Friday night and we've just come back from walking the dog. We're debating cancelling our satellite TV subscription since we are currently paying about $45 per month for practically nothing. I watched for four hours the other night and couldn't find one show I wanted to watch. So I open up Safari and find out both the PGA golf championship and tonight's CFL football game between Winnipeg and Hamilton are available live on-line for free.

Hmmm... What are we paying $45 a month for anyway?

But that's not what I was planning to write about today. I was planning to write about writing.

Why? Because, after a long drought, I can feel the creative juices start to flow again.

Why? Several reasons: first, because my conversations with my nieces got me started on what seems to be a fantastic new Phillip Gold novel, one that is constantly running across my mind, even as I spend a day trimming tree branches; second, because a friend at work mentioned, out of the blue, that she had come across my website some time ago and had really enjoyed reading my new Rowling-world novel, The Way Forward ("It's like the seventh book never ended," she said); and third, because my chat with that same friend, which touched on our mutual love for the old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, reminded me of my own Abigail Massey stories and I feel like I want to get back to them as well.

It helps as well that I finally got around to starting the much-abbreviated synopsis of The Silent Goodbye in preparation for my submission of that novel to a publisher.

So things are percolating on the writing side.

On the reading side, things are not so good. I started Dick Francis' Wild Horses on the weekend, only to lose the darn thing. I'm worried that someone accidentally packed the book up and took it back to Ontario with them when my in-laws left on Monday. I might have to go and buy another copy, since losing my original copy stalls my reading plans completely.

And if I could just manage to catch my sister on Skype, life would be even better!

Tags: Dick Francis, Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey, Novels, Writing, Mystery, CFL, Tiger Cats

Writing is a solitary art. You sit alone at your computer, or with your pad and pen, and compose a story. It takes hours and hours, weeks upon weeks, even years to complete a single novel. And, when you've finished a draft, you have only your own perception of whether or not it's any good.

That's why those first readings are so important. You pass along your precious draft to your partner, a friend or two, your colleagues in your writing group, and you hold your breath. Will they like it? Will they find horrible flaws in your plot, your characters, your writing itself? Will they be too kind to tell you it needs a heck of a lot of work?

I'm lucky to have some fantastic readers in my life, people I know will give an honest opinion and criticism that I can use to make my writing better. My partner, Patti, is one of those readers. She's making her way slowly through The Silent Goodbye and she's already compiled a long list of comments and corrections. My former writing group pals, Ross Pennie and John Hewson, are also trusted and valued readers: they know good writing, they know how to offer constructive feedback and they aren't afraid to tell the truth (both positive and negative).

So the last little while has been quite a nervous time for me, as Patti, Ross and John have worked their way through the novel. I'm glad to say that Patti, though she still has a way to go in the book, has been very positive and has provided some excellent insights and suggestions. Ross is also about half-way through the novel (at last report) and he, too, seems to be enjoying the writing while giving some excellent and useful feedback.

And then the other night I heard from John, the first of my readers to finish the book. And, I'm thrilled to say, he appears to have liked it a lot. He, too, has made some really excellent suggestions on how to make it better but he is also clear that he thinks it's of publishable quality. That's great to hear. And such a relief.

I have really felt positive about The Silent Goodbye since I was well into writing the first draft but it's nice to have my positive perceptions verified by my trusted readers. Oh, sure, there's still a lot of work to do. I've just started a line-by-line review where every word comes under scrutiny (is it necessary? is it the best word to use?) and every scene is tested to make sure it makes a worthwhile contribution to the book.

But I also now feel much more secure in the knowledge that three trusted readers have read at least part of the book and have enjoyed it.

That kind of feedback gives me a boost as I start the revisions. And creates excitement for a review of the other Phillip Gold novels as well as the Abigail Massey stories too!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

December 28. Still off work, with Christmas itself now fading slowly into the past, become more happy memory than happy times.

It's odd not to have a writing project on the go. I am forcing myself not to pick up the printed copy of the draft of The Silent Goodbye but just to let it sit for a while. Reviewing it now would be largely a waste of time since I haven't gotten enough distance from it to be objective. Still, it's hard not to do so.

I have thought about starting the next novel, thought about working on an Abigail Massey short story, thought about getting around to the Star Trek presentation I have slated for February but I don't seem to have the energy to tackle any one of them.

