Gosh, what a lot of catching up I have to do today…Where did I leave you? Oh yes, Wednesday…
I didn’t feel very well on Wednesday. During Monday night I had muscle cramps in both of my calves, the really painful kind, and that kept me awake for hours after as the legs still ached long after the cramp had gone. On Tuesday I started to come down with a cold. And during Tuesday night I had a biliary attack.
I’d been expecting the attack, I can tell the signs now, and I’ve had 2 since I saw the consultant. I’m back to see him in January, and I think I’m going to let him have my gall bladder if he still wants it. Fortunately it was only for less than 5 minutes. But I was already feeling queasy with the cold tablets I took and the biliary attack only added to the nausea.
Wednesday morning I was up with the poet. I didn’t feel like much to eat, I was tired, and I still had the cold. So I was quite grumpy. But I fed the birds and had a break, I made some breakfast and had a break, and I did a lot of admin work with lots of breaks in between.
First of all I shared Wednesday’s blog post. I selected the 5 writing prompts for next May I wanted to keep for myself, then I selected 30 throwaways to share with blog readers and Medium. I wrote the post, searched for, selected and correctly captioned the image, and I posted it to Medium.
I copied the writing prompts article for Thursday’s blog post, formatted it and scheduled it. I updated the jobs list for the November wrap-up post and scheduled that for Friday. And I created the Hello December job list and post, created the image, and scheduled that for Monday. I also created the December wrap-up image while I was at it.
Finally I updated my 12-project spreadsheet with all of the new words before having a little break. I wasn’t hungry still, so just had a drink and a sit down in the reading chair.
The hospital pharmacy called to say the owing tablets had come in and could I please come and collect them before the end of the week…
Eh? So I had to drop everything and be there when we’d already spent hours and hours and hours there on Monday? Fortunately they’re open until 6pm Monday to Friday, so I said we’d do our best. I knew the poet wanted to go and pick them up as soon as they were ready, but he wasn’t here to ask and that car park is a mare when you’re on your own. At least when there are 2 of us, one can drive around until a parking space comes available without being late for an appointment.
The poet called as well to ask if we could have the dog on Sunday and Monday (grand-doggy #1). He was asking because he was off to Ireland on Monday and he didn’t want to volunteer me for something when he wasn’t going to here himself.
I had a couple of biscuits with my tea so I could have another couple of cold tablets without putting too much strain on my stomach, I played a game on my tablet, then played games on the desktop. I interacted with folk on both Facebook and BlueSky. Then I was back to my desk for an hour or so.
The Secret of Whitehorse Farm had a name change because this first book in the series doesn’t actually reveal any secrets. Only a mystery or two. I played with Coming Home to Whitehorse Farm, but I think that seems more like a romance than a cosy mystery. I thought about A Mystery At Whitehorse Farm, but decided that as all of the books in the series are supposed to be mysteries, then this title didn’t really narrow it down. And I thought about Jeopardy at Whitehorse Farm, but that seemed a bit strong for a cosy.
I had a play with lots of alternatives in the end, but they all seemed to be too spoilery. So for the time being I plumped for Death Comes to Whitehorse Farm. Once I come up with an alternative I’m happier about, I’ll redo the covers for both the novella and the issue of Words Worth Reading the whole story will appear in. Only the titles, though. The images will remain the same.
Anyway, the change of title might not seem much, but it did mean I had to go back to the chapter I wrote the day before and tweak it a bit here and there, so everything fitted a bit better. The original title must have been blocking me a bit with that secret that doesn’t happen as once I’d changed the working title, I was off at a rate of knots.
The poet got home and I mentioned my title dilemma and he said, “Why don’t you just call it Whitehorse Farm?”
Well, it’s been called just Whitehorse Farm for something like 35 years. It just didn’t always have the sub-title ‘A Nettie Campbell Cosy Mystery’ beneath it.
So I changed it again in the Scrivener file. If I’m still happy with it, and it will still work on the cover, then I might just go back to that.
Thursday
Thursday was mostly about the novella challenge. I shared the gig list, and I shared the writing prompts. But the rest of the day was about the novella.
I was starting to get worried because there was still a lot of story left to tell and not enough 24,000-word novella in which to tell it. I was also running out of time. But I had a good session and added a nice chunk to the running total.
When the poet got home, quite late actually, we dashed out again to pick up my owing prescription. When we got back, I did a bit more work.
Friday
Friday was a busy day. We had Pest Control coming at 9:30am and door fitters also coming at 9:30am to fit a new patio door.
The doorbell went at 8:55am…It was the pest control lads early. Had the poet not been home, I would have ignored it. But he was. The lad who came last week nipped up into the loft for a quick check. He said some of the bait had gone but the squirrel trap hadn’t caught anything. He stayed for all of 5 minutes before shooting off again.
And then a big white van pulled up. I would have ignored that too, but it was parked right across our drive and our drive has a do-not-park white line across it. That’s fine if they’re coming to our house, as we can ask them to move. But the white line is there for our neighbours across the road as well. The road is so narrow that we both struggle to get cars off the drive anyway, let alone if the white line is covered.
So I went outside and asked them to move into the poet’s spot. First the poet had to move his car. He didn’t put it on the drive, though (as he can’t get off it if anyone parks too close). He pulled up in front of another car, but still in front of our house.
They were there until about 1:30pm, and in between working, I was making them cups of tea and coffee. The poet was on an important Teams call, and he had to move into the living room at the front of the house because the drilling on the adjoining office/dining room wall was overpowering.
I didn’t manage a lot of work until they’d gone. But I did get another chunk done. The story still wasn’t finished, but at least I had Saturday as well. I also shared Friday’s blog post everywhere.
The weekend
We were up earlyish on Saturday so we could do the shopping early enough for me to finish my writing. When we got back, I worked and the poet did some updating and downloading on his laptop.
I finished the story, but it all felt a bit rushed at the end. I reckon I could do with another 4 chapters along with a bit of interweaving to tie everything up nicely. But I hit 22,300 words and submitted it.
On Sunday we were up early again, this time because grand-doggy #1 was coming to stay for the night. He arrived around midday-ish.
I did my finances for the new month, created a graphic for the Great Novella Challenge, shared that to the socials, and joined in a fun daily meme on BlueSky.
We had pork chops for dinner, with which we also had some kidney, well-prepared by the poet, I made a bread and butter pudding from a new-to-me recipe that I probably won’t use again. The kidney and the pudding were both so faffy that they’ve been relegated to perhaps-once-a-year.
Monday
Yesterday, it was back to work and I started to think about Book 2 in the Great Novella Challenge. Because I have less time in December to work on this one, I’ve limited it to around 16,000 words, which makes it a novelette by my calculations but the challenge is 15,000 to 30,000 words. I already have the cover, I already have the title, and I already have the basic idea and setting.
The long title for this one is The Secret of the Old Annexe, but I made life easy for myself again by cutting it down to The Old Annexe. I found a picture taken by the poet when we were in Dorset and replaced the one on the existing cover with this one. And I went into thinking mode. I also shared yesterday’s blog post everywhere.
And my cold finally started to get better.
Today
This week I’m pre-writing The Old Annexe and getting the Scrivener binder ready. I missed the 350-word deadline for the competition, but I still have the 300-word story to do for 12 Stories in 12 Months challenge, due tomorrow. I might put that on ice then for next year’s 350-word flash fiction competition. It will be too short to do anything else with.
I also have Whitehorse Farm to polish so it can be used in January’s Words Worth Reading. And I have just one more short story to write for that, The Ace of Swords, which is Fal’s backstory for the Stevie Beck/Horvale mysteries. And I have stories to polish and stories to start.
