Weekly pics: round 37

More pics from our Wales holiday this week.

Firstly, the Cwmrhwyddfor (coom-roo-eeth-vor). This former glacial valley holds Tal-y-Llyn trout lake in its bowl-shaped embrace. It is flanked by the grim face of Mynydd Rugog and Craig Goch to the south, and the enormous Cadair Idris massif to the north ... well, enormous by British standards, anyway. This photo was taken on the road to Dôl Einion, our furthest north campsite. It was a beautiful but hot day when we got there, and the sky was a glittering shade of azure, perfectly complimenting the intense greens of the Welsh countryside.



Secondly, Tal-y-Llyn trout lake from the high pass leading down into the Cwmrhwyddfor. The mountain you see in the background is the bulbous flank of Mynydd Pentre, leading to the higher peak of Mynydd Pencoed, which is the third highest of the Cadair Idris mountains (the largest, a mile behind Pentre, is Penygadair itself).



Update on the work situation at Wyevale. During some overtime work yesterday evening, I met a girl who works on Saturdays, and has done so for seven months (I don't work Saturdays, so this is the first I've seen of her). She has only just got her identification badge (same as me). Also, she didn't get paid for nearly a month after first joining on. Perhaps most significantly of all, the Head Office has consistently spelt her surname wrong for the past seven months on all her payslips ... "Reenault" instead of "Regnault". Sound familiar?

After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that, instead of human beings, Wyevale Head Office employs a band of illiterate Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to run their Personnel department. Maybe after waiting several months, I will (like Jenny) finally obtain a payslip with my correct name on ... and hence will be entitled to the now rather large sum of backpay which is awaiting me.

We both had a few laughs over this. Apparently Jenny came to that same conclusion months ago. She seems to think in a very similar way to me, and is only about a year younger than I am (unlike most of the other employees). I hope I see her again. But knowing the erratic nature of things at the garden centre, that seems unlikely.

Later

Success! Head Office has updated my file information ... including the feat of correctly spelling my surname as "RODDIE" instead of "RODDLE". Additionally, I have been press-ganged into working for yet another day of overtime tomorrow, meaning that I will have worked nine days in the past two weeks instead of my allotted six. I'm not complaining, mind: the money's welcome, and Jenny will also be working tomorrow.

As an afterthought, I've realised that I'll be working on Monday--NaNo kickoff day. That isn't fair. I'll have maybe two hours in the evening for writing. Although that's enough time to get two thousand words done, it's a far cry from the writing binge I had planned. Maybe next year ...

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

Three days left until NaNo ...

... And I haven't finished the prewriting yet. Although I spent almost all of last month researching, character-building and plotting for Evil's True Form, I never worked out the last quarter of the plot ... and then I got sidetracked with this revision of Cold Witness, promising myself I'd find time to finish ETF's prewriting before November the 1st.

I think I can just about make it, if I dedicate every moment of my spare time to writing from now until Monday. Since last year, NaNo has become very important to me as a month of "holiday time" from everyday writing. I don't want to start late (or worse, unprepared) unless I can absolutely avoid it.

The great news is that I'm still feeling enthusiastic about ETF's story. You may remember me talking about another fantasy novel I'd prewritten, and had actually started: The Riven Path. I abruptly lost interest in that one as soon as the idea for ETF arose. Luckily, PCW's rewrites haven't deadened my enthusiasm for this new project.

(Don't worry: I daresay that, someday, I will write The Riven Path ... possibly during NaNo '05. I like the story, and I like the world, but I have two novels with higher priority right now, plus another three which are begging for my attention.)

The basic ideas for the resolution of ETF's storyline are already in place as hazy, nebulous concepts. I am certain that I can pull together a decent (if a little rough) outline before Monday. It will need some working on before I get to the end, but the important thing is that I know what direction the story and characters are taking. The basic dramatic promise--that Botulf will have his dying wish, and hence save Ikanho from the ravening Gastatha--has to be fulfilled for the story to work. Likewise, the unhappy characters of Redstan and Brynach have to find a satisfying end to their own individual stories. There are lots of questions in this plot: Will Brynach save his family from the destructive power of his father? Will Redstan finally find his niche in life? Perhaps most important of all, will Llewyn gain his wish in attaining the power to save his home valley, thus leaving Ikanho--which Brynach has grown to know and love--exposed to spiritual attack?