So I read, watch movies (looking forward to seeing the first season of Madmen, one of my Christmas gifts) and putter around. Not a bad life, really, but not overly creative nor productive.

Meanwhile, I did the editing work on a new Marlee video, this one with her enjoying the snow and nice weather on Christmas day. I'll paste it onto the video page of this site for everyone to enjoy.

Hope you are all having a great holiday.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey, Madmen

The Silent Goodbye is finished.

Well, draft one of The Silent Goodbye is finished but that wouldn't make a very dramatic opening, would it?

I am sitting here in a surprisingly emotional state, having just typed the last sentence of my third (unpublished) Phillip Gold novel. I'm a bit of a softie in that I always like to include a denouement that tidies things up and gives my character a moment to reflect back on what's happened. That's what I finished writing this morning, in between doing some of our Christmas grocery shopping and cleaning the downstairs bathroom in preparation for the arrival of our guest tonight.

Funny thing is, I find the final passages as emotional as my character does. But it's nice to know I've left him sitting there in his office, his injuries healing, most of his friends safe and his enemies vanquished, contemplating the meaning of life and everything it encompasses.

My plan is to leave the draft for a bit (perhaps as much as a month or so) to get some objectivity and distance, then go back and do a rewrite before sending it to my readers for their input.

In the meantime, life offers plenty of creative challenges: preparing a Star-Trek based presentation for work, completing the character and setting summaries for the Gold world, perhaps writing an Abigail Massey Christmas story and finally starting work on the next Phillip Gold novel.

Yes, that's right, published or not, I'm moving on to number four. This time, it's the prequel of all prequels: Gold at eight, dealing with the violence his father brings raining down on his family. No easy task, for him or for me.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

It's been an interesting week. New Brunswick has tumbled headlong into fall, with temperatures dropping sharply and rain alternating with sunshine on a day-to-day basis. Most importantly, however, almost every night brings a warning of frost, that enemy of all things vegetable.

Since I planted most things late, as in at the end of May, my veggie plants are only at about the three-quarters stage of growth as autumn falls. While we've had a pretty good crop of beans (both string and runner), the tomatoes are still small and green, the cucumbers are just pickles, the carrots really want to be fully grown but aren't and the brussels sprouts, well, the poor brussels sprout plants. They just can't seem to generate enough oomph to put out a sprout or two.

And now comes frost. Tonight's forecast doesn't say "Frost Warning" it says "Frost". I guess it's time I accept that my lateness in planting is going to mean no vegetables whatsoever after tonight. So sad.

On the writing front, however, things are definitely more productive. I went back last night and did a full revision of the scene involving Shannon Olivier's appearance in court. I expanded it quite a bit and made some small adjustments and additions to the existing sections. Again, I think it reads pretty well. In fact, I'm quite proud of it.

I hope I can keep up the momentum. Time is such a challenge, though, with work hyping up and fall house chores arising and life just keeping on trucking.

And, of course, there are the other writing projects that keep calling out to me too. I had a really interesting conversation with a colleague in Saint John, who has read the Abigail Massey stories and seems to agree that a longer work (maybe a novel) that takes Abigail and her pals to Saint John in 1943 would be a good idea. So my colleague has been feeding me nifty tidbits about Saint John history, lots of ideas upon which I could base the book.

Abigail, it seems, is getting restless. She's bored just hanging around the McAdam Station and Hotel and craves another adventure.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

I have to come clean: I haven't written any Phillip Gold in three days. Okay, there, I said it. I admitted my fault. Work has been extremely busy and so has life in general. Add that the constant rain of the past few weeks has finally broken out into glorious sunshine (and the resulting golf game) and you'll see why I haven't been able to get back to The Silent Goodbye.

My subconscious has been working on it (or is that my unconscious?) and I expect to be able to get rolling again when I next sit down. Too many things have gotten in the way.

By way of update on other things, however, I still have not heard from the publisher about my Abigail Massey submission. I have also given up trying to figure out what that means: they don't review new submissions very often so they simply haven't taken a look at it; they have looked at it and rejected it but figure bad news can wait; they like it but it has to go through the channels for approvals before they contact me again.

