Feeling the Draft

Well, now my first complete draft of the Benny novella's finished, which is nice. Not unrelatedly, I'm knackered.

For those of you who enjoy statistics... this draft is 28,970 words long (and that will probably grow during rewrites), over a quarter of which is written in the character of Jason Kane, with a further seven characters getting some first-person narration. It's in eight chapters,with a prologue and an epilogue. And the word "murder" and its conjugates appear 19 times.

My contribution's entitled "Nursery Politics", and we're probably not calling the volume War Stories any more. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say what we are calling it.

[Edit 27-3-7: Ah yes, it looks like I am. It's called Nobody's Children.]

And now I have: a) the week off work for rewrites, and b) a rapidly-encroaching stinking cold. Given that the last time I took leave I ended up with a bout of food poisoning, I'm beginning to suspect that my employers are dosing me with biological agents whenever I take time off, to condition me against it and make me a more productive employee. It's particularly galling given that I've been feeling a bit ill, but not enough to actually take a day off, for most of 2007 so far.

Otherwise, I've been reading The Steep Approach to Garbadale, watching Blackadder and taking the occasional photo when I've had the chance. I took lots of the view of the city and Suspension Bridge from Bedminster Down when I walked up to the chemist there the other day, but the visibility was hopeless and they all turned out rubbish.

More later in the week, assuming I'm not bedridden or dead or anything by then.