Happy Christmas, everybody!

I know I'm on holiday (and therefore probably shouldn't be on the Internet), but I just thought I'd pop in to wish everyone a happy Christmas. The weather here in the Sandlings was God-awful as always; after a day of beautiful snow on Monday, we've got howling Winter gales and rainstorms across the whole of Suffolk. Oh well; that's life.
I haven't written for the past couple of days (the break's doing me good), but I've crossed the 40K barrier and am steaming on towards the halfway mark. If I don't check back in before I return to school, happy New Year to you all!
(I'll be back here full-time come January the 6th, so stay tuned!)

And over 30K ...

This is great. I've finally found a pace of writing that suits me--half an hour over lunch time, then 2-2.5 hours in the evening. At the rate I'm going, I'm managing to get an average of about 2,500 words a day.
However, there's a big problem with this. I am way behind on my goal for rewriting Darkness in the Forest; according to my WIP log spreadsheet, I'm supposed to have finished the first revision by New Year's Eve. And ... guess what. I haven't started it yet. I've got too carried away with Cold Witness and research for Radiant Shield to be bothered with rewriting. That's the really maddening thing; I loved the story for DITF, but now I've grown beyond it as a writer. And yet, in some ways, I'm back in the bad old days. The LOAF trilogy was a nightmare to me; my horrific experiences with the dreaded Permanent Revision Syndrome have left deeper and further-reaching scars than I had hitherto realised. Now, when faced with revising a manuscript that needs a lot of work doing to it, I get the same old fears rising from the dark crevices of my mind once more. That's the basis of it: I'm frightened. And I don't know how to fix this problem.
*sighs* I'm going to have to get over this. I am determined not to give up. My plan for 2002-2005 was based solely on me trying to get DITF published first; I knew I probably wouldn't succeed, but it was the necessary first step. The Twilight Trilogy would come next, then Cold Witness. As things stand, everything will be turned on its head if DITF flops, and the plain truth of the matter is that, at the end of the day, I have changed shockingly little since August 2002. That evil month was the time when I wrote out an extra 50,000 words of utter drivel just because I thought having an extra POV character was the "correct thing to do". Urgghh. My writing may have improved, but I'm still just as terrified of the cold, impassive manuscript watching me from the half open drawer, whispering to me; 'You're frightened, aren't you? I can sense your fear.'
Okay, now I'm getting weird (and somewhat supernatural), so I'll stop.

Wow

Wow ... take a look at this link. (Ack, the links look crappy. Need to edit the template.) Plasma force fields? I'm definitely putting that into Radiant Shield.
I've finally delurked on Evolution. I think I technically joined some time back in September, but I never got round to actually posting anything. Hey! Another glorious Internet time-waster!

The future of Europe

Here's the link to a discussion I've got going on Forward Motion: If there were to be a major war in ten years, who would be the enemy? .
In essence, I'm thinking about a possible sequel to Cold Witness, set in around 2015. For the plot to work, the American airforce need to re-occupy their old air bases in East Anglia (Bentwaters, Lakenheath, Woodbridge etc). But for them to do that, there needs to be a reasonably close international threat. Last time it was the Russians in East Germany. What about next time?

Much better!

Got a solid 5,500 words done over the weekend, which is great. Some nasty (or good, depending on how you look at it) things are starting to happen in the plot. Christina, Colonel Foyle's secretary, accidentally overheard a conversation between Foyle and NSA Agent Evans. She's now knows the essence of what Cold Witness really is. The "usual treatment" for such cases is for the NSA to murder or deport the person involved, but Foyle has thought up an alternative. He can protect her from Harvey and his superiors, but only if she joins his "core staff". The philosophy here is that you know nothing, or you know everything. Believe me, Christina will soon know stuff that she just doesn't want to know.

The latest news that Saddam Hussein has been captured. This is all to the good, obviously, but as a historian I can't help wondering what effect this will have on the overall picture. Will the war really end as quickly as the US generals hope? Will the hard core of Saddam supporters melt away? To be honest, I don't think they will. In the end, they'll keep on fighting after they've forgotten what they're fighting for. Iraq will never be the same again. Bush and Blair believe they can bring democracy to Iraq, but after studying German history very extensively, I'm confident that the Iraqi people a) don't want democracy, b) wouldn't know what to do with it if they had it, and c) will eventually revert back to a "strong leader"-type government, just like Germany did. If a country's been used to dictatorship for so long, democracy is a really bad thing to inflict on them. They don't know how to use it, and it will just cause more problems. At the end of the day, the Western powers don't really have the right to tell the Iraqis what kind of government they're going to have. We've gone in there looking for weapons of mass destruction, and we haven't found any. Can't we just leave it at that?
(Wow, this is turning into a political weblog entry). On the bright side, the European Constitution has been kicked out of the window. It looks like we in the British Isles can hold on to our national identity and freedom for a couple more years at least.