I"ve heard all the possibilities and have no clue which is true. I don't want to give up but I'd feel a lot better if I had heard one way or another.

My vegetable garden is coming along surprisingly well. Although we have little critters that seem to go after certain plants, the whole garden plot (so brown and barren two months ago) is alive with varying shades of green. I even had to go out and do some heartless thinning to most of the rows of veggies but learned from the way the remaining plants suddenly exploded in growth thereafter that thinning is a good and kind thing for plants. No actual, edible vegetables yet but we're getting there.

With regard to backyard birds, I made the mistake of buying the really cheap seed and ended up, perhaps not surprisingly, with a yard filled with grackles, crows, doves and pigeons. I'm surprised the neighbours didn't come to complain. So I took the main feeder down and put it in the shed. Within two days, most of the undesirables had disappeared and, for the last two days, we've enjoyed the company of gold and purple finches as well as chipping sparrows and chicadees at our finch feeder. Much better. Lesson learned.

In the area of reading, well, I've gotten myself caught up in Harry Potter again. In preparation for the disappointing film that came out a couple of weeks ago, I re-read The Half-Blood Prince, then followed the natural course of things and read The Deathly Hallows. Now I'm whipping through the first three books, reading the novel and watching the movie in rapid succession to see the changes. I can't believe I never realised how different the ending of the first book was from that of the first movie: in the book, Harry's battle with Quirrell/Voldemort is killing both of them when Dumbledore intervenes to save Harry; in the movie, Harry is victorious over Quirrell but knocked out by Voldemort's escaping spirit and wakes in the Infirmary. Very different.

And, still on the video front, I am now watching the third season of Star Trek: The Original Series again. You can feel the change in quality from the opening moment. For one thing, Kirk and the rest have been allowed to grow their hair out from the military cuts of the first two seasons to hippie styles of the sixties. It just looks bad.

Anyway, that's the update. Off to the golf course now!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Harry Potter, Abigail Massey, McAdam Station

Almost a week into the new plan and things continue to go well. I have made good progress on The Silent Goodbye, with what I think is some reasonably good writing along the way.

The key is consistency. Write at least a little bit every day. A second key is setting reasonable goals for each day's writing: I'm finding that I try to start and finish at least one scene every day. Some people say you should leave off in mid-scene, even in mid-sentence, so that you can relaunch fairly easily the next day. That doesn't work for me. I'd prefer to write a scene, then spend the intervening period allowing my mind to work through the next scene or two before I sit down to write again.

Although I do the bulk of the writing in the evening (I set aside between 30 and 90 minutes a night to write — again, I'm setting reasonable goals for myself), I also try to do at least a little bit of writing on my lunch hour at work. This creates a bridge period between the major blocks of writing, a chance to work through the transitions from scene to scene, that kind of stuff.

Once I've done maybe 20 to 30 minutes of writing at work, I block and copy whatever I produce into an e-mail and send it to myself. The first step for the evening session is then to open the e-mail, block and copy the passage into my working file for the novel and, then, as I go through to correct formatting errors caused by the movement from Word file to e-mail file and back to Word file, I also revise the passage. This kick starts the evening's writing session and off I go.

Of course, when my work is as busy as it has been for the past couple of days, I can't always get to the writing. Some days are just train wrecks of meetings, drop ins, counselling sessions, and e-mail correspondence. It can be overwhelming.

Even on those kinds of days, however, it's good to get at least some writing done, if only in the evening. It keeps me sane and it keeps the rhythm going. Writing seems to feed on itself: once you get going, you keep going. If you grind to a halt, it's hard to get started again.

So Phillip Gold is moving along well. Abigail Massey, on the other hand, is still sitting in the Ladies Waiting Room, hoping to hear from a publisher. Soon, we hope.

On the down side, my commitment to my writing has had at least one negative impact: less time to play with the dog. I kind of got that message when Marlee Marie marched into our bedroom this morning at 2 a.m. and dropped a ball noisily at the end of the bed, then let out a big sigh and collapsed dramatically to the floor. Message received, Marlee.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

I am now two days into the grand plan and things are working pretty well. I have written two new sections of The Silent Goodbye and, even better, I am finding that the story, characters and plot are settling again into my subconscious and percolating away in there.

That's a good sign. And it makes the writing so much easier.

