Dog Day

Its time for another Word Dogs. Wednesday the 3rd, 8pm, 13th Note, King St, Glasgow.

I'm on last, so you have to stay until the end :)

Novel revision has been completed. I just need to do another pass on the final section and find a few thousand words to reach 80K and I'll be happy for a crit and then start finding an agent, again.

And now the end is near

I recently updated the main website: www.khaibit.com so now it should be all shiny, W3C compliant and er up to date.

After supreme efforts each day (1K+, it helps when you have a plan) I'm within sight of the end of the first draft of Adocentyn. I haven't finished and already I have half a dozen edits I know I need to do. Mainly fleshing out paragraphs into whole chapters, a whole plot thread I left dangling and generally dramatising scenes. I decided to finish the whole thing rather than go back and finese part 2. Since it takes so long to get up to steam, better to make the whole journey, I thought. Polishing is much easier than raw creation.

Progress

I have received the proofs for Nelson's Blood, to be published shortly in New Writing Scotland 26. So I'm guessing that goes to press pretty soon.

Have had a productive time of late. Closing in on 50,000 words in Adocentyn and I don't think I've quite got to the half-way point.

Eulogy

My Grandpa died recently, and at the funeral I gave a short speech on behalf of my family. Cleaning up the house, in preparation for Asura moving in later today, I found the paper I had handwritten it on and was about to throw it away. I thought better of it, and have decided to preserve it here. It is a bit rough in places, as a scribbled first draft will be, but it is also from the heart, as a scribbled first draft will be.

How do you summarise a life? I don't think that you can recount all the words and deeds. But it is by someone's deeds that we should know them.

It is only relatively recently that I got to know my grandpa's history. One of his characteristic features was his relatively quiet presence. I don't think that it is necessary to have done great deeds to be a man - you don't need to explore unknown rivers or build a nation to be a man. A man's true deeds are much more subtle. His very life and the way he lives it - the example he sets- these are the deeds we should measure.

As I've said, my grandpa was softly spoken. I never heard him raise his voice - he never needed to. His word, when used, carried the weight of authority.

Despite provocation, I never saw him truly get angry. As a child, I had recent discovered that grass could be used to make green marks and his newly painted bungalow wall was the perfect canvas for me to continue this experiment. He was annoyed, but still I don't recall him raising his voice in anger or otherwise.

My grandpa always seemed content with what he had. He didn't seem to seek some elusive extra. I was amazed that he could eat a bar of chocolate over a week or two. It did however provide me with the opportunity to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and nibble on it. This allowed my grandpa to show his keen eye and detection skills and deduce that the small teeth marks were mine.

My grandpa had huge reserves of patient and had time for everyone. He helped me learn to read, ensured I remembered my times tables, and eventually I could name my favourite dinosaur, Archaeopteryx.

The summary of my grandpa's life is before you, and around you. His family and friends. The people he influence by being himself. The summary of my grandpa's life is me. And for that I am happy and thankful.

Quick Notes

A celebrity (model or pop-star) opens their own bank. "Bowies sounded like a pub, I mean it was, once, but it was a bank before that. Now it was a bank again, kindof."

"With iQ-Paper I couldn't understand why we still needed to craft models out of wood, card and glue (I used think of it as haiku paper given some of the ways it interpreted my handwriting)."

"With almost all information available just about anywhere, having knowledge is no longer important - what you do with it is now what is valuable."

Greek gods returning (perhaps an old chestnut) - subtly, as Greek gods can be. Punishing hubris, reminding humanity of the Virtues, speaking through statues and so on. Actually this ties in nicely with the my very sketchy headspace outline for the next book which would involve a dose of mass shamanistic initiation.

Talking of which, Adocentyn in now just passing the novella threshold and into the short novel territory (about 40K words). I'm still not halfway through the first draft.

Oh, and Croy Division, since Croftwerk was taken.

Second Wind

I received news that my story 'Primero' will be included in the Robot's Beyond anthology from Permuted Press. Primero deals with the adventures of super spy and Magus John Dee as he was expelled from Prague in 1586.

Technically, this was accepted first, but it took some work rewriting and making other edits before it was fully accepted.

As before, full details of publication as and when I know.

First Sail

I've sold my first story. Nelson's Blood, my tale of video pirates having a high seas adventure, has been accepted for New Writing Scotland 26. I think it will be published in July/August sometime, but naturally will let you know as soon as its available. I'll truly believe it when I see it.

Dog House

I'm doing a reading, possibly my best piece to date, at the next Word Dogs do. Which is on Wednesday, same bat time, same bat channel (7.30, 13th Note, £2). Be there or be bored somewhere else.

Dominion

One of the pivotal moments of my young life was seeing a video on TV by The Sisters of Mercy for Dominion from the album Floodland. I recall a goateed Andrew Eldritch poncing and posing around pyramids with a sword cane. Anyway, for a laugh, I thought I'd see if it was on YouTube. Inevitably, this turned out to be true:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWvOHT0zfXY

It's funny to think just how cool this still looks, even if the pyramids turn out to be the equally cool city of Petra in Jordan. (You may recognise it from the last Indiana Jones movie, no The Last Crusade, silly). And even if there was a full beard and not just a goatee and moustache. Still some things remain so 80s it's unbelievable. At points early on I'm reminded of Bladerunner.