I've been very careful to create my characters accurately this time. Llewyn isn't a clear-cut villain, for example. He may be selfish and arrogant, but his motives are understandable. Brynach, his son, is driven by love for his family to do the things he does. And all those greedy kings, warlords and monks who want to get their claws into Saint Botulf's relics are doing so out of genuine desire to help others. I think it's safe to say that I've covered every angle I possibly can in this regard.

I hope all this intensive planning will pay up ... otherwise I may abandon prewriting altogether and become an organic writer. I'd be able to write another full book every year on the surplus time.

The current version of Cold Witness is completed

I finished it yesterday evening. It now totals at 122,922 words, which is ahout a hundred words longer than the previous version--pretty good, seeing as I cut out several full scenes. The extra wordage is composed of a hundred little enhancements to description, characterisation and dialogue I added along the way.

The story now feels finished ... to me, at least. There are no longer any continuity errors that I can find. The dialogue is as realistic as I can make it. I have tried to create a satisfying story-arc for each and every character, and I've made sure that every character contributes to the resolution in as realistic a way as possible. Perhaps most importantly, there are no areas of the book which still feel wrong to me in any way. Writers develop a subtle sense wherein they can read a section of prose and feel that something isn't quite right. In the enthusiasm of a new project, this tiny voice is drowned out by inspiration ... but I like to think I'm treading the healthy middle ground between "detached" and "emotionally involved".

There's something else, too. When I first started writing PCW, it was mostly an experiment to see if I could write anything other than fantasy. But it was more than that. It was an excercise to see if I could create something which accurately reflects a particular set of emotions or ideas that exist in the real world. I wanted to explore the mystery and atmosphere of Orfordness, of Rendlesham Forest, of the whispered rumours which still persist to this day, and on which I founded the story of Project Cold Witness. I wanted to see if I could take that raw material and fashion it into something which satisfies--both as a work of fiction, and as a hypothetical set of answers to those questions which inspired the novel in the first place.

Although I haven't yet received any feedback on this version, I am glad to say that I think I've accomplished that goal. When I read some of the more powerful passages (ie. those strongly based on truth), I can feel the setting and the emotion of the setting. Surely, that must be a good sign.

So. After six long years of writing fantasy novels which quickly lose their fire, I've finally completed a book which has the stuff of dreams and nightmares woven into its very fabric. A wise author once said that you should always write what you love, what inspires you. I've done that, and at every turn, I've embellished my story with real-life experiences, emotions and feelings particular to the setting, and accurate local details. The result is powerful. Not only does it reflect the mind of its author, it also feels right.

I am proud to say that I'm happy with what I've created. Now it just has to withstand the test of other people's opinions--and that, as we know, is where the real challenge lies.

A strange couple of days!

Sunday

After a long and tiring day at work, my brother and I got our camping gear together, headed out into Tunstall Forest, and settled down in an isolated glade to cook our dinner. The meal was composed of roasted chestnuts and cans of baked beans/sausages/mushrooms/various other things cooked on the fire. After the fire had burned down, we decided to go on a night-hike in the Birches (our local part of the forest). The moon was almost full and provided enough light to see by, but I also took along a candle lantern--which promptly went out in the gusting wind. We used our Maglites to light the way in some of the darker thickets.

Eventually we came to a feature we know as "Forest Barrow", a Neolithic (10,000 year old) burial mound in the middle of a pine plantation. We stopped there and watched the sky for a while. Almost immediately, we both noticed a piercingly bright, star-like object to the west, which was moving southwards at a speed faster than most planes of similar altitude. It was pure white and did not pulse. After it was in view for maybe thirty seconds, the object--for want of a better word--emitted a pulse of purple light so intense that it lit up the entire sky, annihilated our night vision in a split second, and made both of us hit the dirt. Once our eyes had recovered, we noticed that the moving star was gone.