On the fun side, Phillip Gold has fled to Toronto to "disappear" for a couple of days in preparation for the trial. That's given me a chance to take him back to some of my old haunts — the University of Toronto law school, the Villager Suite Hotel, the Big Slice — and spend a little time there as well. It's sort of a break for him and a fun moment for me. The trick will be to make sure I keep it interesting enough as a bridge section that readers won't put the book down and never go back to it.

Of course, I will follow the old hard-boiled axiom: every time you wonder what should happen next, have someone come into the room with a gun.

I'm going down now to write some more. It feels so good when the words are flowing. Of course, I'm also still waiting for word on the Abigail Massey submission.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

I start the new regimen today.

Moments ago, I e-mailed off my query letter for the Abigail Massey at McAdam Station episodic novel to a Canadian publisher, leaving me free to start focusing on one project: The Silent Goodbye.

I am going to attempt to find at least an hour every day to work on this novel, with a view to completing the first draft by the end of 2009. Patti is on board and supportive and I am committed (or at least I should be). I have set up my laptop computer as my principal place of writing and, at some point in the not too distant future, I will take steps to establish my own office in what we call the "Green Room" of our home.

This time, it's SERIOUS.

I have completed the extended (and action-packed) set up of the novel and, from here on out, I will be weaving together the two major plots: Phillip Gold's duel with Alexander Pim, the professional killer, and the sexual assault trial of gang member Billy Watson, Gold's latest client.

The idea is to have one add tension to the other with the two finally coming together in an exciting climax. We'll see. I have the plot carefully planned and more ideas started coming to me while I was showering this morning (I do seem to do some of my best thinking with the water flowing!). My hope is that, by breaking down the remaining writing into bite-sized chunks, I might just be successful at getting the writing done.

Sounds funny, doesn't it? Writers are supposed to enjoy the process of writing, to love sitting at the keyboard and creating a fictional world. I'm not so sure it works that way. The part I love is the thinking and planning, the mental process of imagining the plot, developing the characters, working through the challenges and problems that present themselves. The writing is, to me, a much more mechanical process. Taking those wonderful ideas and manufacturing them with words.

That actually sounds like a pretty negative characterization of the actual writing. Maybe it explains why I have so many ideas for projects but such problems completing them.

While I am committed to completing The Silent Goodbye in good order, I won't be too upset if my work is interrupted by one particular distraction: a call from a publisher asking me to focus on rounding Abigail Massey into shape for publication!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

And so it begins: the process of attempting to find a publisher for the Abigail Massey stories. I've drafted a query letter and will add to it my own resume and a sample chapter. I'm quite hopeful I'll be able to place it but, as always, getting published is no easy task.

Despite what I wrote in my last post, I do intend to attempt to focus my efforts on one project at a time. First, once the Abigail query letter is gone, I will settle in to work on The Silent Goodbye in hopes of getting a draft done by the end of the year. That should be do-able if I am successful in carving out at least an hour each day to write. Quite often the hardest part about writing is getting back into a rhythm once you've lost it. If you can start to set a bit of a pace, however, things tend to snowball and you find yourself writing more quickly, more consistently and more effectively.

That's my goal at this point. Focus on one project, create a rhythm, get it done. Set it aside at that point, work on something else for a while to create distance, then go back with a more objective eye for review and rewrites.

I can promise myself I'll do all that. I'm just not so sure I'll live up to my own promise.

And next Wednesday brings Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, film version. Hoorraaayyy!!!

Tags: Abigail Massey

The other day I had a chat with my friend Ross, author of the highly successful novel Tainted. This book, his first medical thriller, has apparently sold out its first printing and is now under order for a second printing. Cool.

During this conversation, Ross told me he simply could not deal with the number of projects I currently have underway: he'd prefer to focus on one completely, get it done, then move on. Considering he's now published and in the "highly successful" category, I had to admit that his approach is probably better than my scattershot, multiple project approach.

So what did I do? I immediately went out and started a new project. To add to all the others. In case you've forgotten, here's what I'm working on from a writing standpoint: 1) Phillip Gold, The Silent Goodbye, a novel; 2) Abigail Massey at McAdam Station, a collection of short stories for young readers (ages 9 to 12 or so); 3) the Harry Potter Concordance; 4) The Way Forward, a Rowling-world novel; and 5) this blog.

