The Bandstand?  Railman?  These ring any bells?

Lol.  Yeah, I’ve been a bad boy with letting a lot of writing duties slide.

Now, let’s not get carried away that by posting on the the 1st of January about this that I’ve made any bold New Year resolutions.  I have every belief that i’ll get caught up in ‘life’ just as I always do.

But I have been writing, doing a fair bit of work away from the blog.

Just keeping you in the loop. 

And it doesn’t have many spires and it’s not set at midnight.

I’m sure I’ll fix that in the edit, and that begins tonight. 

Looking through the blog it seems that I started this all the way back in September/October 2009 and was dropped for not having enough ‘spark’.  Reading though it again and there’s spark there, just needing a bit of work and an ending.

This is a sequel, of sorts, to Living On Reputation and a story I’ll be sending out into the wild.  Have to make it supergood!

As a big H.P. Lovecraft fan it’s my first serious attempt at writing a Lovecraftian creeping-evil styled tale.  I don’t really know if that’s how it’s going to end up but that’s my intention certainly!

I’m away now – words to write – and I’ll update later.

The weekend was great.  Prog Neil and I drove down on Friday, listening to 7 hours of prog to get us suitably in the mood.  35 tracks in total I think.  Heh.

Met with Bruce and Sharla, enjoyed some fine beer and went to the venue to enjoy some Steve Hackett.  Wow, he was something.  As an opener for the festival he was hard to beat.  Many albums were bought. 

There were loads of great bands on the bill, and the stand outs were Godsticks, Pallas, Karnataka and Pendragon.  All the rest were good but these guys rocked the house.

But it was good to get back to the familiar comforts of home.

And the familiar disappointments…

The Spires Of Midnight has been put on hold for the time being.  Neither Ruth or myself are totally convinced that it’s a good enough concept for the Dundee Writing Comp.  That’s fair enough but it does leave me in a bind.  But where there’s imagination there’s hope…

There is something, just in concept stages, which is where the vampire story is, that i’ve been pottering about with.  It might have the spark I’m looking for that Spires doesn’t quite have.  And I’ve got 3 weeks still before the story is due.  It should be plenty of time.

And then there’s the Whiteinch thing.  I don’t even want to go there.  Not yet anyway.  I’m still too disappointed about that one.

(Not that I’m disappointed about not getting accepted, as far as I know I’m in the book although official confirmation hasn’t come through yet, but this is something else…)

- Alistair

I’ve been plugging away at a project, an easier task since the re-acquisition of yWriter a wee while ago, and although I was working on Desert of Zin and an as yet unnamed vampire story (actually DoZ is being worked on steadily but just not this weekend…) I’ve a new story that has been keeping up nights.

I’m thinking of entering it for New Writing Dundee which is due on the 1st of November.  That would normally give me a month to get it done and edit it but I’ll be away for the last two weeks of the month, on holiday but working on plans for the upcoming NaNo, so I have little time to get it finished and in a state I’m happy with.

It’s called The Spires At Midnight, just a working title for now, and it may be fantasy/horror but I’ll have a better idea once it is finished.

Anyways, back to work…

- Alistair