ROw80 - Round 3 - Check in 2

My Goal: To complete prep work for 2nd draft of a novel.

Not made much progress since I checked in a week ago. Been stupidly tired all week that my motivation got up and left.

I decided to introduce some fitness back into my life and have been doing 5 minutes of pranyama with the ipad. I'm already starting to feel more awake.

Today, I pulled myself out of the slump:
Wrote a new poem for my course, typed up a couple of summaries
Read some poetry for a change and read a chunk of The Invisible Man by H G Wells.

As for my actual ROW80 goal, I started transferring my location details onto the spreadsheet and also been filling in what characters are present and the pov character. I've started adding years to the timeline and will need to work out what day and time of day events actually take place. (Ok I admit, I did the bare minimum just so I could check in today.)

Hope you're all having a great weekend:



Other Recent Posts you may have missed:
Last Monday Poetry - Love Poem to the Sea
ROW80 - Round 3 - Check in 1

Last Monday Poetry - Love Poem to the Sea

Love Poem to the Sea
by Katy Bennett

I am here
in this sprawling
concrete asylum
while you are there
a vastness beneath the sky
an endless body of calm and inspiration.

I envy the seagulls that circle above you
free and alive every day
while I fight
through the hordes day in
and day out. Growing
weary of the rat race
and the chains.

I’ll see you again soon, my love.

Missed last month's poetry? Read it here.

ROw80 - Round 3 - Check in 1

My Goal - To complete prep work for the 2nd Draft of a novel.

I dug out the 1st draft of Shroud and have been going through making a list of all the story's locations and characters journeys from A to B and am up to chapter 6. My 1st draft was devoid of any real detail and I have a background element which is relevant to the locations that hasn't been developed enough.

I'm still studying but once the latest assignment is done I'll have a whole week to carry on with this before I need to begin the 4th part of my course and hopefully I can import the whole thing into a spreadsheet and start working out my timeline.

It's good to be back.

How's everyone else doing?



Other recent posts you may have missed:
Book Review - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20
My Top 5 Favourite Ghost Stories

Book Review - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

Description: An anthology of the years best short horror fiction.
It's a good book for discovering new authors. The stories range from ghost stories to monsters to the weird and quirky. My personal favourites were:

Under Fog by Tanith Lee - A look at the dark secrets harboured by a community struggling to survive.

The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates by Stephen King - King always sucks you into his characters.

The Beginnings of Sorrow by Pinckney Benedict - Unusual story of change and living with fear.

The Place of Waiting by Brian Lumley - I'd avoided reading Lumley up until now, this story looks at death, grief and the afterlife. Left me with a sense of unease.

Rating: 3/5

My Top 5 Favourite Ghost Stories

These days my fiction writing is pulling me towards the supernatural and in particular ghosts rather than your straight horror. I began thinking about what I would list as my all time favourite ghost stories, there's a hell of a lot of stuff I've read but have forgotten and some of my selections were read/seen so long ago that I'll keep this brief. In no particular order:

1) Scrooge (1951 British version, film) Based on Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol". A Christmas ghost story, I have to watch it every year.

2) Woman In Black (Novel by Susan Hill and a theatre production) Creepy, atmospheric and traditional.

3) Apartment 16 (Novel by Adam Nevill) An original modern day haunting that adds plenty of depth.

4) Haunted (Novel by James Herbert) Probably one of the first ghost stories I read.

5) The Moonlit Path (short story by Ambrose Bierce) Effectively tells an event from 3 different perspectives, each with a unique voice, each filling in the gaps for the reader.

So what are your favourite ghost stories?

Other posts you may enjoy:

Review - Apartment 16
Blogger Zombie Walk

Back from hols and gearing up for the row80 rewrite

My recent short break to the coast has refocused my mind back on writing. I love being by the sea nothing else can realign the soul. I arrived at the hotel on Sunday, checking in to torrential winds and rain, a coastal walk was attempted when there was a break in the rain but the wind was blowing at over 20mph and made walking difficult.

On Monday, the rain had stopped for most of the day but the coastal winds were still strong so the day was spent shopping and grabbing lunch. Later, back in the hotel room I saw something peculiar. Sitting on the bed looking out onto the balcony, a metal partition with lots of holes in separated our balcony from the next doors balcony. A shadow cast itself onto the partition that had me questioning my eyes and feeling like I was falling through the twilight zone. At first it appeared to be the shadow of a man but when it moved its arms looked like wings, hands looked like talons, it had a beak. It morphed into this half man half bird creature that Lovecraft would've been proud of.

On Tuesday, I woke up to a glorious day and followed the cliff walk all the way into the next village stopping at the cafe at the half way point. From there it was back to Brighton followed by another mammoth walk to visit an old manor house which could well become the location of a future story, it has a long family history and supposedly haunted.

Brighton is also the location for my novel in progress and now my memory has been refreshed I'm jumping back into ROW80. My immediate goal is to write up detailed sheets of all the various locations in Shroud Of Death so I can begin developing the 2nd draft. I'm hoping to begin this on Sunday once my current assignment is handed in.

See what the other participants have been up to:

Blogger Zombie Walk

The Date: 30th September 2011

The Location: Online

The Host: Ghost Hunting Theories

Sign Up Deadline: Monday, 26th September 2011

The Blogger Zombie Walk sounded like great fun so I signed up. On the 30th September I'll be posting some zombie themed poetry and even one or two of my apocalyptic zombie dreams.

The official post with full instructions on how to take part is here.

Also over on my website, I've finally added more poets home pages to the horror poets page. Go and visit some terrifying pen smiths.

Have a chilling weekend all.

Website updates and blog updates

Issue 6 of Dark Metre has been uploaded to the website.
Publishing credits on the books page have been updated.
Writing prompts have been updated.

Recent blog posts you may have missed:

Poetry News - 3 Horror Lunes Now Live
A General Writing Update
Last Monday Poetry

Over the next couple of weeks I will be moving the furniture around on the main website.