A taste of the next book

I am absolutely loving writing my new novel. The characters and plot are shaping up nicely and this one seems to be more dialogue based so I'm having lots of fun with the conversations. To give you a little visual taster, the novel is mainly set in Crete in both 1967 where young people flocked to live in caves seeking an alternative, utopian lifestyle and then forty years later, in 2007. Unlike the last novel, I have lots of LIVING people to talk to about life there, my mother being one of them! Here's what it looked like back in 1967 (picture taken from the caves):

And here's roughly the same view now:

A present day picture of the caves...

...and four previous cave dwellers reunited last year, in reminiscent mood (my mother is second to left with the hat)

Relaxing into my new writing routine

I can actually feel myself starting to physically relax out here. The days are warmer and slower and I feel like I'm not rushing so much anymore - in fact, I'm barely rushing at all.

I have got myself into a good routine as I have every morning from about 8.45 to 12.45 to myself for my writing, reading and conjuring and it is BLISS. It's worked well dividing my morning into little project chunks and even if I only work on one of these projects for ten minutes, that's fine, I have still given it some thought. So here's what I do (in no particular order): 1) Research digital publishing and read about it online 2) Edit my Spanish Civil War novel as it still needs some attention before I publish the e-book 3)Write between 500 and 1000 words of my new novel 4) Research and think about creative writing for kids as I would like to start running workshops at the start of next term 5) Do some exercise! This involves me walking very fast up and down up the long road at the end of our drive (it currently takes about 40 minutes but once I get my 'power-walking' style perfected should take less!  People often think I am lost and ask if they can help me, it is such an odd thing to see for most people!)

All the above might sound like quite a lot but it's amazing how much I can get done in 4 hours.

Oh, and before you think that photo of me was taken at our house and this is how we eat breakfast every morning in Kenya...it's not (sadly!). It was taken at a lodge during our last trip here in February.

Onwards and upwards

So here I am in Kenya with all its glorious mud, rain, dust, bright colours, smells of the earth, air, flowers and fruit and it's all new and wonderful and sometimes downright weird. But it really is good to  be here, I'm slowly finding a new rhythm to my days and meeting a few people. Now that the children are settled in school (my eldest does 8.10 to 3.15 and my younger two do 8.30 till 1) I, very excitingly, have each and every morning to myself which, no surprises, I will mainly devote to writing (as well as at some point in the future do creative writing workshops in schools I hope, just working on this at the moment so more of this later...)

Just yesterday, I heard back from the agent who had my full manuscript - my final thread of hope of finding representation in the traditional publishing industry. She had many wonderful things to say about it eg 'outstanding plot & backdrop' blah blah blah BUT the answer was still NO. There are no two ways of saying no, it's just NO. It's hard for me to express how this made me feel, I'm not going to go on about it but - pardon my french - I am utterly bloody gutted. When you put your heart and soul into a project for so long - and I'm sure some people reading this have experienced this in a similar way with something else - and it's something you believe in whole-heartedly, it's not easy to admit to yourself that whilst lots of people (agents) have clearly been impressed by it over the years, they just have not been impressed enough.

This particular agent encouraged me to keep working on it but I can't. I don't have it in me. I've re-worked it to the death. It wouldn't be right to say that I'm 'admitting defeat' but what I do know is that I should pick myself up and continue, I must pick myself up and continue. The good news is that getting an e-book out there for those of you who want to read it is one step closer. Boy is it going to be a steep learning curve for me, I'm not even on Facebook and have never really wanted to be but I think now, if I'm going to be tackling the world of digital publishing, it would be a big mistake not to get myself out there.

But a quick question for any of you reading this - I'm at the beginning stages of looking at e-books and also print copies being made of my book which you (the buyer) would have to pay 6.99 for or something like that to have a physical copy. What I'm wondering is whether people would prefer to have the physical book OR would be happy to buy an e-book (much cheaper for you) and then read it on your kindle / ipad etc. I'd be so grateful if you could drop me a line and let me know.

And hey, even though things didn't go the way I hoped they would, I have a great deal to look forward to with this new book I've started work on. It feels right, like this is what I should be writing about. Also, I must remember that potential possibilities abound with digital publishing. Just think Fifty shades of grey. Maybe I should be writing kinky erotic novels instead?!! I'll just have to make the next book a bit more steamy....