Slightly Belated Happy New Year....

[davidgillon]

... on account of I was feeling ever so slightly delicate on New Years Day ;)

(I didn't drink that much, I actually think it was mostly down to Tuesday also being change-my-butrans-patch-day, which has been messing with my stomach for a while now, but there was that headache that kicked in about 10AM, which I can't really blame on patches).

I spent a pleasant New Years Eve in the pub with my sister and her husband, Amusingly, the pub had decided to run Spectre, the New Year's Eve big TV movie (and the latest James Bond), on their over the bar screen, but with the sound off, which meant you had a good two thirds of the guys in the pub trying to follow Bond's progress on screen, while simultaneously trying to convince wives and partners that 'of course I'm paying attention to you, love - did you say something?'. We stumbled home just after Midnight, with the weather continuing startlingly mild.

I temporarily stalled on writing progress on Saturday, courtesy of Windows convincing me that it had lost the rewrite of my short-story 'Wheeler', which I did while I was offline before Christmas. It was in a Onedrive (ie Cloud) enabled directory, so I knew Windows would want to update the online copy when I got back online. What I wasn't expecting was to come back to it later and find no sign of the update whatsoever. I finally worked out, half by chance, that it showed up when I was online and not doing writing, but not when I was offline on account of writing. This was annoying, and if it's working as designed, someone's an idiot.

Another point to avoid, having two or more short stories in one directory, so that when you try to save as Story B after recovering from a crash, you accidentally double click on Story A, make it the filename you want to save as, and almost overwrite your only copy. Soooo close....

So Saturday writing time got swallowed up for re-organising directories and making certain I have actual non-cloud backups of everything I've been working on over the holidays.

I had Monday and Tuesday largely off writing given New Years and family, but short story 3, now titled 'Disruptive Technologies,' now stands at  7200 words, and given that includes the first half and the climax, with only part of the middle missing, I'm confident of finishing it off at about 8500 words. On the other hand I'm also now convinced it's a potential novel concept, which means I now have two viable technothriller ideas competing for my attention. Plotting for short story idea 2, 'Phantom Leg', is also progressing nicely, though whether I get to it before I head home is uncertain. I've belatedly realised I'm reworking the abandoned novel plot from several years back, for a much younger version of the protagonist. Even if I don't get around to writing it, it's still generating some deeply useful character background for the common protagonist of all three new shorts I've worked on over the holidays and has contributed its title, 'A Leg to Stand On', for the first of them.

Recent reading: Having followed up Rivers of London, with Moon over Soho, Whispers Underground and Broken Homes, I'm now working on Foxglove Summer. The re-read makes me simultaneously more and more impressed with Aaronovitch's plotting and detail, and more and more annoyed with Lesley's storyline. Next up,The Furthest Station, the series novella I haven't yet read. One surprising point is how little onscreen time some of the major characters get. I could have sworn Beverly had a major part in every book, but she's largely absent in books 2 to 4, and there's also significanty less of the Faceless Man than I remembered (though given his mysterious villain role that isn't necessarily a weak point).

Comments

Glad you were able to wrestle your work from the cloud

[jesse_the_k]

I'm getting the impression of an amputee theme in your short stories.

Re: Glad you were able to wrestle your work from the cloud

[davidgillon]

And that impression would be right :)

The character concepts date back to when I was still using crutches rather than the chair, and I wanted a protagonist who uses crutches regularly because in all my years of reading I've only seen two. An amputee is a convenient reason for using crutches, and also lets me show that someone can tailor their use of mobility aids to suit the circumstances, as she notes when she's about to be dragged out to a hillside:-
"My prosthetic lets me walk on level ground just fine. But for rough ground and for agility I prefer crutches, and for endurance a wheelchair."

[caulkhead]

Without wanting to post any spoilers, Lies Sleeping made me feel a lot less irritated about Lesley's plotline.

[davidgillon]

I thought it was likely he would try something of the sort, and then decided I was still pissed off with him, because first impressions are strongest, and the first impressions of Lesley's storyline reinforce the established trope that people with facial disfigurements will betray everything they stand for and turn to evil. And that impression has been out there since 2013. Some tropes are damaging even if you intend to subvert them.