| My book of the year (so far) |
[10 Mar 2008|12:52pm] |
I finished Alison by Andrew Humphrey last night and it’s a superb book - definitely my read of the year, so far. A quite beautifully bleak tale of doomed friendships and relationships (and secrets that would have been better kept a secret), set around the Norfolk coast (with some places that I’ve visited, which is always a nice surprise), with sparse, almost (at times) hard-boiled dialogue and a clean, frank approach to both violence and sex, “Alison” drags you through to the grim conclusion that you can sort-of see coming but are hoping against. The book is very nicely designed, it’s a real gem all round and I’ll be on the look-out for more work from Mr Humphrey in the future.
Well worth a look.
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| Drive update (another of numerous) |
[10 Mar 2008|02:43pm] |
"Drive" now stands at 28,800 words, which is 108% of the plan. I estimate there's at least another 2k words to go, which means that I either significantly underestimated the scope of the story when I did the plan or (and this is more likely), my over-writing skill has kicked back in.
I over-write like mad. With what I tend to cut out of a piece, you could almost make another product in the same range (case in point - "Conjure" is classed, by me, as a novella. It started out at 83k words and is now something like 53k - which, as Chris Teague rightly points out, is more of a short novel). I wanted "Drive" to at least hit 20k (ie, the lower end of the novella range) without feeling padded, assumed my normal 33% overwrite factor and even still, I'm sailing over it.
But - and it's a big but - at least I'm still moving forward on it, I still feel good about it and I'm really quite looking forward to writing the violence that is just about to commence (the farmer has just arrived at the piggery, to see what the noise is and he's about to be menaced with a stanley knife!).
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