We considered distant lightning as a cause for the pulse (backed up by subseqent, weaker flashes, plus a rumbling that may have been thunder--or a jet), but we both agree that the first flash was far, far too bright for lightning ... and moreover, it definitely emanated from the star-like light.

I'm at a loss about this. Do I risk your incredulity, or do I speak my own mind and admit that I think it was, in fact something completely unknown? I won't even mention that it seemed to be in the direction of Rendlesham Forest and the Woodbridge Base, which is now re-occupied by British troops. In fact, it seems to draw many parallels with certain aspects of "fiction" that I integrated into Project Cold Witness. Spooky. Throughout writing that book, more and more things which I took to be fictional have turned out to be true. And now this ...

Today

I've finally been paid for my first three weeks of working at Wyevale, only to find that I'm paying about fifty pounds worth of tax. I was assured that, as I'm only eighteen and earning a miniumum wage, I would pay no tax whatsoever. My net pay is just over £216 (I was expecting something more like £300). Moreover, they have spelt my name wrong. Instead of "MR. A. RODDIE", they printed it on the cheque as "MR. A. RODDLE". Can you believe that? Can't these people read, or something?

Onto the second weird thing for the day (sorry about the long post). As I sit here in the electrically-heated darkness of my summerhouse, at the bottom of the garden (back yard?), I can hear the roaring of a pig from the direction of the forest ... a large pig. The edge of the Birches is about a hundred yards west, beyond a field. I think I'm probably hearing the angry growls of one of our resident wild boar as he fends away rival males. We always knew there were boar in Tunstall Forest, but to hear one making a noise that loud (especially bearing in mind we were walking over there this time yesterday night) is enough to make one wish firearms weren't quite so hard to obtain in Britain.

Weekly pics: round 36

As I won't be in tomorrow (some unexpected but rather welcome overtime at work), I'm posting this week's set of pictures today.

In our chronological journey through the Wales 2004 holiday, this week coincides with the point at which we were leaving Plâs Llwyngwern, the campsite in the Cwm Dulas. It was on the fourth day, I think, that we resumed our trek up the Cwm Dulas and finally made it to Dôl Einion, at the foot of Cadair Idris (the highest mountain in that region). This is a photo of the sunset the previous night, at Plâs Llwyngwern. (Before you ask: yes, it really did look like that--my brother doesn't approve of tinkering with photos.)



And this is a picture, taken from the fellside above Abercorris, looking up the remainder of the Cwm Dulas valley into the region beyond. The purple mountain you see in the distance (about five or six miles away from this point) is our first view of Cadair Idris itself. We were feeling a little trepidated at the prospect of climbing that the next day, I can tell you.



I'm not sure when I'll get around to the template change--not until next week at least, since I'll need a fair amount of time online to get it done. Time seems to be so short these days ... I haven't even finished prewriting for my NaNo project, Evil's True Form. That has become a priority!

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

Template changes on the way

As this basic green template has now been in use for over a year, I think it's time I completely re-vamped the appearance of the blog. I'm thinking of doing something on a Cold Witness theme ... basically lots of grey, metallic colours, plus a new titlebar incorporating the Orfordness Pagodas. Alternatively, I could stick with my current nature-green theme ... only with new graphics and a more sophisticated look.

Any opinions?

Here we are again ...

I love this time of year. It's cold during the day again. There's mist over the fields in the morning. It's actually dark when I go down the garden for my writing each evening, and the winter stars have returned in all their glory. When writing in my studio, I need the electric heater to stop my fingers from freezing. The owls are hooting all night long. And, of course, NaNoWriMo is about to start.

Late October is a time of change for me--it always has been. Particularly it's a time of change for writing. Last year, I had just started The Twilight Trilogy at this time, which was my first novel that I actually liked. I also started doing the research which would eventually lead to where I am today--putting the finishing touches to Project Cold Witness ... my greatest achievement to date. Perhaps most importantly, it is the feeling of this time of year which stimulates that change in writing.

As I finish Cold Witness, I believe it is crucial that I find the original inspiration again. What inspired me to start writing the book in the first place? Was it a particular place, feeling, time of year, or a combination of many things? To get the mood right, it is important that I'm as excited about the story now as I was a year ago.

