Rearranging of novel chapter headings and tidying up some plot issues is almost back to the midway point – just about ready to start into the second half’s final rewrite! Scary!

The Letterkenny to Burtonport Extension is a pretty notorious railway. Financed by a Department of Public Works so parsimonious they decided to save £4 by not putting door knockers on the stations, with the line sometimes passing miles away from the towns it was supposed to serve, it’s pretty much a textbook example of how not to run a railway. Accidents due to poor maintenance and lack of staff training were all too common. So naturally I just wrote 2000 words arguing about why it was a total success. It’s for a night class, but once it’s been marked I’ll transform it for web, add pictures and stick it up here.

Essay on Byzantium is done. Essay on trains still to be done, also pitch updates. May scribble more today, depends.

About 60% done on the first of these essays. Reasonably on track to get them done for the weekend. As mentioned, once they are marked I will add pictures and put them up here – the one on trains may be the more interesting of the two.

Today’s scribbling was more work on the essays I have due next week. I’m about a third of the way through the first, and I’ve a rough skeleton of the second done. Planning to burn through them at the weekend.
I also did some research for my pitch – found plenty of interesting things, but none that helped me much. Just got to keep looking.

So yeah, I know I was done with pitching for a while, but that was before David Wong (author of “John Dies At The End” and “This Book Is Full Of Spiders”) chimed in on it to say that he likes the premise and to offer a load of advice (and to kick it up another rung on the ladder)! Trust me, when one of your favourite authors of recent years starts throwing advice at you, you damn well listen! So it’s kind of back to pitching…I’m going to need to get some work on Byzantium and trains done too, though.

Plans to continue getting back into novel work were derailed when I realised that the essays for m history nightclasses were due next week. So I decided to start on those instead. They will go up here, with pictures and links, once they’ve been marked and suchlike.

After two weeks concentrating on pitches, back onto the novel! Slow start – updating the bumpers and refamiliarising myself with the text. Good fun.

Another Holmes review – Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror. Again, I will add pictures tomorrow. Yesterday’s review of The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes does have pictures now, as well as some corrections.

Today’s scribbling is actual content! A review of the second Rathbone and Bruce Sherlock Homes movie, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Tomorrow I will add pictures and put it on Facebook.