Music of the night?

Just a line to let everyone know I've got a new story out in the January issue of Forbidden Fruit. This issue has a 'winter holiday' theme and 'Night Music' is a tale of a less-than-successful holiday trip to Salzburg (Austria) with a surprise ending. Hope you like it!

Favourite quotes

One of the things I love is browsing through dictionaries of quotations and the like for things well-known people have said about writing. They always seem to put it so much better than I could!

Here's a small selection of my favourites - either because they're true or because they make me laugh.

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives." (James Joyce)

"Far too many [books] relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle and an end." (Philip Larkin)

"Writing is like making love. Don't worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process." (Isabel Allende)

"Sometimes I think [my writing] sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running." (Gene Fowler)

If anyone knows of any others they think I'd like, please feel free to send them to me!

And now... Happy New Year!

We only got back from our New Year's holiday cruise late yesterday so this is a little belated, but I just wanted to wish all my friends, readers and friends-and-readers a very happy and prosperous 2007. Hope it's a good one!

The cruise was very relaxing and a great way to spend the week between Christmas and New Year, which can otherwise seem rather dreary. We visited some fascinating places, including a medieval castle in Lisbon which we explored in thick fog, the slopes of the highest mountain/volcano in Spain (Mt Teide on Tenerife), and the beatiful coastal city of La Coruna. We even saw dolphins. I'm hoping to use a few of the sights, sounds, smells and other sensory experiences in future stories.

I've come home with absolutely no inspiration for the novel I'd been scribbling for weeks before Christmas, but I'm working on an old (very old) work in progress, a ghost story set in 1970s Cornwall, instead. It's rapidly approaching the 20,000 word mark and if I can just keep going I hope to submit it as a novella early in the year. Wish me luck!

I usually hate New Year resolutions, which tend to get broken faster than you can say 'resolution'. But this year I'm determined to finish a mainstream novel, and start the lengthy and rather alarming process of submitting it to a print publisher. It will be a new experience, but hopefully one that I can learn something from.

I've got square eyes after my first full day back at work (ten days without access to a computer is a mixed blessing ) so it's off to bed. But watch out for further missives in the days to come.