New authors, some free time

Well, I struggled through Sheri S. Tepper's Grass wishing, all the while, that she had smoked some before starting. Still, I got to the end - but I won't be ordering any more of her work. David Brin, on the other hand, has begun well and I'm already much more intrigued than with dear flat, slightly sweet Sheri. See what I did there? Well, I wrote in cliche for a start. Next I'll be saying someone 'smashed it'.

Where was I?

Here, as always. Listening to some Nitin Sawhney, drinking beer and contemplating doing a module review. My Euro adapter thing arrived - so all those weird bits of gear with euro adapters can sit in it as if they were really in Europe, as opposed to this grim and angry little island obsessed with self-harm. Oops, I go all Brexit Crazy whenever I visit my mum. It's Sunday you see.

I think I have a few days free coming up. Should have thought about the video for those guys in Birmingham but haven't. Will wing it and see how it goes.

Don's new song is rather good. My modular sequences work well so it'll be interesting to see what Dean adds. I had an idea for a melody but left it off to give them more space. And I still really like the vocoder one, more so than 'Memory Foam' which is the one song out of everything we've done that never clicked. It'll doubtless be the one that earns us our immortality and hysterical devotion of old people who are missing Last of the Summer Whine.

But I digress.

Right, beer and modular noodles. Or beer and the little stand-alone setup. Decisions...

Monday. Strange. Almost fell into the online discussion thing with a rabid Brexiteer. I managed to get out before I wasted too much time by asking a simple question: which leaver minds have most inspired you?
Turns out to have been a clever move on my part as the answer included David Davis, James Dyson, Tony Benn and Margaret Thatcher. I kid you not. There was obviously nowhere sane for me to go after that.

Last night I solved the first of my problems for writing a time travel novel: I worked out how time and space really co-exist. Turns out Einstein was quite wrong, the silly old duffer. Anyway, it allows me to fit my skeleton plot around something so I'll start fleshing out the characters in my head. I'm starting with a couple of Time Ladies, an evil assassin and a Jeeves and Wooster-style pair of heroes, all of which I hope will develop personalities of their own once I start writing. I even have a title that I like, already!

I finished the first third of the David Brin and it's ... OK. I've started the next chunk but it's not really doing it for me. Still, of the people reading my novel, I've had only a handful of lightweight comments so I guess my writing isn't captivating anyone either. Maybe I'll keep music and writing to myself in future. Family meal type thing today. Mum still sounding a bit off so it may be fun. Can't fecking wait.

Studio B takes shape. Bought grey import Zoom R24 from a dodgy place called tobydeals.co.uk (a Hong Kong company in disguise). Octatrack not really fitting in there like I hoped it would. I've spent so long trying to make that thing fit somewhere haven't I? Time to put it in a box for a while.

Cold drags on

Yeah, it does. I wake up each morning with my eyes full of the gunk my body is expelling, I cough up a few green jellyfish and my head rings like the inside of a belfry. But as the day progresses I feel OK, weak and listless but OK, and then in the evening I start coughing again. Rinse and repeat.

Still getting slugs in the house. Gonna have to go around everywhere there are holes into the gap beneath the floorboards and seal them all. Not today though. Still writing, feel I'm perhaps 10,000 words from the end. I thought of a clever shift too, a fitting ending for my long-suffering female lead character who never got enough good lines and basically got shit upon throughout every novel she's appeared in. I'm very happy with this one, as I may have said before. Will need to start thinking about how to get a cover done, how to represent a mountain-sized tree presiding over the Elysian Fields, a Heavenly courtyard, a magical river and rainbow bridge without it all seeming a bit cliche. Getting the scale to look right is going to be paramount. Aiming for a 75,000 word paperback even those with no attention spans can get through so a pretty cover is essential.

Have not done owt with the 2 review modules I have. Well, I've played with them (good, fortunately) but not written a word. Barely going into the studio at all, except to do a few recordings for ANT. All I do is sit around being weedy and writing novel. Oh well.

Wednesday, may have spent too long writing but the winning post is drawing me. A lot of what I've written is unrefined but gets from A to B. Almost at the end but forcing myself to stop.

Wow, it's been some time since I started this entry!

Yeah, still done pretty much nothing in studio. Starting to tidy and clear out the other half as much as possible and maybe make a little setup in there of small boxes. I even ordered a Zoom R24 to serve as mixer and to record anything worth recording, loops and shit.

Mum has been wonky again. The usual: refusing to drink, getting kidney infection, raving down phone. Can see it's gonna be a long winter.

Have sent copies of novel to about a dozen people. A single comment back so far. I must really be working the magic.

At least the cold is pretty much gone. A last few coughs and my ear is still bunged up and whistling like a bastard, otherwise OK.

Fascinating PRS this time - not tapering off yet and all my top earning tracks are the new age and melodic ones I did quite early (and which always do well in Japan and New Zealand for some reason).