ust a quick note to say that my story, Go Away , is Every Day Fiction's story of the day today. Comments welcome!

Also, I was delighted to receive an email last week from Riptide, a new UK literary magazine, saying that they'd like to publish my story North Cold. The UK short fiction scene is really hotting up, and ...

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Up at the crack of dawn today - or almost - in order to get myself ready for the Goldenford booksigning at Book Boyz in Farnborough. I set off an hour before I needed to be there as I live in utter fear of driving to strange places and getting kidnapped by aliens lying in wait to pounce on weary travellers. Yes, my brain is like that. However, I managed to find the right carpark and even got myself onto the levels which provided cheaper parking (hurrah!). I must admit to being rather spooked by the fact that, at 10.30am on a Saturday morning before Christmas, I was the only one there. However, I soldiered bravely on. As one does.

I even managed to find the bookshop without too much trouble and set up half an hour before we were actually due to start. Um, not that anyone was waiting for us, I'm sad to say. And even when Jennifer arrived to liven up proceedings, the situation remained unchanged, thus proving that the Curse of Goldenford holds sway over Hampshire, as well as Surrey. I did do a lot of smiling, however, with the special plastic smile (the one formed of despair and faint, fluttering hope) that I keep for these occasions ...

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Log in to http://www.narrativesonline.com each day and pick up my tips for the day. Treat this as a sort of writing gym, limber up your writing muscles and race successfully to the finish with 50,000 words completed.

Find ways to:
1. enhance your creativity
2. build your imagination
3. write faster
4. maximize your time
5. produce more words than you ever imagined
6. banish blocks
7. stay motivated

That’s just for starters.

When the November rush is over there’ll be lots more to come. We’ll be working on completing your novel, re-shaping and structuring, developing characters and a whole lot more, including preparing your manuscript for publication and even looking for agents.

May you all write like angels - or even like the devil!

------------------------------------------
Shahrukh Husain is a highly experienced writer and teacher who has
written 20 books, for both adults and children. She has also written
plays and 11 screenplays and one of her films was nominated for the
Oscar. Shah's advice has helped many beginning writers to fulfill
their dreams of selling their manuscripts. For more information,
please check her website on: http://www.shahrukhhusain.com



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Today is the anniversary of the death of the former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. It doesn't seem a year ago that everyone in London suddenly developed an irrational fear of sushi bars. Especially sushi bars with men speaking Russian in them.

I thought I'd check out the view from St Petersburg. The British security services' only suspect remains the multimillionaire Andrei Lugovoi, also a former KGB agent, and currently a candidate in the forthcoming Russian parliamentary elections.

Apparently the charges against him are making him something of a celebrity; I imagine they won't hinder his candidature.

He is not very impressed with the evidence against him, saying "they have no proof of any kind" and dismissing the allegations as "raving and barking from across the channel". As for Britain, according to Lugovoi, “Britain has always been a country that allows all sorts of bastards to seek refuge on its territory.” Wow. There's a politician who knows how to give sound bites.


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Early golf today as Marian had another appointment at 12noon, but it was actually fairly quiet as we hacked our way around. No great scores, though I wasn't bad off the tee and Marian's putting was top-notch. We've found out that if I stand behind the hole and shout aim at me legs, missus! then her putts are straighter and tend to go in. It's all psychological, you know - though neither of us were sure whether we should count the ball that rebounded off my foot and only then went in the hole. It's not quite golf as the PGA would have it, I fear ...

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My agent, Sid, says this to me over the phone as I'm crashed out on my sofa, shattered and eating a duty free-sized Toblerone. I have called him for a pep talk, a pick-me-up from the man who believes in me more than anyone else alive because his pay check depends upon it.

Sometimes, it seems, he forgets this. I am merely talking aloud about my dream of being included in some magazine article called 'Britain's Best Young Authors' when he cuts me off mid-sentence. "You're too old to be a young author."

There is a stunned silence on my end and the sound of running water at his.

"Are you... flushing your toilet?" I ask when I recover the power of speech.

"No," he replies after an unconvincing pause. The water stops with a glug.

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My friend and stablemate at Headline Review, Rosy Thornton, has started a discussion on WriteWords about epistolary novels. Her own first novel More than Love Letters is entirely made up of letters, emails and diaries, as well all the other documents we generate without even realising it - newspaper reports, minutes of meetings and extracts from Hansard. (Well, I don't personally generate extracts from Hansard, but you get the idea.). TMoL isn't epistolary in that sense, but the letters - written in one century, read in another - were the origin of the novel, and are one of its building blocks, and for some of the same reason as Rosy's used them and A S Byatt uses them in Possession: things like letters invite the reader to imagine what they're not saying, to put the 'real' story together from these partial (in both senses) fragments. There's potential for comedy in people's different views on the same events, there's potential tragedy and irony in, again, how things are read wrongly or differently, or never read at all. Romeo and Juliet would have had a happy ending if a letter hadn't gone astray.

But, as Rosy says in the thread, one difficulty of an epistolary novel is that you can't put actual sex in it.

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Bloody hell, but I've actually done something literary today. Pause for blowing of trumpets and putting up of the bunting. Ah, I remember bunting. Brings back all those glorious '70s moments for me ... Does anyone still use this?

Anyway, I have changed all the names in Thorn in the Flesh that need changing and I'm sure my two secondary characters have grown sparkier as a result of being renamed to David and Nicky (or possibly Nicki - I'm still not decided). Strange what a difference a name makes. Even if only to my inner view of them. I've also added in a couple of phrases about Godalming Museum - well, if I'm going to have the launch there, then I'd better do the decent thing. Never let it be said that I, as an Essex Girl, am too proud to product-place in a novel. And even if the launch ends up being somewhere else, heck at least I'm showing local loyalty ...

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Today as over past days this month, it's easy not to write. Ideas don't seem to come. Winter blues grow darker. But, then a challenge is given and rising to the challenge, a sort of funny tale is born. Goodness, humour in November. Now that's a first.

A long blog, for which apologies – but I’ve put a fairly in-depth review of Lisa Glass’s Prince Rupert’s Teardrop at the end – well worth a read (the book – and the review, I hope!). Had great fun at the Goldenford meeting last night sorting out our upcoming book signings and fairs etc. Christmas is always a busy period. So if anyone’s in Farnborough at all on Saturday 24th November (this Saturday) between 11am and 1.30pm-ish, do pop in and see us in Book Boyz bookshop in Kingsmead, Farnborough – we’ll be happy to see you!...

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