I know, I know, this entry is a few days late. And I didn’t take a photograph this week either. So here’s one of the cat travelling through time to tide you over.

Another brief entry this, still in a festive, resty, mood. It’s been a good week. 2012 has shambled off and while it has been a good year on the whole, long and busy, I’ve felt the need for a new start and a new direction. The last couple of months of 2012 were a bit aimless and I was a bit down. (See previous entries for hilarious gloom) but I feel refreshed now and ready for new challenges and positive things like that.

I began 2013 by resuming the novel I had abandoned in a fit of pique after two fitful days of writing. This new version is going very well for now. I abandoned the last attempt because I wasn’t excited to get to the next part. It felt like I was treading water and writing something I had written dozens of times before. This time though it feels new. I like my ideas and I’m enjoying exploring them. I have as yet only a very vague idea of what the plot is and no antagonist as yet (I don’t think a building counts) but it is early days. Tomorrow the entire thing could have taken on a new and exciting form. It’s only slightly under my control and that is thrilling.

This is one of those weeks where I have to own up to doing very little beyond day-to-day writing; no queries to agents or publishers, no submissions of work to markets. However various editors ensured that I would not leave 2012 behind without my fair share of rejections. I recieved five in the last week– Glimmertrain rejected both ‘7 Make an Oubliette’ and ‘An Alabaster Fang.’ On Spec said no to ‘Maxie Finlay’s Reaching Child’ in a personal email that laid out their problems with the story, which was good of them to take the time but basically came down to a bunch of WHY? questions. I’m just the writer– use your imagination, chums! One Buck Horror rejected ‘That Night You Showed Me Ambaglass’ and The Literarian were the second to turn down ‘An Alabaster Fang.’ Poor, poor Alabaster. No love for that story, it seems. I am debating whether I should widen the net of my submissions– I am currently submitting only to paying markets but that is feeling a bit constraining. I haven’t had a new piece out on display for a good six months now and it’s annoying me. One to think about– what’s more important to me at this stage, the maddeningly ellusive paid work or the more certain but unpaid published work?

High Five Danny O’C  continues to loom on the horizon. Very soon we will be launching into a cavalcade of rehearsals and rewrites and technical stuff. We continue to need your support to fund the project– the Fund-It campaign for the Collaborations Festival can be found here. Any and all support you can give is greatly appreciated. I really want to get the opportunity to put this show on. Must steal cash from everywhere.

Right. The pace will pick up next week. I’ll by sending out more submissions, getting more writing done and getting things started with the play. All good things.