Work has proceeded nicely on the new book. (Just to remind everyone, it's book 8 of a new series which will hopefully see print at some point in the future after I'm finished the Mr Crepsley books.) I'm almost at the end now, in fact. As I've noted before, these are short books, about 30,000 words each. To give you an idea of the length, that's about 5,000 words less than Vampire Mountain, which clocked in just over the 35,000 word mark. So each one will be a bit slimmer than that. Because the three Vampire Mountain books were shorter than most of the others in that series, in the UK we released them more quickly, with just a 4 month gap between each book. That's what 'm hoping to do with this series, except a) it might be even less than a 4 month gap, depending on what my publishers think, and b) it will be like that for the entire run -- short books, released swiftly, to create a real sense of pace and urgency. That's the plan anyway -- assuming it all works out the way I hope!! I'm still not sure how much of the story I have left to tell. Hopefully things will become a bit clearer when I move on to plot out the 9th, although that might not be for a while, as I have a couple of other books I want to edit first, and I'm going to be travelling quite a lot over the next few months.

Away from my PC, I've been watching the old TV series Cheers from the very beginning. This was one of my favourite ever shows -- probably my fave sitcom -- when I was younger, and I'm delighted by how well it's stood the test of time. It was a winner from the very beginning -- even the early episodes worked incredibly well. I've been watching 3 episodes a night and am already well through the second season. Feeling very nostalgic and very happy each night when I sit down with my box sets!

Speaking of nostalgia, I read a book called Johnny Goodlooks this week, written by John Tully. I first read this when I was in primary school. I loved it back then. It's one of the few books from my childhood that I had a really strong recollection of. I read it at least a few times, maybe several times, borrowing it from my school library on what in retrospect seems like a regular basis. I hadn't read it since then, so I was nervous returning to it, thinking it might not be as good as I remembered. But I was delighted to find that it was every bit as funny and moving as it was 27 or so years ago. A real little gem of a book, and I could see echoes of it in my own work -- it's definitely one that had an impact on my style, even though it's very different in theme to anything I've written. A lovely rediscovery of a very old friend. Go check it out if you can find a copy -- there might be some available through Amazon or a site like Abebooks if you're interested.