Banshee

So what is my day job? Well, in a nutshell, I give advice to people about going to university. I am paid to promote one university, but I try to keep my advice as neutral as possible, emphasising the importance of the individual doing what is best for them. I give careers advice, I advise about student loans, about UCAS, about filling in the application form, and also about the different courses that are on offer and what an individual might need in order to secure a place at the uni. I like my job. I mean, it has its bad days, but so long as I feel that I'm being helpful, then I'm happy. Yes, there are problems in terms of the soon-to-be too many graduates for graduate job opportunities (especially in this economic crisis), but university is a life changing experience, and I believe that if someone has the potential and aspiration to go, then they should, regardless of what background they are from.
Ahem.
Anyway, you see, my job is even infringing on my blog now! Crazy!
Sorry to my... I don't know... three readers who have been peeved that I haven't been updating more regularly. I'm going to try to do better from now on (ooh, school parents' evening flashback!).
One of the reasons for the absence of posts recently is that I've actually been busy writing. And it's been pretty good, so far. I know the story, what's supposed to happen, and so I've been working through the first draft of Inter Vivos, and in some places merely connecting the dots, but in others I've had to do a major overhaul of the chapter, else start from scratch and add scenes where none previously existed. I'm on chapter fourteen at the moment, now known as "the longest chapter in the history of the world" because I've been working on it for about a week and I've still not got to the part where the chapter ends! I think when I come to do the proper edit that I'll end up splitting it in two, but I'm not worrying about that now. It will just be a relief when I can finally save it and move it into my "Finished Chapters" folder.
And seeing as activity breeds activity, whilst writing my chapters I also had a new idea for a story. I think I might toy with having two narrators, one a banshee, the other a wannabe rock star university student. Not a love story, but a death story, about losing someone and the futility in not only that loss, but in being powerless to prevent it. It's a work in progress, anyway; something to work on when my Volunteers are reading through Inter Vivos looking for spelling mistakes and huge plot holes (there's still plenty of time to become a Volunteer, btw, so let me know if you're up for it. I might even make you t-shirts).
Just a note about the picture - I was searching Yahoo images for a pic to use for my Banshee, and I came across these slightly creepy but really beautiful dolls. Anyway, the website is: http://www.enchanteddoll.com/ Absolutely lovely, but extremely expensive! (I even found one that looks like "Nox"!)