I've built up a bit of a backlog of things that need addressing lately. I'm hopeful that April will be the month that sees me ticking a few of them off. Notably, these include:

The final re-organisation, review and uploading of SOTS from Prologue to chapter 3. This is underway - honest!

The final draft of a short story I have been working on called Lucky Bill, then to be submitted (with fingers crossed) for possible publication in an online anthology towards the end of 2013.

A bit of housekeeping on the website, including a freshen up of the Links section and the uploading of some of the short fiction produced over the last couple of months.

The conclusion of the latest SOTS chapter. This is almost there - just needs wrapping up and a read through.

Read and critique of another writer's book that I am already a fair way into. I find this an enjoyable and useful task - particularly as it's damn good stuff in the first place!

Oh, and I did submit a short story, entitled Beneath a Violent Sky, a few weeks back and am still waiting to receive the rejection letter from the magazine!
Okay, waiting isn't really a job I suppose.

None of the above has been helped by a recent incident during which my iPad took a tumble down the stairs. It has become my number one tool for getting stuff done over the last few months and I was a bit lost without it. It's back now though, complete with replacement screen.

Time to crack on.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Have been blogging with some writer friends the last couple of days and one of them mentioned that he was trying to dedicate himself to writing a minimum of 500 words each day, a tip that he'd picked up from one Terry Pratchett, no less! Sounded like a good challenge to me, as I am in desperate need of a word count boost just at the moment. Got to it last night and got a short flash fic piece done (800 words or so) for an online contest in about thirty minutes flat. Surprisingly, when I revisited it today, I couldn't see anything that I wanted to change, so perhaps speed writing can actually work! Anyway, I need to decide on what to have a go at tonight. There is a short story that needs attending to for another contest, although my outline for this is sketchy at least. And then there is SOTS which obviously needs to be moved on (mustn't let the momentum waver!!). On the subject of SOTS, by the way, I can advise that I am in the middle of rebooting the whole thing as it currently stands. I've received some massively helpful critique from fellow writers of late, the upshot of which is that the first few chapters are currently being overhauled, as well as re-ordered into a more sensible chronological time frame. It has always been in the back of my mind that this would be required because the prologue and the first two chapters were actually written as standalone, albeit, interlinked stories. More on that in due course anyway. What it does make slightly daunting is the prospect of pushing on with further chapters whilst the beginning of the thing still needs tidying up. Hmmm, maybe it's that short story after all for tonight ;)

ND