I am there right now. The demons all carry copies of Strunk’s Elements of Style, and they’re poking me with fountain pens. At this point, I have written something like five different variations on the opening of the Novel, and I still can’t seem to get it right. My latest effort was written at four in the morning, because writing just seems to be easier when I’m sleep deprived. Am I getting there? I don’t [...]

The last sketch of one of my characters in the Novel has gone mysteriously awry. I suspect the gremlins of WordPress ate it when I converted the blog over to the new site.   Yeah, it’s kinda meh. I’m hardly Picasso, unfortunately. This is certainly not how I imagine her in my head, oh no. When I’m trying to tell the story, I see danger! Excitement! Swords flying and blood splatters and epic battles, and [...]

Alright, I’ve played enough TF2. Here’s the short story, as promised. Hats Do not laugh at the name. I save all my imagination for the writing, not so much the titles. Enjoy, or hate, or whatever.

You know, I was actually going to write some whiny rambling on life, the universe and everything. Then I came to my senses and mentally slapped myself for being a pessimist. Like, what the hell, Claire?! When did you become such a drag? To hell with that, I say! So yeah. I’m thirty. I feel about a hundred, and I wonder what exactly I’m supposed to have been doing for the last ten years, and [...]

It’s now half eleven at night, and technically it’s still my birthday for another half hour. Today I’m the grand old age of thirty. I’m still not published, which is bumming me out. I got to spend my day working, because freelancers don’t get days off, not even for cake. I didn’t have cake, by the way. I wasn’t feeling up to it. My better half took me out to dinner, and I had a [...]

Oh, how I wish I was kidding. Due to various problems, I still have no internet access at home. My net life is currently being supported by kind cafes with free WiFi, and that’s obviously only during actual business hours. It’s almost like being struck deaf and dumb. I’m out of the loop; cut off from the world because I can’t get up at 4am and check my email or tweet bad haikus about insomnia. [...]

Apologies for the blurry picture. The camera on my phone is pretty good, but it doesn’t handle low light conditions. But that is Vancouver. We’ve been here a week, now. I don’t know what I was expecting. I didn’t really think anything at all; just that we were going to a place brighter, maybe more hopeful than Ireland. And it is bright – it glows with life and technology and happiness, a hundred cultures fused [...]

Strange but true fact – apparently, celebrities really like visiting Ireland. The Irish tend not to bother them in the whole screaming-crowd-of-fans way, probably because no one can quite believe that it’s really them, and not just a lookalike – and if you actually go up to them to say hi, you’d be mortified if it turned out to be someone else. Anyway, I have a point to all this. I was in one of [...]

After a year and a half of working on and off, the second draft of the Novel is complete. The first draft wasn’t much of anything. That’s part of the process of how I write; when I’m telling the story to begin with, it’s very ephemeral and inconsistent, with plot holes and continuity errors all over the place. All I’m doing is talking to myself, in a very haphazard way. The second draft, though, is [...]

Ten years ago today, I went to the cinema and watched ‘Road Trip’ with my better half. I remember how awful that movie was in places. I remember the two of us walking home as if there were clouds beneath our feet, nothing but smiles and joy enough to fill any heart. I remember kissing him on doorstep, because every girl should get a goodnight kiss from her date, and he just froze up because [...]