Murder and Mushrooms

Today I'm filling in for that terrible overachiever Zoë Sharp* over at Murderati. Normally Murderati posts are full of wit and wisdom on publishing and writing and all that malarkey. Not so mine. Mine is the usual unreconstructed ramblings of a man who should really get out more.

BUT - and it's a big one** - what you will find over at Murderati is the now legendary Mushroom Soup recipe mentioned on the cover flap of Cold Granite (the one people keep emailing me about). Yes, I'm finally breaking nearly four years of stony silence and coming clean on the soup front.

In other non-soup-related news, I have decided to fill my new-found free time by getting started on the dreaded BOOK NUMBER THE SIXTH! Speak it's name in hushed tones, in case you invoke its dreaded deadly dread. Or something.

Well, I don't know, do I?

*She can fly a plane,teach horsey dressage, build her own house, shoot things competitively, disable a cross-channel ferry, work as a professional photographer, kill you with her bare hands, and write damn fine books while she's doing it.
** Oh, post-related foreshadowing!

Erm...

I have a confession to make - I haven't got a clue what to do with myself. Which is different from my normal 'not having a clue what I'm doing', and therefore a little harder to deal with. Since I handed in the second draft of Book Number The Fifth, I've been something of a loose wheel. I've tried being ill for a while, I've sort of caught up on my reading, and I've cleaned all the squiggles off of my whiteboard, ready for BLIND EYE to come back from my editorial super ninjas. I've even thought about tidying up my study.

Right now it looks like I'm planning on opening an experimental landfill. Or a retirement home for little bits of paper. Wheel them out into the sunshine once a day and feed them coco, make sure they take their medication, that kind of thing.

I've even started in on the research for Book Number The Sixth, but for some reason, I'm having difficulty talking myself into sitting down and actually doing some serious planning on the damn thing. So instead, I'm sitting here house-sitting for my parents while they're away. They have the builders in* and as everyone knows builders have to be looked after with cups of tea, petted, and given regular exercise to stop them weeing on the furniture. Or something.

The down side is that I am stuck in a strange house not surrounded by my own things, or my cat. The upside is that most of my own things** in my own house need a jolly good tidy, and this is a perfect excuse for not doing that.

* And no, that's not a euphemism for anything dodgy.
** As opposed to communal things, most of those are tidy and hoovered and dusted and stuff. It's things what are solely mine that've been visited by the Messy Fairy. Who's a bit like the tooth fairy, only she doesn't take teeth away. Or leave you money under your pillow. So not a lot like the tooth fairy at all. More like the Mucal Fairie, who flits into your house in the dead of night with his buckets full of bogies to ram up your nose while you sleep. I mean, come on, how did you think all that yuck got up there?

Skink

She Who Must Occasionally Take Some Time Off From Work So She Doesn't Go Retail On All Your Arses and I had a wee run in the car yesterday. Well, I'm 'between books'* and she's not at work so what the hell, we'll tootle around the NE of Scotland for a day like a pair of old farts out for a Sunday drive.

We've been meaning to go to Cullen for a while now, home of the famous Cullen Skink. Mmm, Cullen Skink, a lovely creamy soup of smoked haddock and potatoes, unctuous and full of fishy goodness. So we found a nice looking place, just off the main square, and settled down to order the Cullen Skink. Only the Cullen Skink, Cullen Stunk. How the hell could someone screw up the signature dish for a whole sodding town? The hotel chef managed to produce something that was weak, thin, full of undercooked boiled tatties, and had next to bugger-all fish in it. Grrrrrr... On my worst day, with a pair of angry badgers stapled to my gonads I could do better than that.

Then off to the wilds of Buckie to purchase many, many fishies for the eating thereof. If we can't get nice Cullen Skink in Cullen then I can damn well have it at Casa MacBride. Then, with a boot full of the aforementioned fishies we went on a magical mystery tour of small NE fishing villages.

Loads and loads of nice little locations for horrible, horrible crimes to be committed. I've already got a plan** for Book Number The Sixth, but I can definitely see at least one of them featuring in the not-too-distant.

But all this self-indulgent malarkey aside, I have good news: that interview I inflicted upon Adrian Hyland ages and ages ago has finally gone live on Shotsmag (to go along with the review). I think it's a fair bet that I'm not going to be taking over from Parkinson any time soon. Still, it's the thought that counts, right?

* Technically I'm actually 'between book', as I'm waiting on the line edit notes for Blind Eye to come in so I can go back to work on the thing. But if feels a lot more positive to say 'between books' as that way I can pretend I've actually achieved something.
** Well, as far as I usually have. Which isn't actually that much of a plan to be honest. It'll be more of a plan later, but for now it's sort of nebulous.

It am gone bye, bye...

At long bloody last, Book Number The Fifth has finally wended it's hairy-arsed way down south to the great house of Harper, where it's probably hanging around the water cooler making off-colour remarks, or photocopying it's bum. You know the kind of thing.

And now I get to catch up on all the things I've been meaning to do for sodding months and never managed to get around to. Like chiselling out a channel in the solid brick walls of the lounge so I can install a set of lovely Billy bookcases and then fill them with books. BOOKS, I tells ya! Which is where the big slice of guilt comes in. I'm way behind with my reading. I mean seriously, badly, way behind. There's a stack of things that I've been asked to blurb and haven't even managed to crack the cover of. Which is very, very naughty, especially as some of them are ones I've supposed to be giving feedback on. So if you're waiting to hear back from me on something, well ... you know ... sorry, and stuff.

Bad beardy writist, back in your box.

I don't know what it is about Blind Eye (got to get used to giving Book Number The Fifth it's proper name, or it'll get al sulky), but I've been obsessing like an obsessive thing over it. For the whole sodding year. Obsessing to the point where I can't concentrate on anything else. I should probably get out more. Of course, I made a bunch of resolutions for 2008 and how many of them have I managed to stick to? None. Not a single bloody one. The only thing I came close to was the not saying 'yes' to everyone. And even then most of the time I was just putting them off till later in the year. *sigh*

I think I've probably got a week, two at the most before the dreaded Book Number The Fifth comes home to roost, and then all bets will be off as I go on a red-pen rampage. Die words! Die!

Just have to see how much reading I can get done by then...