Today I did some field research into the Whisky War and the Poitin Republic, I discovered that my article on the Holy Grail of Ballybofey was, alas, fatally flawed, and I planned out the next two instalments of The Odd Side of Donegal. Which, as you can guess, are about a saint and some sinners. Also considering rewriting the main page of the section to include the old Donegal tourism slogan “It’s Different Up Here!” It sure is.

The next instalment in The Odd Side of Donegal is available. This time I talk about The Sunny Place in the Stones, an ancient site of myth and legend where gods once walked. Also Victorian archaeology, which always lends a nice air of nuttiness to proceedings.

Today I wrote about one of my favourite places. The story led me from ancient Alexandria, through the tale of an ancient god-king who did not take kindly to the murder of his son, and up to the somewhat slapdash but well-meant restoration efforts of the Victorians being undercut by the somewhat mean-spirited and penny-pinching restoration efforts of the moderns. Not bad for a day out.

Today I did a bunch of research on possible articles for The Odd Side Of Donegal. I’ve planned out the next one, on The Stone In The Sunny Place (which, touch wood, will be up by Friday), and will probably follow it with articles on the Inishowen Whiskey Wars, the Holy Grail of Ballybofey, the Banshee of  the O’Neills, and the Saint Who Slew The Monsters. I’m sure I can find more to follow, but that should keep me occupied for a while!

Today I present a new section to the site, The Odd Side of Donegal. The first (new) entry is a little bit of oddness related to one of my personal possessions, The Haunted Rugs of Ballyshannon.

New project is well underway! First (official) instalment is written, need editing, pictures and so on tomorrow and then it will be unveiled. Mildly excited about this, mostly because of how much fun it’s going to be to research and write it.

With the novel done and dusted, today I wrote up a pitch for Overthinking It that I’ve had knocking about, and then put the idea in to them. May not go anywhere (still waiting to hear back about the Rubberbandits article I sent them) but worth a shot, anyway.

Yes, novel is done – again! Time to zip it up and throw it to the test readers once more.

The main error I had to fix today was missing spaces. For some reason these chapters had loads, though I hadn’t seen any anywhere else. Oh well. Almost done!

Now up to halfway through the reread. Some clumsy sentences fixed, some spelling errors caught, and one more major continuity flub dealt with. Onward!