Just Keep Swimming...

So much to do and so little time.

 

I admit, I've been a little (a lot) lax in my postings of late.  Sin has been too.  I'm trying to dedicate some time to writing so blog posts get left behind in the wake, bobbing about on the surface of my musings without being able to put their feet down and gain purchase.

 

There's a number of things I want to blog about.  A fab meal I had at the Spice Hut in Cleethorpes.  My trip to Disneyland Paris last week (great trip apart from a few incidents with the coach).  Watching the excellent Captain Phillips.  More!

 

But, I'm not getting round to it.  I need a PA or something, it seems.  Or a clone.  Maybe I should talk to the producers of Orphan Black (worthy of a blog post in itself - brilliant show) to see if they have a spare.

 

Anywho.  I haven't forgotten you.  I'm just trying, and I mean trying, to write.  I'm working on the sequel to Sin, but he's gone and gotten himself arrested.  I wasn't expecting that, so I'm a bit stumped as to what's going to happen next.  I've got Puddlebrain, my children's book.  I know exactly what's going to happen (a first for me, I think), but I have to get to finishing it.  Perhaps it's because I know it needs a good edit.  I used a few too many 'big' words for the age range, for a start.  But I'll get there.  Puddlebrain is the story I began whilst writing Sin.  I’d written about 40,000 words and forgotten about them.  I do like what I’ve written, I just need to refine it.

 

Then there's my current story, 'Home'.  With inspiration coming from the same place as The Lake and Summer Loving, it's sort of tied me up.  I'm revisiting an alternative version of my youth, and it won't be pretty.  I expected this to be a short story of, perhaps, a couple of thousand words.  I’m at 3,000 already and still scope for more.

 

Excerpt from 'Home'

The trip to school seemed to take all day.  I could imagine getting there just in time to turn around and go back home.  Unfortunately, the minutes were just taking their time, spacing out the seconds in between like a trail of sweets, with me as Hansel following politely and hungrily along.  I arrived at the school gates with just enough time to spare for my friends to semi-playfully make fun of my fainting episode.  I took the brunt of the jibes and jokes with a facade of smiles.  I’d do the same if I were them.  Cracking jokes, poking ribs.  It was part of being at school.

 

Of course, when I saw the blood dripping off my desk in English later that morning, not quite coagulating but thick enough to look like crimson snot dangling off the edge of the desk lid, the teasing ceased.  I didn’t scream.  I didn’t faint.  I simply stopped.  My feet no longer worked.  My eyes no longer blinked.  I suppose my lungs alternatively inflated and deflated and my heart continued to pump, though maybe a little faster, but I couldn’t tell.  I couldn’t hear the teacher or the pupils talking to me nor could I feel them pulling at me to make me move.

 

My world had disappeared and all I could see was the blood.

 

Then, I think, I did faint.

 

At least it would give my friends something more to take the Mickey out of me for.

 

So.  I'll be back.  How many of you just said that in an Arnie-style voice?  I know I did when I wrote it.

 

Bear with me.  Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.  Just keep swimming, as the epic Dory would say, and I will too.

UPDATE:  Home, a 'short story' was finished a couple of days ago, to the tune of a smidgen over 9,500 words.  I quite like it.  You'll, hopefully, see it in Darker Places...