What are you working on right now?

[Erin99]

What are you working on right now?

Writing-wise, I'm throwing all my energy into completing my gone-on-far-far-too-long novel.

Mouse, you win the award for best poster, because you keep quoting posts and replying to people. It's nice. (Hope that doesn't sound bad. It's not meant to, by far.)

 

[Mouse]

Mouse, you win the award for best poster, because you keep quoting posts and replying to people. It's nice. (Hope that doesn't sound bad. It's not meant to, by far.)

I'm just pathologically polite. I always make sure I engage with people who bother to respond to a thread I've started.

What I'm currently working on today is... I've done some brief brainstorming with amw regarding the collab and now she's working on a chapter so I can chill about that. Right now, I'm back into the heroin research. Watching a documentary about a guy who was also researching heroin for a novel, but actually started taking it himself (I'm so not gonna do that!) and got addicted. Randomly, Neil McCormick (who Ben Barnes played in Killing Bono) has just popped up.

 

[Erin99]

Urgh. Heroin. That's a common problem around here. It really wrecks a person and makes them lie and rob for their next fix (my neighbour let a relative stay overnight once, and the person robbed him and left). I've even had people come up to me in the street after going to a cash machine, asking for money for food. I so wanted to give one lady some money, but Seph said she wouldn't have bought food with it anyway!!! But she was THIN! And out of it. And slur-y. And walked in that way that heroin users do, the "shuffle". I've seen people kicking on doors and threatening doors (well, people behind doors) with machetes over drugs. It's not a nice life. One man is even on the run because of drugs, and his brother is in jail for murder.

One of Seph's mates even tried handing over some food to a beggar on the street who asked for money for food, but the man refused and said he wanted money only. Apparently, hearing the man's voice gave said friend the inkling that the man had a drug problem.


Anyway, good luck with the research, and no, don't study it too far!


Right. Gonna try writing for a bit. Wohooo!

 

[Rafellin]

I started this year with two books 'in hand', which gave me the luxury of some leeway for choice with November's publishing slot.

I intended to finish the companion volume to my first magical/pagan anthology.

Of course, inspiration decided to be contrary.

I am now over half way through my King in Yellow/Carcosa Mythos anthology, currently working on a longer piece set around about now, involving the cave systems under Nottingham. A return from having sojourned in the mid 1880s, the early 1930s and the Second World War over the last week and a half.

Where next? Good question. In amongst the focus, flash fiction science fantasy pieces keep cropping up, so there may be an echo from them influencing me along the way.

But I am feeling late 17th Century Caribbean: I see a longboat shrouded in fog, with a single figure visible, gazing off into the mists.

But first, back to somewhere far below Nottingham...

 

[Mouse]

Anyway, good luck with the research, and no, don't study it too far!

Ta. One of my very close friends is/was mixed up in drugs, but she won't even let me write the word, let alone anything else, because she thinks I'll get arrested. I don't know whether that's something the docs have said to deter her from it or what.

I am now over half way through my King in Yellow/Carcosa Mythos anthology...

Anything to do with the Robert W. Chambers one?

 

[Rafellin]

Anything to do with the Robert W. Chambers one?

Unquestionably. The King in Yellow is one of my all-time haunts and I have many of the key works inspired by it. I had not considered doing a book of my own until I found Rehearsals for Oblivion and A Season in Carcosa, two anthologies set around The King in Yellow. In truth, I didn't like them much. I felt that they had missed the point. Which set me to wondering if I could capture what I thought was missing.

My book, Stars of Black, is an anthology of poetry, flash and short fiction that tries, clumsily, to capture what the King in Yellow inspired in me, plus adding a chunk of my view of the Carcosa Mythos (being The King in Yellow without the bolting-in to the Cthulhu Mythos engineered by Chaosium to sell RPG supplements).

Of all my writing to date, this is the least commercial. But it is also something very close to my black heart and I am enjoying every discovery that I have along the way: my writing having a tendency to go off in directions I didn't expect as the words arrive and the tale develops.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

If I don't bury my youngest under the patio (I've got a migraine and he woke me up at 6am whining lol - and at 3pm he's still at it)

If that doesn't happen then I'm trying to work on Ian and Wilf's first kiss scene. Fun but I am not in the mood for it.

 

[Colbey Frost]

My synopsis! What a pain in the....

 

[Tyburn]

I finished one of my Time Cops stories the other day, well a rough form of it at any rate. Not too sure about how many times David Tennant is mentioned in it, but it is about keeping him safe from time-travelling would-be assassins.

 

[Darkchild130]

My second novella, hope to have it released by the end of March.

 

[Triceratops]

Well, got the ARC copies of my newest YA dystopian. So I'm busy hitting up for requests from a long list of review sources who concentrate on YA books. Oh, it's a big pain! The publisher is doing their bit. That reminds me that I'll have to switch avatars and get my cover reveal up.

chris

ETA: Just downloaded the new avatar. Success!!!!!!

 

[Mouse]

Very nice, Chris.

 

[Triceratops]

Very nice, Chris.

Thank you so much, Mouse!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Going through the copy-edited MS of Hairy London, should be ready soon.

 

[Aquilonian]

Yikes. Heavy research topic. I was planning on a piece that dealt with deep psychological problems such as paranoid schizophrenia (still try to put a t in there) but the research started dragging me down.

Two excellent resources on that topic- "The Story of a Schizophrenic Nurse" by Clare Marc Wallace, and "Operators and Things" (don't remember author's name). Both are accounts of schizophrenia from the inside- CMW was also a psychiatric nurse. Both long out of print but you could find them second hand. Speaking as a former psychiatric nurse I found them very realistic.

 

[Aquilonian]

I'm working on expanding my Epic Fantasy trilogy into six volumes, ie splitting each volume of the trilogy into two and expanding each. I'm 1/3 of the way through the second volume of the six volume version. Going to approach some agents when I've finished that volume to see if there's any interest, before proceeding further.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Working on my steampunkish thingummyjig (I need a title... ). It's going fairly well.

 

[HareBrain]

Working on my steampunkish thingummyjig (I need a title... )

"The Thingummyjig" sounds pretty steampunkish to me. Also seems (from Amazon) never to have been used for a novel.

Is it about a Thingummyjig?

 

[thaddeus6th]

Only using the loosest possible definition. It's a sort-of paranormal murder, and the lady investigator, er, investigating it. (I originally called her a demon huntress... not sure if I'll stick with that).

 

[Mouse]

In all my infinite wisdom, I decided not to do any of the commissions that I'm actually being paid to do, or the R&R which, if it's good enough, will get me an actual publishing contract with an actual publisher, noooooo.... I decided to start a story for an anthology with the deadline being tomorrow. I have to write three thousand words about Men in Uniform. And, it's ok, because I'll make things easy for myself, right? I'll pick an easy uniform like, I dunno, a vet. Or a policeman. Or a Tesco checkout person.

I chose Queen's Guard cos I thought it'd be kinky. I've spent all afternoon researching the Queen's Guard. Do you think I can find anything that says about what time off they get? If they're even allowed out of their barracks? Noooooo.