More Remote Control stuff

          This blog isn't read by hardly anyone these days, which is alright, but it is going to prove useful for keeping tabs on how agent/publisher hunting is going. As I| recall, that was the reason I started blogging about ten years ago. Some things don't change as much as you'd like!

           Ten days ago I sent an email to Contraband. Well, I sent an email to someone!! Anyway, no one got back to me, so I sent another email just now. I think the person might be called Saraband.

           I haven't done anything about agents/publishers for the last ten days because my life in far too chaotic at the moment. I don't seem to be able to find the time to do much writing either. I'm really, really primed to start work on this play as well. Next week! New rules for next week!

Contraband and Remote Control

          I haven't heard anything from William Case Associates about the Ecuador book yet. Must be a couple of months since I sent it to them. I do not expect a good result from this connection, so I've decided now that the summer if over to start working again.

          I read something at the weekend about a Scottish crime imprint called Contraband. I've just contacted them about Remote Control. Anyway, I think I've contacted them! I sent the email to Books from Scotland. At least, I've started trying to hustle again.


         I have worked out how to finish Jock Tamson's Half Hearted Transformation. It'll be back to two acts with an wee intermission.

         So everything seems to be okay. I'm thinking of putting the Ecuador book straight onto Kindle when the New York folk knock it back. But we'll see.

More Jock Tamson stuff

          I'm just back from reading the stage version of Jock Tamson's, or at least  what will be the first half when I'm finished it. That's about the first forty odd pages. So I'm going to write a play in two parts which was my original intention, I think. Anyway, after reading the shortened radio version and the stage version, I think I| can get a play out of this after another two drafts. That's one draft to restore the stage version in two halves and add the stuff developed in the radio version, and then a final draft to polish it (off!).

          With the Brexit vote and the added problems with Scottish sovereignty, this play is bang on in terms of dramatising something that is in the air anyway, but I'll write it just because I want to. I think it'll have as much chance of being produced as I have of becoming Prime Minister. But it is something I really have to finish considering the time I've spent on it over the years.  I started working on this play about twenty years ago.

           The meditations continue to develop wonderfully despite my chaotic social life. And I'll need to get a better routine in my life or I won't be able to write anything!! I need to instigate a regular writing time and stick to it. This seems oddly difficult right now!!

       

Jock Tamson's Half Hearted Transformation.

          I've just finished reading the version of Jock Tamson's I sent into the radio folk a couple of years ago.I did that re-write near the start of my bereavement just to get on with something. Anyway, the trouble with the version I left unfinished about twenty years ago was that there was no second act. That means there was no proper development of the themes in the middle of the play. You have to have set up something in the middle so that the denouement works. Well, the play doesn't resolve itself properly even yet, but I think there's enough there to do another stage version. Since it was set in one locale, it would never have worked really on the radio. I did know that before I sent it into the beeb, of course, but at the time it made me feel as if I was in some kind of recovery.

         So I've got fifty pages of something that was originally about seventy pages long. So I chopped it down to an hour, but I can look at the original and it shouldn't take too long to bulk it up.

          I don't think I'm in one place at the moment long enough to commit three or four hours a day to writing a novel, but I can work on a play for an hour here and there, and that should do it, especially since the play is three quarters written already.

         After that, I may take a look at the crime book I abandoned when I retired about five years ago.

         I still haven't heard anything from William Clark Associates. I did read a comment from someone who said they took three months to get back to them. I wish I hadn't sent it to them now. Three months is too long to wait. That's four rejections in a year!! An author I know sent his first novel to over three hundred folk before he got it published. When  the rejection from these folk in New York arrives, after that the book will be going out four at a time!!

        Anyway, I'm going to New York in November for three nights. Love New York.