I'm going to keep the new project something of a secret for now, considering the ones I do talk about never seem to get done. Suffice it to say, it is inspired by how much I enjoy writing the Abigail Massey stories and it will feature a protagonist who is named after two of my favourite people: her name will be Emily St. Clare. That's not to say that my character will in any way resemble Emily or Clare but I like the names and I like the way they come together.

With regard to a status update on the projects, here goes:

The Silent Goodbye: I have written more than 50,000 words of it and recently completed a fairly detailed plot plan for the remainder of the novel. I have dabbled with writing the remainder and will make this a focus for the remainder of the year;

Abigail Massey at McAdam Station: I have written 12 of these stories which, when counted together, total approximately 45,000 words. I am in the process of drafting query letters to several Canadian publishers of children and young people's fiction with the hopes of finding someone to take the project on. I also dream of the stories one day forming the basis for a family television comic drama, in the style of Road to Avonlea and Anne of Green Gables;

Harry Potter Concordance: this is a personal pet project that I'm doing simply for my own enjoyment. I'm part way through The Goblet of Fire and having a great time with it. But it is slow work;

The Way Forward: Despite a very impressive burst of energy when I started it, this project has lost some steam. I will likely get back to it at some point but it is strictly back-burner for now.

This blog: as long as I enjoy writing it, which I do, I'll keep doing it.

In the meantime, I have started posting simple videos on Youtube under the user name "markwwnb": so far, two short, silent vids of Marlee Marie, our puppy.

So I've got a lot on the go, creatively. That's on top of life, the universe and everything.

And I've come to accept that, even with a clear picture in front of me of a brown and white bird with streaks and speckles, I am incapable of identifying it using bird books like Peterson's. I'm hopeless.

Tags: Abigail Massey, Phillip Gold

Life is impressively busy these days. Work keeps throwing me tough situations which seem to be taking up a lot of time. Then there is this huge conference in which I am taking part. And, of course, there's the garden, the bird houses and feeders, the lawn, the house, the laundry, cooking, cleaning, doing dishes.

What you have just read is a series of excuses, my way of explaining why I have done no writing whatsoever in the past week. I did take some small steps (like researching Canadian publishers of young adult fiction and talking to a publishing rep at this conference) but, as for actual writing, nothing.

In some ways it's quite depressing. But every time I find myself with an idle moment recently, I just close my eyes or flip on a silly TV show or watch another episode of Star Trek, the original series. I think I'm brain dead.

I still have every intention of getting back to it. I hope to start to package the Abigail Massey stories for an attempt to get them published. I also hope to get back to Phillip Gold according to the plot plan I created and maybe even do some work on The Way Forward.

I even sat down at my laptop with the expectation of at least doing a little work on the Harry Potter Concordance but my mind just wouldn't let me go there.

Things have gotten so bad I'm not even writing this blog very regularly and, when I do, it's about how I'm not writing.

I need to shake this up and get going!

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey

Life is hotting up again. Work is very busy and, with all the beautiful weather we've been enjoying, I've got so many yard chores to do it's amazing.

So not much writing is getting done. My brother is in town for a couple of days of rest and recreation and we've been having a really nice visit. Yesterday, Mike and I went to see Star Trek (2009) again and then we went with Patti and Marlee Marie down to McAdam to introduce Mike to the magnificent station and hotel.

It was good to get back to McAdam, now that I've written all of those Abigail Massey stories. As I learned during our visit yesterday, my own fictional image of the station and hotel has actually replaced in my mind the real thing. In writing my stories, I have made several major errors in describing the design of the building and in setting the action in it.

For example, I wrote the stories on the assumption that there were sets of stairs at either end of the building that connect all three floors. Wrong. The stairs from the first to the second floors (from the station and eating areas to the hotel rooms) rise from a space almost a third of the way along the building from the western end, between the ladies sitting room and the formal dining room. The stairs located at the ends of the station connect only the second floor with the third-floor staff quarters.

I also realised that the hotel does not stretch the entire length of the building. It fills only the western two-thirds of the second floor. Another error on my part. Also, the girls' living area has a large kitchen room (where they probably ate) as well as a large shared bath, both located at the top of the stairs. I had the stairs opening directly into the sleeping area and the girls eating at a table in the sleeping area. Interesting. I'll have to do some re-writing to correct my errors.

