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Well, Friday has come round pretty quickly — and with it the end of the first week when I've ever tried to come up with a bit of non-fiction every day. You've been very patient during the process, and I thank you for that.

So what's up?

Today's going to be pretty busy. When I'm done writing this I'm going to be spending it doing graphic design. I earned a living this way for a while back in the 1990s, and still keep my hand in doing stuff with and for my good friend Stephen Jones — horror anthologist, editor, and genre man about town. He's limping about town somewhat at the moment, courtesy of a small slip after we'd spent an evening celebrating recording some voiceovers for an animated children's horror movie we've written. But that's another story — and I wouldn't want you to think my entire life consists in recovering from excessive intake of stimulants. Because it does not.

After that, there will be cooking to be done, as my editor and her husband are coming for dinner. Garlic chicken and grilled vegetables are on the menu, ...

Ah, the dawn of a brave new Thursday...

So — how are you today?

Much better — thank you for asking. I did get some work done in the end, but then hit a slow patch in the afternoon and decided to do 'research' instead, which basically meant cruising around the Internet.

One of the things I like to do, possibly tragically, is check out the menus of small-town restaurants that have somehow acquired a shambolic presence on the web, crimes against punctuation presumably thrown up by the owner's slack-jawed nephew, in return for food. My great find yesterday was a place in Wisconsin that offered deep-friend ice cream, which impressed me deeply. I completely agree with novelist Jim Harrison's assertion that we should be open to the idea that life is not one long self-improvement exercise: but Deep-Fried Ice Cream really is running against the tide of the zeitgeist. Why not put Fried Beer on the menu, too? Or Fried Cigarettes? I mean, I'd try them, obviously, but...

I also found a site telling you how to make spaghetti. At home. Yikes. I can see that fashioning home-made ravioli ...

So, it's Wednesday, then.

How's it looking?

For a start, kind of rainy. As you may have heard, England lost this year's summer in a late-night game of poker. Got over-excited by a pair of kings and lost out to Paraguay, who was holding a straight flush the whole time. Paraguay didn't really need the extra summer and so part-exchanged it for some wrought iron yard furniture, which is admittedly pretty classy but means the denizens of London have spent several months staring out at relentless drizzle. (A mildly interesting thing about the word 'denizen', incidentally, is that the word actually relates to the history of London. It's derived from the medieval Anglo-French 'deins' (which would now be 'dans', meaning 'in'), and makes a distinction between those who lived within the old city walls, and those who lived outside — who were thus 'hors', which mutated to 'fors', and ultimately became the word 'foreign'. Or so I gather, though my etymology dealer is a notoriously shady individual who once did time in a Louisiana jail for transporting a verb across state lines for immoral purposes).

The other thing about this Wednesday is ...

Hello again... and I hope you all had splendid Mondays.

How was it for you?

Well... as indicated yesterday, my main job at the moment is a new novel, and something I've gradually learned (The Intruders was my seventh book) is to be open-minded over what counts as a day's work.

There are days when the words tumble out — two, three, even four thousand at a time (higher numbers don't necessarily mean you'll wind up cutting more the next day; often quite the opposite). There are other days when it's more like triage in a long war of attrition, going back through what you've done and re-aligning it: I try not to overly plan ahead while I'm writing, which can be exciting, but a royal pain too. I have days, also, when barely a word gets written, but a thought suddenly occurs to me, one I know will turn out to be significant in the long term. These are the UFO days, when — completely unpredictably — some notion arcs across the inner skies and pulls you onto a path you didn't even realise you'd been looking for. You can't make them happen, ...

Well, hello there.

First thing I'm going to admit is that I've never actually blogged before. I'm fortunate enough to get my typing fix done via being a novelist, though I do also write screenplays from time to time — if I've been extra bad, and feel the need to atone for my sins by undertaking tasks involving pain without hope of reward.

So I'm not sure of the etiquette over blogging, what's acceptable/desirable and what's not. I considered nervously preparing a series of insightful and painstakingly-researched non-fiction vignettes, and trying to pass them off as 'What, this little notion? Came up with that in the shower this morning!' — but that seemed outside the spirit of the thing.

So instead I'm going for a daily snapshot: a foreign correspondent, if you will, sending short and random dispatches from the country of me. Whether the country of me bears more than two seconds' scrutiny will be for you, dear reader, to decide.

So what's up?

For the many who don't know, a quick introduction. I'm the author of a psychological thriller that's out in hardcover now, called The Intruders. ...