Outlining

Look at this beast. It started on a single sheet of A4 and just grew and grew. It is the outline for my next    novel and it gives me a bit of a headache because it is not very portable. Somehow I need to break this bad boy down into separate scenes before I can do anything with it. For the the opening scenes I'm going to need a ladder and a head for heights. It's good to have connections between the various plots, subplots and layers, but in the end this lot has to be unleashed onto the world in some kind of linear sequence, and therein lies the challenge.

If I can just get each scene into a Scrivener outline I will feel better, but its hard to read and type at the same time when your 8 feet up in the air. I've tried laying it down on the floor and getting myself down in amongst the detail, but the available floor space just isn't up to the job. Neither are my knees.

I'll tell you what, though, it's been great fun so far. Loads of those weird serendipitous moments when something happens that you didn't figure on, but then you have already laid all the ground work and foreshadowing without knowing why. As works in progress go, I'm having a ball with this one.

Change of subject: I'm off to the Hay Festival next week. As usual the day job is being awkward and getting in the way of a full week of Hay goodness, but the weekend will be good and I have lots of events in the diary. I'm also reading a lot more right now and all those book shops are beckoning. Can't wait.

Fish in Print

Ah, so here it is at last, the fish anthology from Dagan Books. It is now available in the UK from Amazon as print or ebook. (I prefer the print version myself because it looks so good in the bookcase.)

Here's the link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fish...

The anthology contains 33 original stories, science fiction and fantasy, retold fairy tales and brand new myth. There are stories from Ken Liu, Cat Rambo, Camille Alexa, Alex Shvartsman, Cate Gardner, Amanda C Davis... the list of excellence goes on and on. Fish is edited by Carrie Cuinn and KV Taylor.