So close…so tantalisingly close Went shopping for presents, bought presents for me… New babies Have yet to catch up with Ange and Michelle and their little girl (I think) Hannah. I believe I will be free after tonight's planned Finish-a-thon. House Because we don't think many people will bother to look at houses during Olympic weekends, we're just advertising on the net this weekend, but we'll still be open tomorrow. There was a lady just back from England who wants to come and have another look at the place, which is moderately promising (but of course tedious, repetitious disappointment has by now taught us not to get our hopes up). We're almost at the point now where if we don't sell, we're going to start going backwards. Sigh.
"The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici" is a fascinating read, and the chapter on the April plot is especially good. So I have no doubt an entire book on the subject would be very fine indeed, although lacking the surprise factor that the Rise and Fall had. It was covering years per chapter, and then suddenly we were getting very detailed description of a particular day, so there was obviously something significant about to happen. Heightened the tension no end!
By Andrew Shellshear, at
10:59 PM
Yeah, I'm going to look for a copy of 'Rise and Fall', I think, just to round out the context. Do you have one?
Yes I do.
By Andrew Shellshear, at
12:31 AM
Then I shall contrive to borrow it from you at some stage...
Friday, August 20, 2004
The end of The Attempted Novel draws painfully near. It’s been a week full of busy evenings and I haven’t had as much time as I would like to get it finished, but it’s so close I can taste it. The damn thing has defied me again, insisting that it needs “just one more little chapter” to wrap things up after the implausibly action-oriented Chapter 14, so I will be tacking on an epilogue. There’s no good reason for it – logically, the story doesn’t hang together well enough to justify a tidy finish – but I don’t want to risk not having a sense of closure when I type ‘The End’ (which I won’t do anyway, because that’s extremely lame).
So I’ve been shopping around for Ian’s birthday present. His first preference is for something in the “big, colourful fantasy artist’s portfolio” genre. Searched a couple of bookshops yesterday, without success. At lunchtime I checked out a used books store next door to my preferred coffee dealer, and again, no luck for Ginge. But a copy of April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici by Lauro Martines caught my eye, so I bought that for my next reading project. It’s about a pivotal assassination attempt on the head of the Medicis by one of their merchant prince rivals (backed by the Pope and various powerful nobles) – one of those explosions of gory mayhem that result from an unfortunate collision of powerful competing interests. I fear it may also be a much better example of the effect I was going for (at times) in the writing of T.A.N. We’ll see.
The Renaissance is one of those periods that always catch my eye as being one I should be more interested in learning about, if I weren’t so lazy. So, I believe I shall celebrate the end of The Attempted Novel with a few rounds of anti-laziness-inspired Library Lucky Dip. After I finish this, and Glen Cook’s The Black Company and China Mieville’sThe Scar and Stephenson’s The Confusion, that is.
After netball last night (we’re getting better - we may even be competitive by the end of the season), Fi and I visited Erika and Mal to coo over Piper. I am happy to report that she is small, dark-haired and a bit wrinkly, and appears to have the correct number of digits. Oh, and she has a decent set of lungs, for which I’m sure her parents are grateful most of the time, except possibly at two in the morning. Erika can’t do anything much for the next six weeks due to the caesarean, so we may have to visit again with stacks of Buffy DVDs and perhaps some brie and chardonnay.
4 smartarse remarks
Post a Comment
4 Comments:
