¦ dialling in from Jesus Mound ¦
06:55 GMT, Easter Monday, 24th March 2008. Sitting at my parents old dinning table, tucked away in a corner at the front of the house. Nick Drake is playing on random selection through laptop & earphones. To my left is a bow window, wooden latticed panes, a garden in shade...frost covered greenery, and beyond that the street bathed in bright early morning sunshine. To my right, the expanse of the house, an open plan view through the 1st lounge into the 2nd lounge and further, into the kitchen and breakfast area, all illuminated gently by light refracting through dense foliage of trees in the backgarden: shards of green and yellow light.
A half drunk mug of tea is sitting on a coaster.
Nobody else in the house is awake; not even the cats.
This has to be my favourite time of any day.
It's been a good holiday weekend. Drove up on Friday morning with Jo and her twin sister Sarah. It was Sarah's first time this far North, and she got to meet my mum for the very first time. My sister is up from London. Fredddy, the Dutch lodger has his wife over from Italy. The house has been wonderfully busy with people.
The weather has been slightly insane. Sunshine one moment, but temperatures hovering around zero degrees, then abrupt darkenings of the sky, heavy hail showers or big fat snow dumps. Then sunshine again. It feels slightly more like Christmas than Easter.
I started the new novel, Edge last Tuesday, 18th March, with a thumbnail plan of completing one chapter every 3 days: so I'm expecting to finish around mid-July. However, in the past 6 days I've finished off 8 chapters (13,000 words ¦ un-reviewed) so I'm pretty darn pleased with progress. This is thanks to several weeks of planning, prepping, plotting and character dev I did...starting back in 2000, then picking up and completing in 2005. So I'm praying that I did a good job of note making all the way through otherwise I'm going to get so far in and hit some blank section, where I didn't bother fleshing out the twisted plot threads...
Regardless, it's great to be writing a novel again after 3 years dominated by Yellow Dawn.
**Edit 17:17 GMT, just finished chapter 13, that's 22,000 words. Yay!