Ack, not much done yesterday

I got less than a thousand words on Cold Witness yesterday--not bad when you consider my previous track record, but bad considering my current target is two thousand a day. James and my parents had to go to some Awards Evening at school, so I was left at home babysitting Amber. God, she's a nightmare. Whenever anyone leaves the house, she starts whining and yapping at whoever happens to be left behind. You'd think she's still a puppy, instead of the six (or is it seven?) year old dog she is. Anyhow, I just couldn't write with her gibbering away. I managed to type up the stuff I did during my lunch break at school--but sod all else.
I suppose I must have jinxed the beautiful weather by writing about it here. The temperature's gone up to above freezing, and the weather man portends rain to come ... lots of rain. Flooding, in fact. Over the weekend. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

Past 10K!

Blasted through the 10K barrier on Cold Witness yesterday, which is pretty cool seeing as I only started it about four days ago. The plot's starting to deepen, and some new and unexpected influences are creeping in. For example, when Lunar Squadron investigate the weird occurances over Lantern Marshes, a formation of A-10s from RAF Bentwaters come screaming over at really low altitude, taking photos of the area. Cold Witness is restricted airspace, so Foyle's hopping mad about this. I suspect that the Bentwaters link will come through much more prominently later on ... how much does Commander Wilson really know about Special Protocol 96 and, more importantly, Cold Witness itself? How am I going to handle all these intertwining subplots? *gulps* And am I really reaching the truth of the matter here?
I'm also thinking about a possible sequel for Cold Witness, maybe set in the present day; Christina would be nearly 40, so it would be a good time for her to gather together all the original witnesses and blow the top off the whole case. It would be cool if I introduced a new weapons programme on Orfordness ... maybe a classic Star Wars approach? Plasmoid beam weaponry, or something like that? The possibilities are endless.
Here, I've got a couple of possible titles. How about Project Radiant Shield? Or Project Hornet Pulse? Maybe I could even have Radiant Pulse or Hornet Shield. They all sound pretty cool.
I'm thinking too far ahead here. After I've finished revising Darkness in the Forest and finished writing Cold Witness, I'll be doing part II of The Twilight Trilogy. Let's take things one year at a time, shall we?

Waking up to moonlight

Winter's here. I woke up at 7 AM this morning, but instead of the sunrise illuminating the inside of my room, the moon shines radiant over the forest, silver light glowing on the frosty lawn outside.
I love this weather. Freezing, crisp mornings, with only a few high-flying clouds to disturb the crystal calm of the winter sky. The moon shines too bright to look at during the night, and in the mornings, the forest is filled with layers of swirling mist. The bracken's dying back, too, and now you can see the herds of deer every so often as they make their way through the heather. On the hillsides to the east of the Tunstall Road, the young birch saplings form a shimmering purple fuzz over the burnished copper of the dead bracken. It's magical; you have to see it for yourself to truly understand.

My writing really takes off at this time of year. Summer's a dead time; weather in the Sandlings is kind of odd, with long weeks of blistering dry heat during the summer months. Winter's the time for me, when the vegatation falls back to reveal the shape of the land once more. Everything feels more right, somehow, during winter.
I'm starting to get philosophical, so I'll stop. Okay ... time for an update on Cold Witness. I'm on page 44, which means I should be over page 100 by the end of the week (with luck). Foyle and his men have already encountered the first batch of unidentified lights over the Cold Witness array, and I'm about to write the scene where Oliver Elmwood's subplot is introduced.
I'm really excited about the upcoming chapter entitled THE RENDLESHAM INCIDENT. I've managed to get my hands on a copy of the Halt tape transcript; the tape recording that Lt. Colonel Halt took during the investigation on 28th of December, 1980. This is going to be one of the events in the climax of Cold Witness, and although I'm changing Halt's name to Holton, I'm going to stick to the events depicted on the tape as much as possible. Jesus. If I get this right, this is going to be eerily authentic.
(Oh, by the way, three more prisoners escaped from Hollesley Bay yesterday :) )

Started writing it!

Got a thumping 6,742 words done on Cold Witness this weekend. I'm already immersed in the plot--there's been a major failure of linear amplifier 4, resulting in the electrocution of one of the RAF soldiers. NSA agent Harvey is getting annoyed at Colonel Foyle's apparent lack of solid progress in getting the Cold Witness weapon up and running. I've also introduced Christina's subplot, including her discomfort at working at Cold Witness, and her unease when her boyfriend (Corporal Johnny Campbell, Lunar Squadron member) can't tell her the secret stuff to do with his job. The first chapter's called MOON DUST, referring to the mysterious memo that Mr. Harvey leaves with Foyle. I'm just starting on the second chapter (called FIRST ENCOUNTER); Foyle and his other officers are relaxing in the pub onshore when their radio starts babbling, but they can't make it out due to the static. They go over to the quay to get the boat ready, and start seeing weird lights out over the Ness. Time to deploy Lunar Squadron!

