Leaving Mallingry is going well – it’s day 18 and I have 38,162 words out of the 50,000 so far. On the spur of the moment I invented a woman to be irritating on a sofa and she immediately wormed her way right to the core of the plot, only to be bloodily despatched several chapter later, at the hands of the villain!

Leaving Mallingry is now in progress – on day 8 I have 13,483 words out of the 50,000 so far!

Cover for the collection now finally done, see here. I am aiming for the Launch to be at the beginning of December.

Spent a day at Gloucester Guild Hall with some fellow writers on an e-Publishing course. This was given by Jarek Adams and John Thorn and covered cover image, blurb, formatting plus marketing techniques.

A fascinating day, and a chance to meet, discuss things with fellow-minded writers.

I have been working on a Stage Play based on the story of the Wooden Horse of Troy entitled the Gift Horse. The latest version has now been submitted to the Script Readers team (http://www.thescriptreaders.co.uk). If successful, I get to hear a rehearsed reading.

Bread was recorded last night at the StroudFM studio in Stroud, and a good job they did too!

We did an initial read-through which worked well, and then recorded it, which went even better. So thanks to Chloe, Swithin Fry, Claire Jackson and PJ Cox who all did sterling service, plus Laura on the desk who recorded it all.

I have decided to self-publish a small collection of short stories on Amazon and iTunes. I am still working out all the technical details – creating the iTunes version is pretty straightforward, but converting to Kindle is more involved – but it should all be done and dusted in a couple of weeks time.

New radio script completed – as part of StroudFM’s Radio scriptwriting course – and recording should happen this week, with real actors, plus the excellent Chloe who was so good in ‘See You Later, Elevator.’

Alas, I didn’t make it through to the shortlist. Still, being involved was an amazing experience, and there’s nothing to beat watching real actors reading your lines and making the whole thing work. Also, I think the underlying idea I came up with was good and has the legs to be used elsewhere.

Thanks to all at Theatre West for the opportunity.

At last the read through! The Alma Tavern theatre sits above a pub (the Alma Tavern) in the Clifton area of Bristol, not far from Clifton College. It’s a very small theatre, barely 50 seats in total. The minutes beforehand felt like waiting for a dental appointment – not a mere checkup, but the kind of appointment when you haven’t been near a dentist in five years and suspect all sorts of problems –  but in the end it all went very well. There were four scripts to be read before mine – all of them dramatic and interesting; all of them making me feel both that I wanted to know more and terrified that my ‘Cards for Clara’ wouldn’t measure up. Also, I felt incredibly stupid that I hadn’t realised how read-throughs work, and had left one of my characters with no actual dialog – in a read through, the cast sit on chairs and read their lines, with stage directions read aloud.

But in the end, it was all fine. It was truly inspiring to hear real actors (two of whom had been on Casualty, according to Google) bring the words to life, and my 10 pages really seemed to work well on the stage, even getting a couple of laughs despite the overall dark tone.

I don’t know when I learn about whether I’ve made it to the next stage, but even if I don’t, it’s been well worth it, just to get this far.