Liz Williams: journal

Is here:

6,000 / 10,000 (60.0%)

No more writing tonight after taking a friend for fish and chips. He's 39A. So he tells us.

Zokuto do not seem to have paid their bills and I'm not wild about the 'potato man' word meter, so here's an alternative version. TSP is churning along and I'm aiming to do another 2K or so today, with a self-imposed deadline of Sunday night. Apart from that, I'm also about 2K up on some sample chapters. Now, however, I have to go and write something different - a business plan - and start putting the company's new database together.

85,000 / 95,000 (85.0%)

The BBC very kindly sent a taxi to collect me at 7.30 this morning. Arrived at the Taunton studios well before time and was installed in the usual boot cupboard with headphones and a mike. Gareth was in Bristol and I'm not sure where John Humphries was...anyway, I have grown used to regarding the physical presence of presenters as a luxury where the Beeb are concerned: it's usually a countrywide thing.

I thought Gareth was extremely cogent. I could have done with slightly more penetrating questions, but not to worry: we seem to have acquitted ourselves reasonably well. After the interview I was abruptly cut off and put back in the taxi for the station, reaching London well within time for the signing. A big thank you to Forbidden Planet for hosting, and also for your lovely sandwiches. Great to see caskared and Simon!

Also good to make it down to Picocon, Imperial College's one day convention. I caught the discussion on SF and politics between Farah, Charlie S and Ken McLeod - very interesting, and has given me some food for thought. And it was just nice to have a bit of time to chat to people. Note to the Sid fans: I may never play the violin again, but medics tell me that the scar tissue will eventually fade (in preparation for the signing, I varnished my nails, but then ruined the effect with an unwise cat pat: Sid has laid the back of my hand bloodily open, requiring elastoplast. He seemed very smug about this).

And I have seen a fish fight, which I gather is an integral part of Picocon, whether or not it actually happens. As we were watching this, a young student came up to me and asked what was taking place.

"It's a fish fight," I said.
"But what," he frowned, like Roland Barthes, "Do you actually mean?"

Alas, it is exactly what it sounds like.

After all this I had a quick, quiet dinner in an Italian place in S Kensington, before catching the train home - delayed, due to a fight in the buffet car, but we all got free tea.

Chen grinds on:

76,000 / 95,000 (80.0%)

However, I just hit a rather faster scene. Plot has stopped dragging its feet.

For Sid fans, he has now been here a week. He thumped everyone else in the house at various times this morning, and discovered in the night that he was Displeased by my jasmine hoops in the conservatory, dug them up and dumped them on the floor. He hasn't done anything else in the pots.

TSP is coming along, a little slower this week, but still getting written:

70,000 / 95,000 (73.7%)

I am aiming to finish it by the 25th and there is a reason for that. More on which, later.

It is a dank, cold, typically January day here. We've been into town briefly for the farmers' market and to do a few other things, but otherwise I have been writing. Total thus far is:

56,000 / 95,000 (58.9%)

I'm aiming at 60K by the end of the month tomorrow.

Trade paperback editions of BLOODMIND arrived this afternoon. My book is, well, a book.

More work on the Chen novel today and it looks like this:

41,000 / 95,000 (43.2%)

I have also started something new, which needs to be in proposal form before the end of February.

Meanwhile, the dog's wordcount is 2, courtesy of a paw on the keyboard. He typed this: A!

Give him another 2000 years and he might come up with a Shakespearean play. Or, at least, the phrase GIV ME DINNERR NOW.

Just got the news that Darkland has made it onto the shortlist for the British Science Fiction Association award for Best Novel of 2006.

Meanwhile, the Chen book is here:

26,000 / 95,000 (27.4%)

I've only done a couple of thousand words this weekend - it's been beautiful weather and so I've taken the chance of getting out in the garden, weeding around the emerging snowdrops and tidying up the vegetable patch. We've also had a house guest, who very kindly took us out to dinner last night. So the weekend has been a pleasant mix of productivity and pleasure.

DARKLAND has been nominated for a British SF Assoc Novel Award for 2006.

matociquala, did you know 2 of your short stories are on the nomination list?

http://www.bsfa.co.uk/index.cfm/section.nom2006

and a nice review of one of my short stories here:

http://www.bestsf.net/reviews/whatestimepieces.html

We have been having one of those quiet days where one manages to get a great deal done. The shop is closed on Tuesdays in January. My editor has received VANISH and we have set a date to discuss new proposals - Macmillan may or may not want to go ahead with this, but that's a future topic. The next Chen book trundles on:

15,000 / 95,000 (15.8%)

I have not joined Novel in 90, although I think it's a great idea. However, it's close enough to my own approach (I am on a 2K a day minimum word count for the Chen book, with weekends off unless I feel like it) for me not to feel a need to join up. The approach does work. I'm disciplined about writing (I have to be) and this book will be done by the spring.

Otherwise it's a deeply fascinating round of recycling, housework, and bulb planting - we are very late putting things into pots, but hopefully not too late. Weather is foul - typical January, with chilly rain and lowering skies. I am about to do a Chinese marinade for a mallard. All of the above activity has been brought to you today courtesy of jasmine green tea. I could give up alcohol, but tea - never.