ‘the thing with the flamingos and all,’ she said, ‘that was just a story wasn’t it?’

‘Well it must have been of course but it was all so long ago. Sometimes it’s hard to keep everything straight in my head – some things that seem real could not have been, obviously, but then others improbably might be. I try my hardest not think about it, really, but then sometimes it all enters my head like a remembered dream. Then there are so many questions. I should have asked him more before he died, I expect. But then I didn’t and now it is too late.’

‘Vivie says it was really all about Mrs Hargreaves, the cricketer’s wife,’ said Eliza.

Sidelong, Alice Lutwidge gave Mrs Eynsford-Hill a curtly raised eyebrow.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘Mrs Hargreaves grew up and became sensible.’ Whereas I am playing silly bicycle games with you,’ she smiled. ‘You can make up your own mind on the whole subject.’

The four women were now at the entrance to the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, dedicated in love by Queen Victoria to her consort, Albert. In the foyer there was a small door. It was inconspicuous – the sort of door that, in the everyday world, guarded a cupboard of mops, brooms and buckets. But the key that Vivie Raffles produced didn’t look as if it was meant to fit a humble lock. The locksmith that made it had evidently been much concerned to ensure that replication was a fiendishly difficult task and the intricacies of its cut said as much. The ladies waited, looking over their shoulders to make sure that no one passing was taking any special interest in them. The key was turned, the door opened onto a small oak panelled room with no windows or any other door. The four entered, still wheeling their bicycles, and closed the door behind them. The key was used again in a hidden lock set inside one of the panels – and with a bump and jerk the room began its ascent.

‘Your father was a bit erm... unusual, they say. I’m only saying what is widely spoken of,’ Eliza continued in her conversation with Alice.

‘Well, he was my guardian. I called him my father and still do out of respect and he was really a good father to me, Eliza. And, well yes, I mean practically obviously he was a bit out of the usual run of things that you’d expect,’ said Alice, ‘but not in a bad way, truly. Mind you I sometimes had a creepy feeling that one day he would take me into a dark room, shuttered off from sunlight, and try to teach me arithmetic.’

‘It does all come down to numbers in the end,’ said Vivie Raffles. ‘In any of my ventures you just have to look a bit further than the plush velvet and gilded mirrors and there will be a small room and in this room will be a safe and in that safe will be a ledger packed with numbers. If we’re lucky some cash too, of course.’

‘For me also, in a way, said, Eliza Eynsford-Hill. There is no art without box office. No laughter, no tears and certainly no applause without the chink of shillings.’ She bowed extravagantly.

‘And in the wake of swashbuckling pirates - have at you, Liza!’ Gwendolyn mimed a cutlass thrust, ‘come the tea clippers’.

‘Not tea, this minute, Wendy,’ said Eliza firmly; ‘there shall be a cork popped for the richly deserved toasting of commerce just as soon as we have heard Vivie’s thrilling secret.’

Another bump and the oak panelled room had arrived at its destination.

Edwardian refrigeration

Not a whole lot done today, I'm afraid. Y objected to Eliza opening a bottle of champagne in Scene 4 that appeared to come from nowhere. This is one of the dilemmas I face writing. I know I'm supposed to prune verbiage back to the essentials but also (Y says) avoid loose ends that puzzle the reader. The upshot was that I spent a chunk of the day doing research. (Teddington Library is amazingly good!) So now I know about Edwardian refrigeration as it related to champagne. As so often happens the research led to very little. Apparently a big house would have a cellar with blocks of ice. So I just resorted to an 'ice cabinet' seeing as how my scene was in the roof of the Albert Hall. If I do ever publish this, and once published it is ever read, I'm sure I will have every historical anomaly dragged out like bleeding intestines before my eyes!

Writers Circle

The Wednesday reading has come and gone. I enjoyed the response from the Richmond Writers' Circle. Mind you they are far too generous and polite to be actually critical. I feel a bit bad about my speech impediment making the reading so bad. Just too many explosive Bs -too many 'bicycles'. Oh well I'try to do better next week. Y is still my fiercest critic and while it annoys me I don't have too many good responses to the things she says and she does seem to read more fiction in a week than I have in several years.