I revisisted Rendlesham Forest on Saturday, checking up on East Gate and the landing site. I brushed all the leaf litter from the patch of ground where the UFO supposedly landed, and to my astonishment, I find that not only have the three pod marks survived to this day (24 years), but the ground in the centre of the patch is seriously blackened (this is sandy soil). I've taken some pretty cool photographs. Before I begin the chapter entitled 'THE RENDLESHAM INCIDENT', I want to go back there at night to get a real feel for the place.

Cold Witness just got warmer

I'm a little more enthusiastic regarding Project Cold Witness now, after doing my characterisation sheets. I've got about 8 MCs fully outlined plus nine or ten secondary characters, and as always, nice little plot elements are starting to surface. I've got decent conflicts running between my MCs (the commanders of the Cold Witness base); Colonel Foyle, Lieutenant Brown, and Major Ford. There's also a neat subplot starting to emerge regarding the possibility of a Russian agent compromising the facility ... but seeing as the brother of Foyle's secretary, Christina Beckwood, is obsessed with finding the truth behind Cold Witness, there's scope for some major cock-ups and misunderstandings.
Oh yes, and the UFOs. I've designed an Electro-Magnetic Pulse gun (the DEMP-3) which I think could work in practice, and I'm going to be using it as part of a new protocol known as Moon Dust (after the infamous 'Project Moon Dust' in the USA). Basically, Harvey, the NSA guy, will demand that the new protocol be put into operation to guard against UFO attack. Foyle and his colleagues will scoff at this, but before the protocol has been properly set up, a UFO lands on Orfordness, and all hell breaks loose. Foyle and Brown will be relaxing in the Jolly Sailor onshore when it happens; they'll see bright lights over the Ness, and try to contact Major Ford, but the interference from the Cold Witness array itself will jam their radio. Muahahaha. This is going to be great!
By the way, everything I'm putting into this novel is based on true events. The places are all real, and in fact the remains of the Cold Witness array can be seen from the riverwall about a mile away from my house. Some of the information I've managed to retrieve from the US Freedom of Information Act have yielded astonishing results regarding the true nature of the whole Cobra Mist/Cold Witness project, but as always, I'm using artistic license to dramatise and modify the truth ... whatever that may be.

99,295 words and done!

Finished Part I of The Twilight Trilogy last night. It was a wonderful feeling. Rhys asks Cathany to marry him (at long last), and she accepts. The last scene of all, though, is a nice one. Irind Triscim, after taking an emergency teleport out of his house in Westar, is now lost and penniless in an unknown city. He uses a public remote meeting point and spies on Rhys and Cathany ... 'Making plans, are we, cousin?' he says. 'Not if I can help it.' He vows revenge against the Eraven family, and before falling asleep in the street, thinks that soon he'll be able to contact a regional Following HQ and get back in control. I've set up all the conflict and further drama I need for Part II, which will probably begin with agent Bren and his gang gatecrashing Rhys + Cathany's wedding ... with bombs.
I'm kind of drifting right now. Obviously I can't start Part II right away, but I don't want to spend the next two months just revising Darkness in the Forest. I've read some of the early sections, and they are embarassingly bad. I want to start on a new book ... I've got all the plans for Project Cold Witness on the drawing board, but I'm starting to think it's too ambitious for me. Maybe I should keep it in cold storage until I've got more experience. Another Historical Fiction may be a better idea ... perhaps one set in Iken or Rendlesham in the 7th Century? I could always salvage the plans for Evil's True Form and modify them in some way. Yes, I think that could work rather well.
After all, in the words of Irind Triscim (and this is the last line from Part I of Twilight); 'Tomorrow is a new day ....'

(Edit: I've just remembered this from my last holiday up north, and couldn't resist sharing:
'Hear much, listen much, say nowt;
'Eat much, sup much, pay nowt;
'And if ye ever do owt fer nowt;
'Make sure ye do it fer thysen.'
--A Yorkshireman's Advice to his Son)

Mud. Lots of mud.

Damn, should have known not to send myself off on a trek this weekend. I got a good amount of writing done (I'm nearly done with this book), but I just couldn't resist the call of the wild on Sunday. I got out my faithful map (now so battered you can stick your head through the holes), and searched for a route. What's that enticing path I see snaking along the inside of the river? Of course, I didn't notice the MARSHES right next to it. Urgh. 16 miles, with leaking boots, through some of the muddiest terrain I've ever encountered. Despite the extreme discomfort I'm now feeling on Monday morning, notably swollen feet and very stiff legs, it was fun. I haven't been on any really long treks for several months; I now realise that I've probably got somewhat out of shape (the stiffness in my limbs is testament to that), but it's a great way to spend a day, if you've got nothing better to do.
By the way, let me offer a belated happy Thanksgiving to all my thousands of US readers!