I’ve been lacking in official, non TV-Eye related updates recently, mainly because I’ve had a couple of tough weeks, and there’s been an awful lot of desperate staring at the novel going “HOW AM I GOING TO MAKE THIS WORK?!?” One of the most disturbing things about looking at a big novel in depth is that all your tricks are laid bare. The repeats. The over-used phrases. “The problem is…”, and so on. The fact that I’ve got several gigantic dialogue scenes, yet can’t work out a way of making them visually interesting or blocking them out in a way that makes sense. There’s a gigantic amount to do… and if I’m going to reach my deadline of June 22nd- just over three weeks from now- there’s going to be a crapload of work to do. I’ve got to take a novel that’s “Kind of there”, and push it over the edge into officially done. I know I can’t fix it, but I can try and get most of it to the level that I’ve reached with the first chapter (which I read aloud to George tonight). I’m going to make it.

Elsewhere, I’ve been subbing, doing a ridiculous amount of driving, and been on the verge of having a filling repaired, when the dentist had to cancel due to illness. Pah!

I may, at least, have solved our DVD player problem, and will be ordering a new one tomorrow which should (theoretically) do everything our old one did, and a few more things as well. There’s other things that I need to sort out, some of which will be happening on Tuesday when I return to London for a day of shopping and sorting out of things.

My second-hand SF book habit continues– I’ve been trawling charity shops recently, as there’s a fantastic selection in Alton which often have some fascinatingly weird books (I picked up Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan, and Take Back Plenty by Colin Greenland for a total of £2). Every single shop also seems to have a copy of From a Buick 8 by Stephen King, which doesn’t fill me with confidence about ever reading it (I’d happily pounce on a cheap copy of The Gunfighter by King, as I’d like to dip my toe in the Dark Tower series, but it never, ever seems to turn up at the right moment…). Anyway, I also recently discovered that Alton has a quite excellent second hand bookstore with a wonderful SF section that’s crammed full of the kind of weird and wonderful paperbacks that brought back happy memories of libraries during the Eighties, and I picked up Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock, and The Space Machine by Christopher Priest. I’ve got an SFX book review to do, but once I get those out of the way, I’ll be starting on one of them. Either way, my love of reading for pleasure, dormant for a while, is finally starting to wake up again. It’s nice to have it back.

Plus, this week, George passed her Driving Theory Test, and is one step closer to getting her licence. Hurrah!