New job new me

Since April I have had a new job. I'm now a fitness instructor for LA Fitness. To be honest it's a little bit sad seeing my stab vest hanging in my wardrobe collecting dust, and I do feel a bit pent up sometimes. The good side is I'm in the best shape I've ever been and I'm not a zombie in the mornings. It gives me a bit more energy to play with my little girl in the day time and I'm learning about another trade, but I'm not currently doing any fight training and I miss both Gladiator Gym and Systema badly. Moving on is weird, but it was the right time.

Spinetingers.co.uk

I have made contact with Spinetingers.co.uk a publishing and review company. They have agreed to review my manuscript and will enter it into a competition, the winner receives a publishing contract. I'll let you know how it goes, check their website if you like horror it's got some good stuff on.

A break from the macarbe and dreary

Having finished I thought I'd break away from the novel and just post a few pictures of my little girl Lilly-Mae, she's the most amazing thing to ever happen to me and the thought of making her proud motivates me (rather odd when you consider the content of my work)

This is Lilly-Mae on my shoulders on her 1st birthday at Blue Water Aquarium with a sand-tiger shark.

Its finished! an overview of writing my 1st novel

It's finished, from the opening word to the last. In all it took me from around June in 2005 when I first started writing the opening to a funeral as a writing exercise to July 2008 so we can say three years. I didn't complete the first draft until September 2007 and since then I ended up with 13 drafts.

A huge list of thanks and acknowledgements should go out to everyone who helped me but I'll list them as they come Andrew Biswell and Paul Mags and all the group from MMU, everyone who read extracts and gave criticism notably Nick Jobling and especially my amazing fiance Ray.

The novel is currently at the printers and then going straight to the Mr Biswell for my hand in. In the meantime I am going to hunt around all your blog sites and steal as much as possible and make as many links.

Keep logging in, I'll fill you up with everything that's gone on in my life.

Deadline extensions

The new deadline has been granted for submission to lecturers, although an exact date has not been set I am hoping for late July to early August. I also opted out of the competition that was looming deciding to wait until I had a finished product. As were getting right to end now I'm trying to think ahead and look at small publishing companies that might take on submissions or self publishing.

Updated version

I have updated the extract below, it is now the most recent draft and in all likely hood very little will change before publication. Hope you enjoy and thanks again go to Ray with the proof reading.