Cleaning

So, I'm having a massive clean-out now. Our house is a complete sty, so I am attempting to fix it. Half of the kitchen is clean, half looks like the plague has hit it. The living room is coming along, but the front room is the worst. It is my fault, mostly, as there are still two big boxes in the middle of the floor from when we moved in a year ago. But when it's all tidied or chucked away, I think the room will be nice. Going to buy a nice arm chair for in there, so we can use it as a study. Perhaps then I can invite people round without The Shame of living in a pig hole.

Good news, Anakin Skywalker and Scarlett O'Hara were voted worst movie boyfriend and girlfriend respectively. Now that would make an interesting pairing:

Him: Sulk, sulk, no one appreciates how good I am. Sulk.
Her: Me, me, me, me, me, me, me!

Classic.

Work is crazy busy right now, but back to the writing tonight. Finish Inter Vivos by end of October? I hope so, because then I can spend November "having a break" doing NaNoWriMo, and then get on with the editing in December.

Quick Post

I'm pretty busy with work at the moment, so this is just a quick post to share a couple of things.

Firstly, I found a really interesting piece on the net about the typical advance paid for a novel. Apparently it's about $5000 (so slightly over £3,000) in the US for SF/Fantasy fiction. The author has also compiled stats about how much your advance is likely to be if you have an agent or not. It's interesting stuff. You can read more about it here: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2005/10/05/author-advance-survey-version-20/

Secondly, I found a great little comic today too here: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php There was a very cool Holmes-Watson one, and a funny "Dude watching with the Brontes".

Inter Vivos is ongoing as ever, and I'd better get off to the library and get some more done, if I ever wish to get my hands on any sort of advance. You know, I've found it's a lot harder to become a writer if you don't actually have anything to sell...

September Greetings!

Hola everyone. I have just got back from a week off from work, from leaving the house, and from the internet. It's been really blissful, in a 1995 sort of a way. I've been mostly sitting in front of the TV, watching Buffy (OK, 1998 then), reading some not very good books, and generally just zoning out. It's been really nice. And now that I know I can survive without the internet for a week at least, I'm actually getting more done at work because I'm not constantly distracted. Which is nice.
I haven't worked on any of my stories whilst I've been off. Yeah, I know. Naughty me. I had hoped to have IV properly finished by now, but I'm still working my way through my revised ending notes. I watched the last episode of the BBC version of Jane Eyre whilst I was off, and it struck me how much the end part of IV that I'm writing now is like the bit in Jane Eyre after she runs off from Rochester and is found by St John. I have previously referred to Inter Vivos as "Jane Eyre with Cyborgs", but had picked Jane Eyre simply because it is one of the best known examples of a Bildungsroman. Having read the story in my first year at university, I could only really remember the middle bit, Jane's time at Thornfield up until she runs off after the wedding. So I'm rereading those couple of chapters from the point she leaves right up until she gets found, in the hope that it inspires me when I'm writing Nox's journey from Calista to Aquarius after she leaves the Governor's mansion. It was purely coincidental, but it is kinda cool to think of Jane as Nox's very distant ancestor.
Anyhow, hopefully in the next month or so I should be able to post some proper updates about writing and stuff. I've sort of "fell off the horse", or "off the wagon" or whatever other phrase you want to choose, so it's time to pick myself up now that I'm rested, and hop back on.