Keith's April Newsletter

Hi All

It’s amazing the difference a bit of sunshine makes. One minute it’s dark and dingy all day, the next it’s 7pm and bright sunshine. It’s all very confusing but I’m not complaining. Winter can get very S.A.D. for me. I was not born to live in the dark.

Putting On My Big Boy Pants

Realised the other day that I’ve been in Manchester six months now. That’s weird. I’d say amazing how time flies but I’m fifty-one and I’ve no idea when that happened so maybe time moving on is somewhat inevitable.

This month I bought jeans that fit instead of pretending I have a smaller waist than I actually do. It was hard on the ego but good for the body as I’m finally comfortable once more. The movie Eat, Pray, Love might be a crock of sh*t with philosophical holes you can drive a bus through but it did get one thing right; eat what you like and buy bigger pants.

That being said I would like to eat better and exercise more going forward, to bring my waistline down a bit. Nothing forced, just positive changes that hopefully will have a positive outcome. As previously mentioned, I’m in my fifties. If I don’t change things now it’ll be harder to change them later on. Exercising now is, ironically, an act of laziness.

Speaking of lazy, I had a day out this month. I went to the Manchester aquarium. It’s all too easy to sit around at home doing ‘stuff’ until the sun goes down, so I decided to pretend like I was still travelling. When I went round the world the options were sit in your stinky dorm room all day or go do, so I decided to go do.

The aquarium was nice. Like their sharks it wasn’t massive, but it was well kept, the staff were nice, and the VR experience was fun to do. If you’re in the area it’s worth a go. I came away with a stuffed axlotl (I love axlotls for their spelling alone) and I tret myself to a burger and fries for afters.

I had to get the bus there because the trams weren’t working, which was a hot sweaty pain, but even so I’m glad I went. Going and doing is better than staying home all day, no matter how nice your home is.

News From The Steam Factory

Rewrites on Odds Bodkin and the Night Mayor of London are done… more or less. I’ve done the big inserts I was going to do, meaning the word count has gone from 57k to 61.2k. Good enough for me to call it a proper book. But whilst I was doing that I did some changes that are so good it’s made me doubt the rest of the book, meaning the whole thing is going to need reworking (somewhat) from page one. Some bits are fine, but some of them will need chopping and changing to add more clarity. It’s a bad thing in terms of the work that needs doing but a good thing in terms of my writing in that I can see that I’m improving. First you get good in the edit, then you get good in the draft. That’s the plan anyway.

I’ve been working on my solarpunk short this month. It’s kind of done but, as above, it needs chopping and changing for more clarity. There are paragraphs which do two things, which is fine, but it’ll be better with two paragraphs doing one thing each. I did a blog post about this ages ago, but like everyone else I’m bad at taking my own advice lol.

I’ve also started outlining my Christmas story which is proving weirdly challenging. The hard part about writing a Christmas story is the 365 days between Christmases. That’s a lot of time to fill between plot points. It’s hard to make it make sense.

Finally, my agent submission for In The Valley of the Wind didn’t work out. Another rejection. I honestly don’t know now whether to do one final round or start approaching small presses? Another round would take time and I feel like I haven’t published anything new in ages. I want to crack on, keep my name out there. I dunno. Maybe I’ll feel better once Night Mayor is done. With that to shop around perhaps I’ll feel freer to do other things with ITVOTW.

When I’m Not Writing

Got a couple of series to recommend for you this month; Taskmaster New Zealand and Letterkenny.

Taskmaster I’m sure you’re familiar with, a bunch of comedians making fools of themselves for our entertainment. I’m a big fan, but I’ve seen all the UK ones so I was pleased to find there are three series of the New Zealand version on Channel4.com.

I’ve been ploughing through them for days but I’m going to run out soon. I’m aware there’s an Australian version too but that’s not available here yet. Perhaps soon.

I’ve also been watching Letterkenny on ITVX.

It’s a Canadian comedy that’s just dumb fun. Lots of drinking and fighting and taking the mick out of each other with running gags. You’ll either be into it or you won’t, but if you don’t mind fart jokes and over-the-top characters this is the thing for you.

Oh, and there’s twelve series of it, so no chance of running out any time soon lol.

One final recommendation for the authors out there. Did you know Brandon Sanderson has released a free series of lectures on the art and business of writing, which you can watch on his YouTube channel?

They’re really good, with some great insights on how to become a successful author. Of course the business of writing has changed since he broke in, with self publishing and the like, but the art of telling a good story remains the same. Well worth a watch if you’re into that kind of thing, and also even if you’re not a budding author as well.

Watching them prompted me to buy Mistborn, which is where he suggests you start with his whole Cosmere universe. Oddly enough, even though he’s a massive author in terms of sales and influence with a loyal readership who adore him, I still haven’t read any of his books. Hoping to rectify that real soon.

And that’s it from me for this month. I hope you found all that interesting. By the end of next month I hope to have Night Mayor properly finished, my short story done, an outline for my Santa story, and maybe a little trip overseas under my belt. See you in 30 days time to see if I get any of that done, lol, and until then remember…

Toodle-pip for now.

Keith