well it's been ages

Well, it's been ages since I wrote anything here. I've received angry, hungry emails and phone calls from all over the world wanting their fix. Those untold thousands of my blog readers whom I've been neglecting. They want to know why.

Why, is because I suddenly plunged into writing a novel, which I didn't think I'd ever do any more. Admittedly a short novel. I'd call it a novella, in fact, except that readers and editors feel cheated by the word novella. Hell, they're paying good money for a real novel, so it better be at least 100,000 words long. Mine's just 45,000, first draft.

But that's 45,000 words in seven weeks, which ain't bad. And I do love the feel of being in a novel, creating (and living in) its own small world, with its own rules. I raced to finish that first draft, as if my life depended on it; but now, while I wait to see what needs doing to it, I feel bereft. But I can now read other writers' fiction, as I don't allow myself to do while I'm writing, and I have a very good book to indulge myself in: Three Balconies, by the American writer Bruce Jay Friedman, a collection of short stories and a novella. The short stories are real, funny, wry, observant and written with grace. It will sustain me in this sad interim.