So, it's over for another year, or at least until Camp NaNo. I made the fifty thousand words and a bit, and now I have yet another unedited manuscript. "So, what's it all about?" Well, the novel is a sequel to the one I wrote in 2013, which was provisionally titled "Village Without Men". This one is to be called "The Treachery of Friends". "Yes, but what's it about?" It's about a man and a woman who fall in love, and the problems they face before they get their Happy Ever After. "Boring!" It's also about smugglers, spies, revolutionaries, and how to feed a village full of women, children and old men in the Year Without A Summer. "Never heard of it." In 1815 the volcano of Tambura exploded and sent a cloud of debris up into the atmosphere. It caused the weather to change over the whole globe. Crops failed, people starved, there were riots, governments feared revolution. Nobody knew then what had caused it, which made it worse. "A bit like that Icelandic volcano, then." Yes, but much worse. And then there's the thing about the hero and what he did ... no, I'm not going to tell you about that. "Spoilsport. When can I read it?" Ah, now, there are some other manuscripts in the queue first. But soon, I hope. At least I've found a picture to use as a cover. That's a step forward, isn't it?
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I seem to have been going through a bad patch recently with electrical and electronic appliances. This is not a particularly new thing. I used to be known to the IT Support people at work as the Kiss of Death.
I'm not taking the blame for the two reconditioned dishwashers that have ceased working recently. I mean, how long do you expect reconditioned things to last? And to be honest, this second one just refuses to pump the water out at the end of the cycle, and while the wet-and-dry vacuum cleaner still functions, we can get by. And I don't go near that. The first one, well that could have been the visiting mouse chewing through a cable, which I understand they are in the habit of doing. And the washing machine that only lasted a year or so, and the central heating boiler that has been in only five years when they should be good for about twenty, well I suspect that neither was a very good design. At least that was the gist of what the boiler man said when he came to repair the boiler for the third time in a month, although he used completely different words to describe it. The laptop too, when I looked up its original purchase, was four years old, which I understand is about average, so it wasn't really surprising that it was getting a bit senile. Then the steamer wasn't cooking things in the time it should have been. That's lasted three years, but I never liked it. Not to worry, we do have a spare, thanks to the old man's love of auctions, and specifically those job lots of small items in boxes where you can't actually see what's at the bottom. To tell the truth I'm not sure exactly what he's got up in the attic these days, although it's pretty safe to say that it doesn't include a dishwasher or washing machine. The next thing to go was my iPod. Now I use it for a very specific purpose, which is to keep me sane while I am at the gym putting in miles on the treadmill or rowing machine. It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I am not a great lover of exercise. I go because I have to if I intend to get as much benefit as possible from my final salary pension scheme. My attention span whilst working out is limited already to ten minutes at a time on each piece of apparatus, or roughly four Songs Of The Sixties on my iPod, before I have to change round. So I can't say that the iPod has had a huge amount of use over the seven years I've owned it. It was a bit of a surprise, to be honest, when my computer accused it of being corrupted. I suspected the man in the dirty mac who's been hanging round - no, wait, that's my husband. Now this morning the trip switch went in the middle of consulting the mighty Facebook, and we tracked the fault down eventually to the coffee maker. Another essential piece of equipment for a writer, especially since I can't drink the instant stuff. But see above - he had a spare. Sanity is preserved, and I did notice, eventually, that he'd forgotten to turn the fridge and freezer back on after he'd tried all the electrical items in the kitchen to see which one was causing the problem. But this afternoon my replacement iPod arrived, all packed up in a nice shiny box, with a set of strange shaped ear buds. It was even charged up. I put some music on it. Goodness, it does hold a lot more than the old one. Plugged in aforementioned strange ear buds. Nothing, in spite of the display counting down the time the song lasted. Tried them plugged into the computer. Music. Tried the computer speakers in the iPod. Nothing. Tried resetting the iPod (you know, if in doubt turn it off and then on again). Nothing. I haven't even got to use the thing and it's broken already. This time I refuse to take responsibility. Well, not exactly no inspiration. But it's just gone in a different direction for the moment. And hello to all of you who have been dropping in recently, and sorry there's been nothing new on here. But ... November. In case you hadn't realised, and why should you, November is NaNoWriMo. Which stands for National Novel Writing Month. The aim of which, obviously, is to write a novel in a month. At least, to write the first draft of a novel in a month. Fifty thousand words' worth of it, though people do crazy things and write a hundred thousand, or do their fifty thousand in one day, or do nothing for three weeks then pile all the words in during the last week. Or day. Me, I like to start strong and build up a head for those days when you feel too ill, or your daughter calls you in for an emergency, or you have to go shopping because there's no food in the house. Which usually means I finish around the twentieth of the month, give or take. So I'm over forty eight thousand words now, and the end is nigh. Just thought you'd like to know. |
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Doreen lives in the empty bit in the middle of Wales, where since her retirement she has taken up writing. She says it's better than working any day. Archives
February 2018
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