I'm back! But for how long...

Hello again.

Well, I’m back now.  Hopefully for a while, but you never know.  I’ve been on holiday in Ireland for the past few days.  It’s always nice to hang round there for a bit, even if there is nothing to do apart from look at the scenery, walk round the scenery and read about something that isn’t the bloody scenery.

In my case, my holiday reading has been some particularly thrilling Anti-Money Laundering coursework material.  Please don’t spoil the ending for me.  It’s really hotting up now, 57 pages in.

Anyway, aside from that I also took the holiday time to (finally) get started on my writing sample for the Black Library submissions window.  I possibly left it a little late, as the window closes in a fortnight.  I’m also not helping my case by doing my piece a little arse-backwards.  You see, the way the submissions procedure goes for BL, you submit 1,000 word sample of your writing, and then they read it, disregard it and you move on with your life.  A thousand words isn’t particularly hard.  It’ll take me about an hour, maybe two.  However, I took it on myself to write an entire short story (about 10,000 words) and then cull the best 1,000 words out of that and hand it in.  This seems unwise.

However, it hasn’t stopped me.  Not quite.  I was in Ireland for four days and managed to churn out just over 5,000 words of the story.  Hardly prolific, but I’m happy with the story so far.  Iron Hands based (so no surprise there).  I had a bit of a concern as to whether or not the main character was interesting enough to hold the reader’s attention, but I think I’ve managed it.  Anyway, that’s going to be the main project for the rest of the month.  I should get the whole story finished soon and then I can excise the best thousand words and send it off.  And then probably use it to keep the blog updated for a bit.  I’m thinking of posting the story in pieces every Friday.  Hopefully use that Friday deadline to get some fiction writing done.  If I can work it into my routine, then that can only improve the ‘thwarted writer’ status I’ve clearly been hungering after for so long.

Anyhoo, another thing that’s been getting in the way of updating this overgrown and ill-maintained piece of webspace is that during my lunchtimes, I have been reading the Malifaux background.  From all three of the rulebooks (one main and two expansions).  It’s been interesting to read about the world and, whilst the quality of the writing is variable, it really does help add atmosphere to the world.  I’ll do a bit more of an in-depth write-up of my impressions on the Malifaux stories later on the in the week, time and laziness permitting.  Speaking of Malifaux, I have fallen for the game in a big way recently.  Seriously enjoying it and trying to spread the sickness to other club members, as is my disgusting wont.  The key seems to be finding a model or concept that the target finds cool, be it undead cowboys, zombie Chihuahuas, hulking steampunk mechs or, in the case of my friend Alex, a Johnny Cash expy.

Sue is awesome.

That last sentence totally made sense in context.  I swear.