I'll admit, there have been moments of despair. There have been times when I've been convinced that the novel is fundamentally flawed, that it deserves to be contributing to the greenhouse effect by burning on a fire somewhere. Perhaps most depressing of all, there have been times when I haven't been able to get through a particular scene, and this frustration has led me to believe--albeit for a short while--that I'm useless as a writer and will never create anything of worth. But we all go through those phases. They're what make us writers.

However ... I am glad to say that the experience of writing PCW has been an overwhelmingly positive one. This is the first story that I really feel I own. Conversely, it is also the first story with a strong grounding in reality, and somehow this has helped me see it as mine (don't ask me to explain that). And now, when I'm halfway through what promises to be the penultimate pre-submission read-through, I still love the story. No writer can ask for more than that.

How can I describe it? The images of the novel are powerful, and have remained constant through a whole year of change. They're simple images: a starlit winter sky, with a single red light pulsing on and off; tracer rounds skipping over the bleak shingle desert of Orfordness; the sound of a Geiger counter and American voices in a still, misty forest of pine and birch. And the colour grey. These basic images, each powering a pivotal moment in the book, have kept me going for an entire year. And I still feel the drive of the original inspiration, unclouded by the process of writing--a process which is, as far as inspiration is concerned, a highly destructive process. But it hasn't destroyed the spirit of Project Cold Witness.

Something tells me that this novel won't be put down so easily. I'm following this one through to the end.

What colour is your novel?

This is a post I put up at Forward Motion on Saturday:

I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a project I've been working on for nearly a year. It's Cold War fiction, with a strong dash of science fiction thrown in for good measure. The story takes place in a local area I know very well, and many of the plot elements are based on reality. It's called Project Cold Witness.

Yesterday, I realised that many of the things in the book are associated with the colour grey. It occurred to me so suddenly that I stopped walking (I was taking my dog for a walk in the forest at the time), and just stood there for some minutes, astonished, until Amber came running back with an impatient look on her face. The revelation astonished me. I never consciously set out to associate the novel with a particular colour. Somehow, it just turned out that way--and I think it's definitely for the best.

For example, the uniforms of the soldiers working at the Cold Witness base are grey. The blockhouse command building is rust-blotched steel ... largely grey. I tend to use a lot of dull, overcast weather as part of the setting. The story is set in winter, and at that time of year, much of the landscape is grey. The nearby river, featuring prominently in the book, is [i]always[/i] muddy grey. Something about the way I've told the story also suggests an undertone of sombre greyness, a dull, brooding quality over the events of the plot. Even the name "Cold Witness" sounds grey.

When I described this moment of insight to my brother, he gave me an odd look and said, 'You've only just worked that out? I've always associated Cold Witness with the colour grey.' He's been one of my main proof-readers throughout the process of writing it.

This is strange because, up until now, this had never even occurred to me. But now I've realised it, the "grey theme" leaps out whenever it appears in the manuscript. And it appears all over the place. Curiously, I think this helps to create a strong sense of internal unity. A coloured theme helps bind the many aspects of the story together.

On further thought, I now realise that all of my previous novels had colours. The Life of a Falcon series was black. Darkness in the Forest was copper-brown (like bracken in autumn). The Twilight Trilogy was coniferous green ... and Project White Light was, naturally, white.

Does your novel have any particular colour associated with it? If so, how does it shape the story?

Weekly pics: round 35

More Wales pictures this week, both of Plâs Llwyngwern (pronounced pli-as tlooin-goo-ern, if you can believe it), a small campsite in the Corris Valley / Cwm Dulas. We stayed here for a night on the way to the Cadair Idris mountain range.

This photo shows my brother, James, trying to remember which guyline goes where. His tent, having a broken rear pole, was in rather a sorry state by this point--but he still somehow managed to get it up faster than mine. I hadn't yet put the outer skin on my tent at this point (as you can see). Oh, and if you're wondering how much equipment we took with us, it's all on the ground there in front of James' tent. We certainly traveled light.



