Serendipity

Current work: archaeologist c7 ; nonfiction research

It’s fairly well known that I work on two books at a time – a fiction and a nonfiction. (It's my way of avoiding writer's block.) Actually, at the moment, I have two nonfiction books on the go (just signed the contract for the second one this week, deadline not until March). I did most of the pics for the second book last year, but there’s one particular place that’s not generally open to the public.

Anyway, this morning I was working on my fiction. For no reason whatsoever I decided to nip into Google to look up this particular place – and discovered that it’s open today as part of the village flower festival. Now, how spooky is that? The day I decide to multitask and write a nice letter to the owner, I discover I can actually go and see it! (Even spookier, given the book's working title... but I digress.)

So this afternoon I am dragging the kids and DH off on a location research trip. Afterwards, we’re going via the train station to sort out train tickets for our trip to London in half term and also my lunch with my publisher on Nov 2.

And tomorrow I’ll be announcing something exciting. (To do with Modern Heat.) So do come back and say hello…

bad bad puppy

Current work: library day, YIPPEE!
Listening to: various classical guitar
Reading: nonfiction in the archives…

Guitar good yesterday; came home to discover I’d just missed out on an antiquarian book purchase. (My fault for not following it up last week.) So naturally I had to sulk a bit (even though two lots of research books were delivered a little later), and during said sulking process (aka browsing antiquarian bookshops on the internet) I discovered that Rod Neep is having a sale, and a certain CD book I’m after is half price at the mo. Now, I’m still kicking myself for not buying the original when I saw it: reason being it was 10 years ago and I couldn’t justify spending £150 on a set of books at the time because I had a small baby and was still on maternity leave (the unpaid part of it). I could justify it now, but last time I saw it for sale it was over £3k, sigh. So as the CD was such a bargain I had to buy it. (It’ll be a constant research book – and even better because it’s CD it should be searchable, which will save me a little bit of time.) Since it was a bargain, I managed to justify (to myself, anyway) spending my ‘savings’ on more antiquarian books. And they’re research for the next book or three and something else that’s bubbling.

Also had a good chat with my desk editor and the next batch of project management jobs are lined up. So I’m feeling much more settled. In some respects, I could’ve done with my library day at the weekend, but I’m treating today as a bonus, and I’ve put in so much headway on the nonfiction that I can afford to ignore it for the next month and concentrate on fiction.

Today my car is in for its first service. As it isn’t a year old, if they find anything wrong with it I hope they will fix it under warranty. Meanwhile I’ll be in the library – I have a list of the books I want to see (and possibly take photographs of some of the illustrations as they are out of copyright – we’re talking pre 1850s) and a list of dates for looking up newspaper reports.

And then tomorrow I will be back on track with the fiction...