Writing in Haste (Cecilia Peartree)

I write this in greater haste than usual, having forgotten what day it was for all sorts of reasons, some of them more convincing than others!

We had an extremely busy July, which was also very frustrating in some ways, involving as it did some chaos in the garden and a series of phone calls to and from the bank because they had decided someone was trying to do something fraudulent with my current account when actually it was only that I had to pay a small fortune to tree surgeons to get rid of a tree that had well outgrown the space in our garden. You will see from the stump that remains how big it must have been.

RIP the big tree

The only thing that kept me (relatively) sane during July was writing. Despite all the upheaval, I stuck to my regular writing slot almost every day, between 11 am and 1 pm. Incidentally this coincides with the timing for letting the cats out, although of course I couldn't do that while the tree work was going on. Our current cats are rather wary about being outside, and if anything at all unusual happens out there, they will immediately rush into the house and possibly upstairs if the unusual thing is particularly awful, such as the arrival of next-door's window-cleaners with a ladder.

I am pleased to report that I am now on the home straight with my alternate history novel, The Prussian Alternative, have also managed to produce a short story about decluttering for the UK Crime Book Club summer event on Facebook and to start planning the thirty-first in my long-running mystery series. When I say 'planning' I don't mean I'm drawing flowcharts and creating new Excel files or anything. I've excavated the start of what was meant to be a short story that used a scenario I want to use for the novel, and I've been making fairly random notes by hand in a notebook as I try to work out whether I want to begin the actual novel in the same place or not. 

I won't be able to start this one anyway until I've looked back at several earlier novels in the mystery series to find out what happened to a particular building I want to re-use in this one. I have a feeling I set it on fire at one point! This kind of thing is always tricky in a long series. I will also have to consult the one Excel file I do use for my writing - it has a list of characters with a few notes about them, particularly if they have either been a murder victim or a murderer in a previous book,

Once all these questions are answered, I look forward to writing no. 31. It will be a lot simpler than the Prussian book and with a lot less research to do. I now know far more about railway accidents near Morpeth in the later 19th century than I ever wanted to know.

The garden is not a total write-off, by the way - we now have a little tomato which I am hoping will ripen at some time before the first frosts come along.

The little tomato