On The Road To Publishville # 2 - "The Synopsis & Cover Letter"

# “(S)He's writing, (s)he's writing, (s)he's writing a novel. (S)He's writing, (s)he's weaving, conceiving a plot...” # - Cake

So! Your masterpiece is finished and lying in a conveniently unmissable place, either printed out on paper to encourage you and convince you that you really are a writer or instead sits quietly waiting, but nevertheless complete, on your PC hard drive… You’ve read it and read it till you’re (only just) sick of the sight of it and you finally (in my case a decade later) feel ready to allow other eyes to look upon it for the first time…

That's where I presently stand with "Moon Crater": the book what I wrote (still with a "cover name title") which I'd like to turn into my debut published novel... It's perhaps fitting that it's now 3 years to the day of this post, that I began blogging in an effort to kickstart me into finishing the novel I'd had the initial idea for way back in 1999 and then begun to write seriously between 2003 and 2005. At the end of 2005, I found I'd hit a rut or had just run out of steam with that particular story but always knew I'd return to it and the blogging phenomenon caught me at just the right time so that I could harness it's motivational power and use it to get to the final paragraph of my book...

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"Seven for a secret never to be told..."

# "I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow, casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows..." - Adam Duritz


This month sees the return to my hometown of “my favourite band, Counting Crows”… - I haven't seen them play live for about six years and it's sure to be a brilliant gig... (reviews of the Newcastle, UK show are likely to appear here by the end of May)

I've always judged whether I'm "into" a band by the fact of me liking every song they put out, and borrowing their first album from a friend back during my undergrad days in the mid-90s, I was hooked from the get-go. Since then I've listened out for all their B-sides, bootleg live versions of songs (which constantly change from show to show) and any of their rarer tracks that they've contributed to TV and film soundtracks over the years...

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Conning the Continuity...

# "What if I lost my direction? What if I lost sense of time? ... It feels just like I'm falling for the first time" # - Barenaked Ladies


I’m afraid this post begins with a bit of a “Warning” (perhaps even a ‘red alert’?) because I’ve got a feeling that even before I begin to type it, it’s going to be one full of question marks and exclamation points… (and sometimes both at once!)

It was just over two years ago, right here on this very weblog journal, that I geekily ranted about my love of “timelines” of ongoing fictional book and TV series, and now around 26 months down my own life’s timeline, a few recent ‘events’ in the world of fiction have led to what I’d describe as a “slow-burning annoyance” related to a new strand on the theme of timelines, and it’s one which is especially close to my heart in writing "Moon Crater"…

I’ve talked before about the idea and importance of “Continuity” to my writing, among the various drafts of my novel and my story series, and how I even began to keep a “Continuity notebook” to help ensure that I didn’t overstep my bounds and the established rules of the worlds of my stories…

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