Made reasonable progress in the week. Up to about Chapter 29 now and I’m not at the halfway stage yet. Again the work is mainly editing down and chucking out. There’s no point doing any major rewriting unless it’s needed and untill I know what I’m left with. There’s easily enough material to spread it out over a couple of books but, well, it’s not really necessary to turn this thing into a long drawn out literary knifing.

I suppose it’d be an idea to use this blog to display some teasers, extracts in progress so to speak. Even if only to prove that I really am writing something and that it isn’t just a blog where I’m pretending to write a novel (and that premise wouldn’t be a good idea by the way. Getting a bit bored with post-modern sideways-looking pap). Here’s an extract.

BIG SHARP LAUGHTER

Sleep that night was impossible for Jan. He kept expecting, hoping even, for the for dark haired figure to turn around and be a smiling Ann, but it was Peter every time; a laughing and mocking Peter who had taken his wig off and thrown it at the laughing Horace, or grotesque laughter that morphed into big sharp fangs, gaping guffaws all around the bar, big sharp teeth in every mouth, behind the lipstick, out on the street, in cars and trams, in the beer, in the sky, on television, and Jan couldn’t fight them or escape, not even when he ran home and switched on the computer to try and work, as the ugly laughing mouth, which had now taken on the form of an ever evolving shape, taunted him from his computer screen and Pacman-like, munched up all the words in his finished play, taking it back to the blank page. Jan jerked awake but his relief was only short lived and broken by the dark shadow standing at the edge of his bed as if it had been there since he was in the bosom of his babysitter.