Monday 24 March 2025: I can see the end of the month from here…

And just like that, we’re in the last full week of March.

Thursday evening, after tea, ended up with some unexpected Monkey Dust admin. They had a gig on Friday night, one of their favourites and one that’s always a good night. The venue had asked for confirmation at the start of the week that the gig was still on, which it was. But on Thursday a call came in from one of the other band members to say he wasn’t very well and thought he might have Covid. Straight away we had to let the venue know, and then I created the ‘CANCELLED’ poster and shared it on Facebook and Instagram.

I decided to buy and read a very short Christmas cosy written by the person running the cosy mystery novel(la) courses. It was the cheapest of hers, and the 2^nd, I think, in the Christmas series. By the time I turned my bedside light off, I’d finished it. I wasn’t wholly impressed because it wasn’t actually a cosy mystery, in my view. Instead, it was a bit of a farcical romp with too much repetition for a short story, even a long one. BUT…it was a good example to study and it conveyed the Christmas spirit. I was glad it was done and dusted in only one evening, though.

In Friday’s post, I forgot to mention that I’d updated my reading log with the Jane Eyre stats. On Friday morning, I added in this cosy mystery, probably one of my quickest ever reads.

I was slow getting to my desk on Friday morning thanks to the recent discovery of the Meta AI training fiasco. Hundreds of thousands of creators, including very many of my friends and colleagues, have had their work stolen by a pirate site and scraped by Meta in order to train their AI. Seven and a half million books are on the database. I only had one book on there, The Life of Richard Cadbury. It’s one of my traditionally published non-fiction books and it isn’t in Kindle Unlimited. Some are finding that only their KU books are on there. Others say none of theirs are.

I started by sharing the original link to The Atlantic, which includes a little box where you can write your name and see what this database has of yours. I’d already seen the link to the Authors Guild with the letter you can write rescinding any such permissions, even though none were sought anyway. (Bit ironic that we can use an auto-generated letter to complain about AI…) And then I did some more research to see what, if anything, the writing organisations are advising to do, and I found this link to the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. I’m sure the other organisations will also be planning something.

When I did make it to my desk, the poet was in a Teams meeting. So I set off a weekly backup, updated this week’s diary, and settled down to do some more pre-writing for The Christmas Tree Mystery. I transferred some sleuth information to the sleuth worksheet and I had a play with the suspects and their relationships to the first victim. I’m still on the fence about having a murder in a lighthearted Christmas story, but I still need the suspects even if it’s a body-free mystery.

In Scrivener, I went and collected all of the character information from the last book, The Haunted House Hotel, and duplicated it all into the current book, The Christmas Tree Mystery. I deleted all of the characters who were specific to the last book, but kept all of the recurring characters and a couple I want to carry over into the current book.

While I didn’t have the names of all the suspects, apart from 2, I did do some brainstorming for another 3 of them, so now I have 5 suspects and 2 potential victims. It was time to do some writing, though, so when the poet put his headphones on for his next Teams meeting I went for it.

But I couldn’t get settled until I knew I had at least enough of an idea for every Act. So I worked at sketching out the main points throughout the novel and made sure I at least had sufficient for 12 chapters or 24 scenes. Acts 2 to 4 still need fleshing out, but at least now I have the entire book mapped out. I’m a planner at heart and not plotting out the entire novella is already a big thing for me. But I’m getting there.

I scheduled today’s blog post and finished work at 5:30pm.

Here’s Friday’s task list:

1. share today’s blog (Friday)
2. finish and schedule Monday’s blog
3. weekly backup
4. next week’s diary
5. The Christmas Tree Mystery

Extras:

1. Monkey Dust admin
2. research & share links re. AI training
3. update reading log spreadsheet

And here’s today’s task list:

1. share today’s blog (Monday)
2. write and schedule Tuesday’s blog
3. The Christmas Tree Mystery
4. proofread Mavis Braithwaite Strikes Again
5. client edit

If I don’t hear from the client edit author today, I’ll send him an email but start on my screen edits anyway. Both the client edit and The Christmas Tree Mystery get 2-hour slots. The proofreading and the blog get an hour each. The proofreading is usually under and hour and the blog is usually over an hour, but they work out well in the end. Everything else, including things not on the list, go into that extra hour. 

I try to only work 7-hour days these days (plus breaks). I’ve done 12-, 14- and 16-hour shifts and pulled all-nighters. I don’t need to do that now. When I get a bigger gap. I’ll run an errand.