Let the countdown begin

Help!!  I have just realised I have roughly only 45 days left until I go to on holiday with the family.  45 days to finish the book.  I had hoped to have finished a first draft by the end of June (hollow laugh) so that I could spend July reviewing and redrafting (hollow laugh again).  But life, as usual, gets in the way.  So there's no choice but to spend the next 45 days writing as much as I can - squeezing words out in the midst of my chaotic family life.  Of those 45 days, only 32 remain completely free to write and even then some of those days are already half taken up.  Thus it's about getting a few thousand words out every day even in limited time.  Otherwise I will taking a laptop with my on hols and that won't be fun.

Countdown:

Today 24th June (yay Chloe's birthday)   2,306 words

Watch this space

But who really did do it?

OK.  So a bit of an epiphany since last I wrote on the blog.  Yes my villain did suddenly reveal himself but  I woke up early one morning and realised that of course he wasn't the murderer after all.  So I took control of the reins again and forced him back with a stick.  Don't worry though, he's still got an unpleasant role to play.

So now I am faced with a new villain - a different villain, one which I hope will behave until the time is right. This suspense writing is tricky.  My book is not a full one crime story nor is it a complete romance.  Finding the balance is tricky - there has to be some police procedure but most of what is happening is going on in the character's heads and in their lives.  It's behind the scenes that give it the suspense.

Well, hopefully.  Meanwhile I am busy working on a new villain profile whilst carefully looking over my shoulder.

Feeling a little melancholy today....

Time Captured

It seems to me as I look out

The day has flown by without me noticing

And now the fading tones of evening arrive

And I am wondering just how it happened.

When I was younger

Time seemed to race by

Births, marriages and deaths

And now it waxes and wanes

A golden moon in the dark sky,

Teasing me with its glow.

I once heard of a woman who loved only one man.

He, a young man now buried under poppies in a field in France

Still stands proudly in his uniform, smiling and twenty.

She, finally buried under green moss in an English churchyard

Her heart beating for him, long after the trenches were filled in.

Every star in that inky black sky is billions of years away from me

I reach out and lose my hand in the darkness.

Time snatches pockets of my life

Causing me to panic when I can’t remember

And it is only when I see a photograph

Captured forever in a frame,

That I remember your faces.

Vanessa Woolley

June 2014