Keith's August Newsletter

Keith's August Newsletter

Welcome everyone, to what I think we can confidently call The Summer.

It's been a busy month for me, what with starting rewrites on The Dragonfly Delivery Company and attending The Town That Never Was, so without any ado whatsoever...

Let's Go To Town!

After being cancelled last year due to covid, The Town That Never Was returned once more to Blists Hill Victorian Town museum.

A weekend of steampunk shenanigans at one of the best locations you could think of for such things, this was my second time going (I missed out in 2019 because they initially advertised the wrong dates, which I'm still a little bitter about to be honest. I booked time off and everything!) and even though it wasn't as busy as it could have been, what with the lifting of pandemic restrictions still a few days away, it was still a fun, well attended event.

I got to dress up for the first time, which was great, but I had to buy myself a thinner waistcoat (pictured above) than the woolen one I had on for day one, because it was so damned hot all weekend. Seriously, people were melting in the heat!

I've done a

if you want to know more, with more to come over the coming weeks. There was just too much to fit all in one post. Plus you can see more of the awesome cosplay people were wearing on my

, if you can't wait for the blog posts to come out.

News from the Steam Factory

Rewrites on

The Dragonfly Delivery Company

have begun in earnest. I'm managing about twenty pages a day, when I'm not working, so hopefully I'll have it all done within a few weeks.

I'm glad to say that it is in pretty good shape already, without me having to make too many changes. The start was a bit messy, and I've had to insert a couple of sections to foreshadow some bits later on, but all in all it's looking pretty good so far.

I shared this quote on

today, because it made me laugh.

"But whereas Magnus senior had been a likeable man with all the wisdom and cunning of a chess playing fox, Fenris had all the brains and subtlety of a man banging his head against a door marked pull."

Now as far as I'm concerned, if your own work can make you laugh then you must be doing something right, eh?

When I'm Not Writing

It's been a non-fiction month here at the Steam Factory, with

by Giulia Enders, and

by Liam Wong.

is a fascinating book about how your digestive system works from beginning to end (quite literally), with explanations of how and why your body does what it does, and what you can do to help it keep running smoothly (if you know what I mean). If you've ever had any questions about what goes on inside your own body then this is the book for you.

Boasting a foreword by Hideo Kojima himself,

is a must have book for anyone with an interest in cyberpunk and/or beautiful urban imagery. A collection of photographs taken at night on the streets of Tokyo, it's hard to describe how gorgeous these images are. The light, the rain, the lonely figures waiting for futures unknown, if you like street photography and worlds unseen then this is the book for you.

And there we are my friends, that's July for you. Hopefully by the end of August rewrites will be done on The Dragonfly Delivery Company, and I'll be looking for proof-readers to tell me if I've got a novel on my hands or not.

Take care one and all. Enjoy the sun. Don't forget to hydrate. And be kind to yourself, coz you deserve it!

Toodle-pip for now.

Keith