From Twitter 09-15-2009

• 09:22:41: Keith Floyd is dead?! I'm gutted.
  
• 11:36:51: Sample quote from The Lost Symbol: ""What a delicious scandal that one caused! You do enjoy putting the fox in the henhouse!"
  
• 11:36:59: Srsly, Dan Brown?
  
• 11:54:45: @RebeccaJPayne That would probably make a better story
  
• 13:41:22: Musing over ideas for a story. Why do I always want to write about junkies and homeless people?
  
• 14:15:07: Lol, been asked by an editor if I can tone down the profanity in a short story...
  
• 14:21:53: @Scarimonious The best kind!
  
• 20:25:49: @DamnationBooks Thank you! Happy to be here!
  
• 20:26:11: @StaciaKane I'm reading it right now - utterly awesome!
  

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Catfish and Paper Tigers

There was another sighting of the elusive upsidedown catfish last night! I saw him sitting on top of the fake skull in the fishtank (I have the gawthest fishtank, yo) and got so excited I had to run and get Kyle and chaostheory to come and have a look. By the time I'd dragged them away from Red Dwarf into my room, however, the catfish was gone. I mean, literally. Gone. He was nowhere in sight. And we're talking about a big old fish here; twice the size of my corydoras. Where the hell could he possibly have been hiding? I was baffled, and then everyone accused me of being crazy. So I scoured the tank with a torch until I found him. He was hiding in the fake log. The dastard! (That was toned-down language, just for you, Dad.)

(This isn't my catfish, btw. He's far too sneaky to be caught on camera).
 

Anyway, with that excitement over and done with, we returned to Red Dwarf and I started musing on SILVER KISS. I'm happy with how the second draft is going, but I'm having some issues with one secondary character. I don't know anything about him. I've got nothing on this guy. The other secondary characters, I know. I know their backstories and what makes them tick. For some reason, this one is as elusive to me as... say... an upsidedown catfish. I don't think it's a huge problem in the context of the novel - he doesn't have a big enough role, but it bugs the hell out of me that I can't get to grips with him.
 

The Evening's To-Do List

I skived off last night because my arm was hurting, so I feel I need to be extra productive this evening and make up for wasted time. (Not that watching Red Dwarf and spying on my fish is wasted time, exactly, but it's not editing or writing either).

So:

1. Write up October's horoscopes for the Cambridge Explorer. That's something I don't really pimp round here that often. Are people interested in my adventures with Tarot cards and astrology, or is it best left unpimped?

2. Edit two more chapters of SILVER KISS. I've set myself a goal this week of two chapters a night, and so far have been doing three (apart from last night when the lure of the catfish proved too strong to resist).

3. Go over the first chapter of Night and Chaos for submission to my writers' group. I haven't touched it for almost a year, so I'm sure it's a horrendous mess, and I'd like it to be just a little bit less so before it gets ripped to pieces critiqued.

4. Spy on the fish.