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12 Books in 12 Months

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February 2011

Book Two Excerpt

Katie nodded officiously and scurried away to carry out her orders.  The manager, whose name was Bob Taylor, ran his fingers anxiously through his receding hair and with a deep breath, marched across the foyer to talk to seat G15 in person.

“Mrs Shiers-” was all he got out before her tirade shot forth.

“What was that, Mr Taylor,” she shrilled in tones that had spent years being cultivated into a semblance of Jean Brodie, “some keynd of joke?”

“I can assure you it was not,” Bob began, but she ignored him.

“If that is the case, I can assure you it was not in the least bit entertaining.”

“No, well-”

“This theatre has been going downhill for several months now,” she continued.  “The shows you get in are poorly advertised and of poor quality-”

“Mrs Shiers I-”

“- don’t interrupt me Mr Taylor, that’s extremely rude!”  She glared at him over the top of her varifocals with undisguised menace.  “As I was saying, the shows are terrible, a fact of which you must be aware given that nobody comes to see them – ”

“I wouldn’t say nobody, exactly – ”

“There were twelve people in the audience this evening, Mr Taylor,” she informed him crisply, “I know because I counted.  And two of them left during the interval.”

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An Update

Apologies for my recent silence.

The reason behind it is mainly that I haven’t written as much of book two as I ‘should’ have – 9000 words less, to be precise – and I was a bit embarrassed to come forward and admit it.  I’ve written loads of other things, mind you – for example, I am to be relied upon if you want to read lengthy dissections of nonsensical song lyrics.  And I’ve pitched a couple of articles that have elicited vague promises of monetary gain, which is hugely exciting for me because I haven’t been paid for my work since I was 19 and wrote some arts reviews for The Perthshire Advertiser.

Other than that, I am now back in Edinburgh after the chicken sitting adventure.  Last night a group of friends rallied round to show their support of this whole nonsensical idea by buying me beer, which was very sweet of them.  Thus my enthusiasm is renewed, and cannot even be dampened by the shock revelation that there are only 28 days in February and it’s already the 6th.  Perhaps fortuitously, my temp agency hasn’t as yet offered me any work for this week, so maybe I’ll get caught up over the next day or two.  Stranger things have happened…

And now, an unedited excerpt of book two.

 

“I am never working with you amateurs again,” hissed Morag McWhirter, whose turn it was to throw a wobbly as the curtain went up for the final time.

“You always say that,” Elspeth pointed out, hastily pasting a fixed grin to her face as the audience came into view.

The company bowed once more to the lukewarm applause of about thirteen people.

“God.  This is depressing,” Hamish McWhirter said under his breath, giving the old lady who always sat in seat G15 a cheeky wink of recognition.

Then a body fell from the fly floor onto the stage in front of them with a blunt thud.

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First Draft of Caligula’s Blog Complete!

In university, I had a habit of working on essays right up until the deadline, then racing along to the history department to hand in essays right as they were being removed from the box.  It would appear that, certainly when I am unemployed, I have retained this tendency, for not twenty minutes ago, right before midnight on January 31st 2011, I bashed out the last few posts of Caligula’s Blog.  I’ve written 5905 words today, and I wouldn’t advise doing that much in one sitting because now my back really hurts!

The draft is very raw, and falls short of my 50k word target, weighing in at only 33, 173 words.  However, given that I knew nothing whatsoever about the man on the 1st of the month, and most diary style books are shorter than 50k, I regard this as being fundamentally OK.  We’ll see how that changes when I come to look over it again – April at the very earliest!

41 AD
January 24th

I dreamed last night I was standing in heaven, near the throne of Jupiter.  It was very beautiful and humbling.  I was about to say something, when Jupiter gave me a push with the big toe of his right foot, and I fell right on my face.  When I woke up it turned out I had fallen out of bed, so that’s probably why that happened in the dream.

Doesn’t feel like a great start to the day, really.  Still, things can only get better now that I’m awake!  Perhaps I’ll sacrifice a couple of white bulls to the big man this afternoon though, just to be on the safe side.

Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus – or Caligula to you and me – was assassinated later that day by his own men.  His wife, Milonia Caesonia, and infant daughter Julia Drusilla were killed by members of the Praetorian Guard a few hours later.  He was succeeded by Derek Jacobi.

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