And this, after the camp was fully up, is the view from my tent, looking up the hill towards the farmhouse. The emergency fire equipment rather takes some of the impact out of it, but I think the boots and the folded map make up for that. I also did a picture like this at Dôl Einion, our next campsite ... situated at the foot of Cadair Idris itself.



Good news: I have now finished my BTS classes, plus the crit I've been working on for about two weeks. I have also begun to type up the corrections I made on the manuscript copy of Cold Witness, and got fifty seven pages done yesterday! Now all I need to do is keep plugging away on PCW and get this prewriting finished for Evil's True Form ...

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

Is the end near?

Our stretch of the East Anglian coastline is at constant risk from the sea. Over the millenia, local inhabitants have erected defences against the waves, ranging from minor channels and ditches to the great river- and sea-walls that guard our marshes and farmland. They work well, but only if they are constantly maintained.

The government has recently announced that the cost of maintaining the North Sea defences in the Sandlings has become more than the value of the land itself. In short, nobody is going to repair the sea-walls anymore, because there's no money to do it with. The environment agency--that's our environment agency--agrees with them, and furthermore says that the Sandlings isn't worth very much anyway, despite being the only existing refuge in the world for about two or three hundred extremely rare species of animals and plants. On top of that, it is one of the oldest man-made landscapes in Britain, and has existed as we see it today for ten thousand years. Now it is going to be allowed to revert to the state it was before Neolithic man came to Britain. Before any world civilisation, in short.

The threat from the sea is very, very real, especially at places like Bawdsey Manor and East Lane. In the past year, the battering waves have consumed forty metres of beach there, and have now formed a crumbling muddy cliff ten foot high which progresses further inland with every tide. In the next major storm, it is predicted that one of the Martello Towers plus a huge expanse of marsh-farmland will go to the sea. Within another few years it is estimated that most of the land between Bawdsey and Hollesley--that's dozens of square miles of unique marshland--will be gone.

But that's just the beginning. If none of the sea defences are being repaired, the sea will certainly break through the narrowest point of Orfordness, at Slaughden Quay. This would turn Orfordness into a literal island ... and worse, it would allow the tide to get into the River Alde/Ore twelve miles further upstream than it does today. In turn, this would cause the collapse of the river defences. Hazelwood Marsh, Iken Marshes and Sudbourne Marshes could be gone in years. Minsmere nature reserve, Westleton Heath and the remains of Dunwich would soon follow.

In the worst-case scenario, three quarters of the land in the Sandlings area (that's wildnerness and farmland) could be converted to tidal mudflats within ten years. Luckily my village is on relatively high ground, but one of the most historic landscapes in Britain will be changed forever ... a landscape which took thousands of years to create, and if lost, will take a similar amount of time to restore to its current condition.

More ideas!

This is not fair. Here I am, poised on the very edge of beginning my sparkling new Annales East-Englum cycle, and more ideas are begging for my attention.

Perhaps I wouldn't mind so much if I knew I could make anything of the ideas. But, in this case, I'm suddenly being tempted again to work on a Cold Witness sequel. Project White Light was fun to do, even though I never finished it; however, it would have taken too much work to get publishable. I wasn't prepared to give it the attention it needed to fix its crippling flaws.

But ... there is a core of golden material there that I really like. The Orfordness scenario--both in real life and in my fictional adaptations--enthralls me. PCW is the kind of book that could suffer a sequel, and I honestly think that I could make a book every bit as good as the original.

But huge swathes of the plot would have to be annihilated, and replaced with something I am more authoritative in talking about. Forget having Christina being kidnapped from her research lab in Boston, Mass. by MIBs. Just cut straight to the core of the matter: Project Hooded Falcon, an idea which is not only interesting enough to make a good plot, but would also make a pretty cool title.

The idea is a relatively simple one, and was actually brought up in PCW (whose plot is, if you don't know, based on the idea of "psychotronic weapons" being used to alter perception of reality in the human brain). What happens if you take an ordinary stealth aircraft, then stick a psychotronic emitter on board? Answer: depending on the frequency band in use, you can make the aircraft look just like a UFO. And you can zap people with it, too.