Patti and I have also discovered the joys of iMovie. We work on Mac computers. We also have a fairly advanced digital camera that, with our memory card, can take up to an hour of good quality moving pictures (with sound, if we wish). That's led us to put the two together and figure out that, with iMovie, we can do some amazing things with the movies we take. I probably won't incorporate those movies into this website but I'll have to see about taking a more active part on Youtube. For example, as I sit here now I realise I should have done a film of our visit to McAdam yesterday. That probably would have become very popular on Youtube.

We'll have to go back.

And I'll have to get back to my writing. After, of course, I mow and edge the lawn, tend to my garden, clear out the dead, dying and unwanted tree bits in the back of the yard and tidy up our growing pile of refuse branches, sticks and trees.

Don't worry. I'll get there.

Tags: Abigail Massey, Phillip Gold, Star Trek

I'm back home again after what turned out to be an excellent conference in Halifax. A lot of good people from across the country and some excellent presentations.

I didn't get any writing done, however. Too much to do at the conference, too much to do in Halifax.

So I've come home exhausted and looking forward to a quiet (apparently rainy) weekend to recover in time to get back to the office on Monday.

I am still trying to think of ideas for an Abigail Massey novel. My visit to Halifax prompted me to wonder if perhaps that's the direction I should go: have Abigail and her pals go to 1943 Halifax for some reason, perhaps to greet a war brides ship or a hospital ship. I'd like to get them into Pier 21 since my mother's family arrived there about 10 years later and I find it an interesting and quite dramatic place.

As usual, I'm worried about the research but there does seem to be a massive amount of information on Halifax available so I hope it would not be too hard.

While in Halifax, I had the chance to see and hear both Lawrence Hill, highly respected author whose most recent novel, The Book of Negroes, was recently named winner of the Canada Reads competition for 2009, and Halifax poet and singer Shauntay Grant, a performance artist whose poem "Up Home" is now a highly successful children's book by the same title.

As any of you who have read this blog in the past will know, I was not overly impressed with one of Hill's earlier efforts — Some Great Thing. My review of that book appears in an earlier post. Hill in person, however, is exceptional. A warm and welcoming man, his presentation proved a wonderful kick off to the conference. And he read an abbreviated version of the first chapter of The Book of Negroes during that presentation, prompting me to go out and buy the novel. I've just started reading it and am very impressed.

Grant, on the other hand, closed the conference with an energetic, passionate performance of several of her poems, including "Up Home", a memoir of her childhood in North Preston, one of several Black communities in and around Halifax. Grant's performance was entrancing and her poetry has a lovely quality to it that I find hard to put into words. I don't know if the book, Up Home, is available widely across the country but it is worth looking for. It's published by Nimbus Publishing in Halifax and includes some truly spectacular artwork by Halifax artist Susan Tooke, much of which was on exhibition at the Nova Scotia Art Gallery when we were there.

Meanwhile, my garden is showing very healthy rows of green now, all of which popped up while I was away. Exciting times!

Tags: Abigail Massey, Lawrence Hill

After a very pleasant weekend which mixed pleasure — a whisky tasting club Friday evening and an afternoon at the driving range on Saturday — with work around the house (including mowing and edging our rather large, uneven yard), I am now preparing for a five-day conference in Halifax, leaving on Monday.

I like Halifax a lot and am really looking forward to seeing the city. I hate to admit but I'm a little bit ambivalent about the conference itself: don't tell any of my colleagues that!

It was really good to have re-read the Abigail Massey stories the other day. The process of reviewing them has served to bring the characters and setting all vividly back into my mind. As I said in my previous post, I should start looking for a way to publish the stories.

To that end, I am starting to wonder about trying to write a longer story — a novel or at least a novella — to serve as a core piece for a published book. I'm a bit nervous about the prospect of doing enough research into 1940s New Brunswick to do it effectively but I think that central group of girls (Abigail, Martha, Jenny and Alice) provides an interesting set of characters who could carry a longer work.

I'll continue to give this idea some thought as I visit Halifax this week. I will also be bringing with me my working copy of The Silent Goodbye so perhaps, while I wile away the evening hours in my hotel room, I will find the time and energy to move that novel forward. I might also find the energy to look up the word "wile" to see if I've spelt it correctly in that previous sentence!

