Sunday 3 November 2013

Some more novel ideas

Here's my November column for AVENUE magazine.


November is with us again, the month in which hundreds of thousands of people each year turn their backs to orange-coloured October and sink all their free mental capacity into the writing of a fifty thousand word story. I’m talking about National Novel Writing Month, of course: a cocoon-like period of time out of which one emerges bleary-eyed and startled to find that Christmas has somehow arrived.  I started in 2006 and I’ve only missed the finish line once since then. Actually, last year I was ten thousand words short by 30 November, but I did at least go on to finish that title and ‘AFK, Again’ – my fifth novel set in Second Life® – hit my virtual bookstore in March of this year. That’s a plug, by the way. You can buy it.

Saturday 2 November 2013

NaNoWriMo 2013 kicks off

And we're off...

Having said previously to quite a number of people that I wouldn't write a sequel to AFK, last year I wrote a sequel to AFK.  I enjoyed doing this way more than I expected and so this year I'm going to write during NaNoWriMo a third novel in the series.  It's pure indulgence on my part, but then what is writing if indulgence doesn't figure anywhere?

Here is the opening section.


“Got you,” said Inch Sideways, as she left.
In a way, you could say that it was Inch who turned me into a murderer in the first place. I mean, it’s not like I’d even contemplated killing anyone before I met her, aside from the occasional (and entirely understandable) desire to slaughter in cold blood the odd politician here and there.  And it’s hardly the case that, having done the deed once, I would go on to murder again. I like to think that I’m no more likely to kill a second person than anyone I pass on the street is likely to kill their first.