(Actually, this isn't entirely fictional. One line of thought surrounding the Rendlesham UFO incident claims that the USAF were testing a psychotronic plane at the time.)

So ... I like the idea, but I can't see where I'll find the time to develop it further. Maybe I'll keep it in Cold Storage whilst I work on ETF and the other Annales ... then bring the idea out if I need some leverage when trying to sell Cold Witness

(Ugh. This post is actually quite scatter-brained, isn't it? Forgive me--just thinking out loud. Part of the reason I set up this blog in the first place was so I could talk to myself. I can throw stuff at this wall and see what sticks. But, as always, Project Hooded Falcon will have to pass the test of time before I can start working on it.)

And the third revision of Project Cold Witness is completed!

I finished the on-paper edits of PCW yesterday, after twenty one days of slaving away. Encouragingly, the book is feeling very finished by this point: very little major changes were made in this draft, and although I found much that needed to be edited on a line-by-line basis, I'm confident that I have almost finished.

Only three more stages remain. First, I have to copy up the edits onto my electronic version. Once that is completed, I'm sending a copy off to a friend of mine for critting--but very specialised critting. He's an expert in firearms, the American armed forces, and combat tactics during the Cold War (his Back To School class on firearms showed at Forward Motion last month). I'm hoping he'll clear up most of the errors in that department.

The third stage is to do a last line-edit, clearing up grammar errors, usage errors, and any typos that may still exist (I picked up one or two in this draft). After that ... it's the great unknown of submissions, agencies, and publishers.

(*searches memory* Yes, I'm certain I've written that in this weblog before ... probably about this time last year. :-) )

I'm feeling kind of daunted.

Simultaneously, I am working on a full-novel crit, my BTS classes on Anglo-Saxon warfare (of which I have finished three; they'll be showing at FM next month), and the outlining for the first Annales East Englum novel, Evil's True Form. Along with this new job, which is going splendidly, I am certainly keeping myself busy!

Weekly pics: round 34

Three more pictures of the Dovey Forest this week, from our Wales 2004 trek.

This picture was taken on our first day walking up the Cwm Ceirig. There was a lot of low cloud lying about (as often there is in Wales), and most of the bigger hills were invisible above the three hundred metre mark. I believe we were about two hundred metres up at this point, looking across one of the smaller cwms which empty themselves into the Afon Ceirig itself. The mist-shrouded fell you see in the background is about the first third of Mynydd Du, the highest mountain in this particular range, now almost completely covered in the Forestry Commission's Sitka Spruce plantations.



And this was a bit later in the day, when we set off up the upper reaches of the Cwm Ceirig into the forest itself. The steep, wooded slope to the left is the flank of Mynydd Crwper, the mountain we climbed the previous day (but from the other side--the side from which, strangely, you can see no trees whatsoever).



And this is me walking along the main Forestry Commission track, looking slightly lost and more than a little overawed at the astounding discovery that forests can grow at other angles besides on the flat.



Next week: photos from our brief stay at Plâs Llwyngwern, in the Corris Valley.

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004

Mysterious happenings

Before I give my account of what happened yesterday evening, I will fill you in on some context. Every evening, at about 6:30 PM, I go up to the summerhouse / converted shed at the bottom of our garden. It's dark by seven o'clock at this time of year, which means that I am accustomed to writing in darkness--in fact, I'm not usually comfortable unless it's dark outside. Other than a single desk lamp, I have no source of light. The sky is dark. We live ten, twenty miles from the nearest town of any size, and only far to the south can any artificial afterglow be seen--the dockyards of Felixstowe, Harwich and Shotley. The bottom of our garden is one field removed from the forest edge. On a still night, you can hear the creaking and whispering of the trees, the hooting and barking of roving dear, the constant chatter of owls.

However, the British Army has recently re-claimed Woodbridge Air Base (formerly RAF Woodbridge, occupied by the USAF 81st Tactical Fighter Wing), and they carry out helicopter training missions on most days. They have a Jolly Green Giant and another, smaller attack helicopter. These craft frequently scream overhead at ridiculously low heights. As I'm interested in such things, I usually step outside to take a look at them.

