Personal Blogs

Following the rejection of the first three chapters of 'The Companion' by two agents, I am thinking of ways to promote volume 1 of 'The Companion'. One of these will be to write volume 2, which I have already started thinking about.

Interest in 'The Companion' seems to be re-awakening, probably because of the intake of people who had not heard of it into the A363 class. I have had a couple of requests recently for the first of the PDF files, and I intend to solicit some more. I expect that most people who read the first PDF will want the second one and hence the final instalment.

When I was converting it into PDFs, I decided that I would send the final instalment free of charge to anybody who had provided reasonable feedback on the earlier parts. I have now decided to modify that plan.

I am going to institute Final Instalment Day. For one day only, anybody who asks by email will be able to receive, free of charge, the final instalment of 'The Companion'. The only condition is that I must be satisfied that the individual concerned has read the rest of the story.

The date I have set for Final Instalment Day is 18 March 2012: the day after the announcement of the 'Fish' short fiction competition, which I have entered.

I am now on Wordpress.

http://iamhyperlexic.wordpress.com/

The first edit of 'The Companion' is now available as two PDF files.  They are available free of charge by sending me an email.  They contain the whole of the current version of the story except the last chapter.

The last chapter is also available, free of charge, but only to selected readers. 

I am in the final phase of completing the first draft of 'The Companion'. 

I am going to post some more parts, but not the ending.  The ending will not become public unless I succeed in  getting it published. 

When I have reached the last part to be posted here, I will entitle it accordingly. 

The next part will be posted shortly.

Today I finished a draft of a second poem for TMA 03 which means that I only have another 7 lines (minimum) left to write to complete it.

As soon as I have finished, I expect normal service to 'The Companion' to be resumed until the first novel is finished. 

I hope everybody can hang on until then. 

I apologise for the lateness of the next part of 'The Companion'.  I wrote 1500 words yesterday, but I can't post them, because they don't reach the required standard.

Fortunately, I have had some very good ideas today, both for the immediate future of the story, and for its longer-term development.  I am busily re-writing Part 31. 

Please feel free to post any comments or complaints.

Part 25 of 'The Companion' will be posted on Christmas Eve.  I am writing it now and have reached 500 words.  I will try to make it longer than usual but it is too early to make promises. 

It will be largely concerned with pantomime being staged on board The Irish Rover, but it won't contain a blow-by-blow description of the production itself, because that would be rather boring.

Those who are hoping or expecting that Kelvin Stark is about to be taken down a peg or two should be pleased with it. 

While Cuthbert is psyching himself up to make a proper start on his PhD thesis, he has been seeking to re-use his academic skills by finding employment outside SPUE. 

Radio and audio media companies have offered him two engagements. 

The first is to interview an author who has specialised in using objects, especially articles of clothing, in order to develop and visualise character.

The second is to interview a non-fiction author, with a view to exploring the overlap between fiction and exciting non-fiction.  The non-fiction author in question is cookery writer, Nigella Lawson. 

Which of these Cuthbert Dry-Monotone (the eminent Reader) undertakes first (or whether he gets out of bed at all) will depend on comments posted on this blog.