The story so far

Spoilers

I started writing a short while before beginning this blog. Now as I prepare for my next reading at the Richmond Writers Circle it may be a good time to review the story so far. Here it is -

Tomorrow I shall be reading my favourite bit so far, my introduction to the ladies of the Kensington Gore Croquet club. I have great fun writing them. Alas my partner Y has read this scene and found many things she doesn't like. The trouble is that I just don't know how to write it better. The thing is that perhaps I just don't have the skill. There are things about that I can learn. But the magic I can't. Well I shall press on and we shall see.

The story so far:

Ch 1 Scene 1 - Four magicians meet in a desolate place not of this world. One, Ludens, declares, to the anger of the others, that this is his century (the twentieth AD of the Christian era). He will bring reality and light he says.

Ch1 Scene 2 - The Master of Dover Castle, an eminence gris in the government of the Empire, senses that something dangerous has taken place. He dispatches his agent, Richard Rassendyll (who has cancelled his dinner in London with Mrs Eynsford-Hill) to fetch the Laird of Boleskine who he believes can tell him what is afoot.

Ch 1 Scene 3 Part 1 - Deolali Transit Camp in India. The gentleman rankers, Reuben Chatham and Ambrose Delahay rescue a young Sergeants’ Mess steward - Noone, from a barroom brawl and take him with them in a hurried retreat into the night. They recognise that he, like them, is a gentleman ranker (a man of breeding, education and culture serving in the army as a non-commissioned officer or private).

Ch 1 Scene 3 Part 2 - A cave close to Deolali Transit Camp - The gentlemen rankers and Noone are attacked by Indians and dragged down into a cave. They beat off the attacks thanks mainly to Noone’s marksmanship. Noone says he cannot remember how he acquired this skill. He cannot remember anything about his past. The American Colour Sergeant (Mortimer Angel) approaches and kills an Indian who runs at him in the darkness. Then comes a patrol led by Captain Fitzgerald, sent to bring the gentleman rankers to Kitchener. They see the statue of the Hindu Goddess Kali but Angel tells them that these Indians cannot have been Thugs since those were suppressed long ago. They are merely common murderers and thieves.

Spoilers

Inevitably a blog such as this will contain spoilers. Over the last decade or so I have been impressed by people's resistance to spoilers. Even quite young children seem to be adamant about them. They want to experience the story as the writer created it without any preconceived ideas. Now in truth it is a bit pretentious of me to even think about spoilers in the case of my story, written by an amateur and unlikely to be finished let alone published. A spoiler for The Gentleman Rankers is not going to be in quite the same class of calamity than one for a Harry Potter novel, is it? Nevertheless, I shall try wherever I can remember to flag spoilers in advance. Oh yes, and I nearly forgot - probably no one will ever read this blog either.

Mash up

I conceived 'The Gentlemen Rankers' as a steampunk mash-up. Mash-ups seem to occur more often in steampunk than in most other genres. Mash-up means bringing together several characters from real life and / or works of fiction. An example is Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which brings together characters including Alan Quatermain (King Solomon's Mines) Mina Harker (Dracula), Dr Jeckle and Captain Nemo (20,000 leagues under the Sea). There are earlier examples such as in the works of Phillip Jose Farmer or even William Rushton's Dr WG Grace's Last Case.

What these offer an author such as myself are powerful memes (more about memes later) that can be deployed to intensify the thought streams within a story. n "The gentleman Rankers" most characters aside from the gentleman rankers themselves are real people or famous fictional characters. The derivation of the gentleman rankers themselves I'll discuss another time.

Tiny steps

Really only a few lines today but I think I much improved Scene 4 which is the next I shall read at the Writer's Circle. I hear of professional writers getting down ten or more pages a day. I am sure that that is achievable. Gosh, I must be envied by would be writers who have a real job and families. I read sometimes of people who write between 10.00 in the evening and 2.00 in the morning. They make me feel guilty. At the Writer's circle we can each read our stuff for about 10 minutes - which seems fair. So if I write at that rate I shall do about 1,200 words a week. Not a lot I suppose but it does mean that if I can keep it up for a year I can do about 50,000 words. Even if they are not so great ones I shall feel as if I'm on my way.