Yesterday, at about half past eight, I heard the familiar drone of an approaching helicopter, so I open the glass door of my studio and step out onto the grass. The night is cold, the stars dull. The moon lurks somewhere behind a cloud, throwing up ambient light into the sky, outlining the large gum tree not far away in sharp relief. The helicopter moves overhead: a blinking red light. It passes, and I turn to go back into the summerhouse.

However, something catches my eye. There, above the course of the helicopter, an orange line in the sky, tiny yet piercingly bright. It is stationary, and then it moves--and with such speed! For months, whilst writing PCW, I've been trying to explain this phenomenon that I've never seen, those dancing aerial lights that used to be so common over Orford. They zip and zing from one side to the other, throbbing, gyrating, swinging back and forth.

I watched this light for maybe thirty seconds. I didn't know what to make of it. It moved with sickening speed, twitching and flitting in every conceivable direction, defying logic and the laws of motion. I felt sick just watching it. Somehow, its movements seemed insane. I quickly became unnerved (even frightened: I'm not ashamed to admit it) and ducked back inside, shivering with an unfamiliar fear. I found it difficult to do any work after that. I'd just reached a UFO scene in Cold Witness, and I didn't want to read it at that point.

It was not an aircraft. Aircraft do not move like that. It was not a moth caught in my torchbeam: I quickly turned the torch off as soon as that explanation occurred to me, and the thing didn't go. I cannot in all honesty say what on earth it was. But I do know one thing: I've finally seen one of the "Orfordness lights". Whatever they are.

"The second phase" begins

With this new job, my existing schedule--such that it was--has been turned on its head. I am now working six hours every Sunday, plus nine hours on Mondays and Tuesdays--also occasional, erratic days at other times of the week. I'm not complaining about these hours. The money is more than welcome. But as I'm now returning home at about 6:30 PM, that leaves only two hours of PCW revising per day, and another hour or so of "spare time" for crits and other writing-related things.

My three-money holiday has ended. I am now working every waking moment on at least three days out of seven, whether it be at the garden centre, scrutinising manuscript pages under the glow of a desk lamp, working on a novel exchange, or doing Back To School work for FM. Other than on my days off, I now have very little online time.

Not fair! I only just "officially" returned to Forward Motion. Now I'm having to cut back yet again.

Still, the BTS course I'm composing on Anglo-Saxon warfare is coming along very well. Some parts are graphic and gory, some thought-provoking, others humourous. I have included some household experiments that simulate axe-blows to a steel helmet. I'm sure you'll laugh as hard as I did when the idea first came to me.

Zette gave the go-ahead a few days ago, and was seemingly so impressed by my outline that she agreed to schedule the class for November. So, if your time isn't being eaten by NaNo, watch out for it!

Endnote: I am still open to suggestions or requests for content in the classes.

Weekly pics: round 33

More photos from Wales this week. In the spirit of presenting these pictures in chronological order, this week's supplement follows our journey up the Cwm Ceirig into the Dovey Forest.

First, a beautiful close-up my brother took of the Afon Ceirig itself, at a cattle ford near Dôl For. The river was a perfect find for a parching summer day: cool, shade-dappled, and crystal clear, the water was practically crying out to be drunk and splashed in. Unfortunately, it was a cattle ford, and we'd seen some nasty things rusting away in the river not far upstream. So we had to be content with looking at it only.



Secondly, the Cwm Ceirig as it enters the vast forest of Coedwigaeth Dyfi. This Sitka Spruce plantation, seeded by the good ol' Forestry Commission maybe forty or fifty years ago, covers the entire mountain massif between Corris and Glantwymyn (actually, it's a big hill massif, but this is Britain we're talking about here). This view shows the Geifron flank of Mynydd Crwper to the left, Talcen yr Allt (a part of Mynydd Du) to the right, and the distant elevation between them is Ffridd Cae'rfelin. At just under seven miles, and mostly in valley bottoms, that was a great evening's walk. Plus we found some cool waterfall glades, too.



Next week I'll be showing some of the more impressive Coedwigaeth Dyfi pictures.

Photos (C) James Roddie 2004