Monday 8 May 2017

"Murder on a crappy cruise ship"

Started writing a small crime book called The Murder on a Crappy Cruise Ship. (Working title. Or not.) I already know the entirety of the story and details, since 90% of it already happened, but the trick is to keep the language extremely simplistic. I got a few pages in, then got bored and stopped and had some cake. Later in the evening I returned to editing the last chapter of Goose, which is so rich in language and so intense in the narrative, it was almost a relief! ... I didn't have to hold back, keeping afloat, with sentences like:

Nigel arrived first to the restaurant and readied to eat alone, to the stage of chiming silverware and  waiters sliding between the tables with fish on the trays, vine in the bottles. 

Now I can write like me again! :D


 ‘Twill be the rudest sound to such a meadow, this knitted sea of crimson and clover, but I didn’t care to oversleep. Somewhere during the dark hours a predictable friend joined us, having arrived earlier and having seen the phone glow from across the basin, knowing what to look for and where. It was not as unusual as one might think, the likes of him to be drawn to the fire. He put his travel blanket over all of us, fragrant of soot and forest soil, and listened to us sleep. Well, Starbark slept, snoring like a chestnut might snore. I was excited, my brain abuzz, each thought a firefly dressed as a villain. But he was warm and we were tired and none motivated to break the silence from fear of spooking away the stars or the rustling falling leaves and they would recognise us for valley invaders that we were.


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