What am I trying to write?

First, I want to write a 'page turner'. I said I write only for fun but I see that as no excuse for self-indulgence. I certainly don't aspire to great literature. If I did, I lack the skill. But I do want to entertain to amuse. And that for me means writing a 'page turner'. Whether I can or not is another matter.

I am not sure how to go about it but I think that part of the answer is that each chapter should resolve some questions raised earlier in the reader's mind (but not all). At the same time each chapter should pose new questions opening up unforeseen vistas in the reader's mind. I picture this in my mind as the ebb and flow of a magnetic wave. How useful this is time will tell.

Next, I want to write a Steampunk Mash-up. I know that not everyone is familiar with these terms so allow me a bit of explanation. Steampunk in a way is a sub-genre of science fiction. But really it is more than that. More than being a literary genre Steampunk has grown to embrace Steampunk rock-bands, Steampunk fashion and artefacts and festivals. Here are some examples:

To be continued

Wednesday has passed, one of my favourite days of the week as it involves the Richmond Writers Center where for the last couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to read my story. Putting aside the useful comments received, there is nothing quite like reading out loud to a knowledgeable audience to reveal to me every flaw in my writing. My only previous experience of a writers' group was in Rozelle, Sydney. I expect that is is generally true that the sort of people you meet in such places and kind and generous in their comments and supportive. This time, however it was a competition day a tradition of the writers' circle for St Valentine's Day. Love poems and prose were the order of the day. Wanting to enter into the spirit of things, I resurrected a poem I wrote nearly half a century ago. This poem survived as it was written onto a blank page of a book still on my partner;s shelves. I had destroyed all my other poems and decided to write no others in about 1970. To be candid m reading the poem aloud as |I did this evening past made remember why I stopped writing them.

The Richmond Writers' circle can be found here: http://richmondwriterscircle.org/

The New South Wales Writers' Centre can be found here: http://www.nswwc.org.au/

The latter is situated in a lovely old Mansion in grounds that sweep down to Sydney Harbour. It was once the old psychiatric hospital. Strangely appropriate if you ask me.

What actually is a Gentleman Ranker?

"The Gentlemen Rankers" is the title of my story and I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, if I get asked a lot what a gentleman ranker is. In my story it comes straight from Rudyard Kipling's poen from his collection - "Barrack Room Ballads". Conveniently out of copyright as it is, you can find it here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman_ranker

A gentleman ranker is someone who you would think would be an officer to judge by their attitude, breeding and education but who is a non-commissioned officer or private. In the British army of Victorian times this was not uncommon. It was the result of misfortune or misadventure. My original gentleman rankers in the story are Reuben Chatham and Ambrose Delahay. How they came to be gentleman rankers will be revealed as part of the plot. As the story opens they are sergeants in the Royal Engineers. I chose the Royal Engineers as it is in this regiment that the brightest rise fastest. As I wrote on I found that this choice chimed nicely in with other elements. I think there is a something at work that if you are somehow on the right track in writing a novel things fall into place. I have no evidence for that, mind.

Why this Blog

I am starting yet again to write a story. I haven't ever finished one yet. I write for the pleasure of writing, more so perhaps for the challenge - it isn't always a pleasure to face a blank sheet of paper. I guess I write in much the same way that other people might do cross-word puzzles, or play a musical instrument. It is a hobby.

I don't intend to publicize this blog much - perhaps just share it with one or two people. Mainly it is for myself. I want to try to keep to the discipline of recording my progress (or otherwise) each day, jotting down what I can for 15 minutes at midnight. The sorts of things I shall write about are the process of writing, what advice has worked for me, how I have met the challenges - that sort of thing. It would be nice if one day this should be useful to others starting out to write a first novel.

As I complete chapters to a reasonable standard I shall post them on Google Drive, which seems to work well for that sort of thing. I'll put links in the blog as I go.