Or maybe I'll just wander around beautiful downtown Halifax! Either way, you won't be hearing from me until next weekend.

Tags: Abigail Massey

This is a very slow process. I am trying very hard to give myself the time I apparently need to recover from my mother's death last month and get back to my writing. Step one occurred last week, when I started to read through and perform some minor editing on my Phillip Gold novel, The Silent Goodbye.

Step two is upon me. I have just taken several hours to read through the many Abigail Massey stories posted on this website and perform the same sort of polishing work on them. I fixed up some typos, dealt with a couple of consistency issues and changed the ages of the four major characters from 18 to 16, to bring them more in line with their attitudes and behaviour. I think the stories work better this way.

Once again, however, I find that I truly and honestly enjoy my own writing. And that's not a good thing. First, I get so caught up in the story I am not actually able to spot the errors and stop to fix them. Second, I don't have the kind of objective eye I need to see what is not working on a more macro level and make the stories better. I find myself simply reading for enjoyment.

I like these stories. I like the characters and find them both well-crafted and, by the end of 12 stories, fairly well established. Abigail and Martha have a nice relationship and I quite like Jenny and, to a lesser extent, Alice, who is the least developed of the four. Miss Pierce has emerged very nicely as a person of several levels and I think I've succeeded in portraying her as a stern manager who, because she is dealing with stuff in own life, cannot often show "her girls" how she really feels about them.

Both Mr. Fitzpatrick and Gilles LeClerc are also, I think, reasonably charming and nicely developed. I am even quite happy with how the budding romance between Gilles and Martha is coming along.

Like I said, I'm not the most objective reader.

I'm not sure if I'll write any more of these stories, at least not soon, but I do think I should start making a plan to market them. I'd like to believe they're good enough for public consumption beyond this webpage! Maybe as a collection of stories or even as the basis for one of those sweet Canadian period dramas for the CBC!

Tags: Abigail Massey

Yesterday's blog entry set a record for one-day traffic to my website. I mentioned on my Facebook page that I was opining on the new Star Trek movie and 28 people came to visit in one day. That's a record for me and my site. Gavin enjoys reminding me that his site gets hundreds of visitors a day, especially on windy ones, but I think 28 is pretty good. So thank you, everyone.

That being said, my run of tough luck continues. We won't go all the way back to the sad events of April. We need only look at May. First, I put a great big gash in my finger. Then I crunched my thumb with a hammer. Now I have some fairly nasty flu-like symptoms that are keeping me home and unhappy. And that's just my own health. Did I mention that Marlee Marie is also experiencing "flu-like symptoms" and then, to top it all off, ran into a skunk yesterday?

Helpful that Patti left for Ontario last night for six days. Great timing. Actually, she's heading back to celebrate both her god son's confirmation and her sister's graduation from a graduate program in education so I guess those are pretty good reasons to leave her two sick loved ones behind.

Underneath all of my suffering, however, I am starting to feel some energy return. I hope to get back to working on Phillip Gold soon and I am starting to contemplate writing an Abigail Massey novel, either by stitching together some of the existing short stories or with a fresh new plot. I may also revisit the original stories to do rewrites; I dashed them all out pretty quickly so I have no doubt some polishing could be done.

And, of course, as a result of the Star Trek movie and the conversations I have been having since, I have started watching all of the episodes of the original series in order again. Just to get back into it.

What about the Harry Potter Concordance and The Way Forward, as it appears on this website? Well, we'll see what the future brings.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey, Harry Potter

Just when I launch a new beginning of this blog, I post an announcement that I, along with Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey, George Weasley, Aberforth Dumbledore and all the other characters I enjoy to write about, will be taking a brief break.

I am about to board a plane back to Ontario for a week's visit. I'm hoping to see friends and family, visit the fabulously renewed Art Gallery of Ontario and just mope around Toronto and Hamilton for a while.

Since I can't take my RapidWeaver with me (well, I could but it would be a huge production) I'm afraid I won't be able to post anything during my vacation. Marlee Marie will probably put up a post or two of her Dog's Blog while I'm away so check out her action!

See you soon.

Tags: Phillip Gold, Abigail Massey