Blog On The Motorway

Firstly, a quick note to say that those of you who have come to the site directly and not just looked at the shiny RSS feed will notice that the site looks awful. Turns out updates are not such a good idea, and I shall be looking at a new theme soon, but in the meantime, please do stay.* Now that’s out of the way, I’d like to talk to you about my office. No, please do stay.

One of the strangest things about our move into the new and shiny new house has been the realisation that getting what you want isn’t always the best of ideas. The main reason for deciding on a three bedroom house (aside from the obvious fact that a three bedroom house is always going to be bigger than a two bedroom) was that finally, I could have an office to do all my writing in. In the old house we had the computer set up in the mockery that was the dining room, but in reality was more of a big space that connected the lounge to the kitchen. As such, it was bloody hard to concentrate sometimes, with Rosie back and forth all the time, and the general cooking time ruled out for actual work. In the new house, however, we now have a spacious office room, with a proper computer desk, a filing cabinet (well, of sorts) and even a nice plush leather sofa bed that enables us to use the room as a guest bedroom. It’s perfect, and should now enable your dear author here to get some serious work done. All except for one thing.

It’s upstairs. Now, what with me not being a Dalek, you wouldn’t imagine that this would be a huge issue for me. But Rosie is a bit young for me to leave her downstairs on her own during the day, so writing when on my own is out. Also, the office is right next to her room, and the hot weather and new room have meant that Rosie rarely settles when we put her to bed as it is, so the notion of sitting and tapping out an opus once she’s gone to bed is also out of the window. And Ellen and I see each other so infrequently that when we do get an evening in together, I rarely want to remove myself from the lounge. So we now have a nice office that never really gets used for any great period of time. Which renders it essentially useless.

All of which is really just excuses. What I need to do is either bite the bullet and admit my mistake and move the computer downstairs, or stop spending my evenings sat in front of the telly, and instead get writing. But as well as the logistical difficulty of using my own computer, I have to admit that the V+ box, which I believe I may have already mentioned once or twice, is making it very hard to get anything done at all. By freeing me of the constraints of having to sit down at a specific time to watch a show, it now allows me to record anything that I think may be of interest to me. Which is a hell of a lot of stuff, it turns out. So now, as unshackled as I am to regular programming, I am having to spend all my time watching telly just to stay on top of it all.

So in other words, I need to stop being a lazy arse. In that spirit, I have once again started working on Blood On The Motorway, which for those of you who don’t know, is the mythical online novel whose existence I have been threatening for a year now. I actually registered this domain a year ago, and the blog was moved to a sub domain, but this whole year it’s been nothing more than a holding page, and I have been putting off its launch for some time. But today I talked to the mighty Jonic about getting the site itself designed and took another pass at the first four episodes/issues so that they will be ready to launch with the site. I’m not going to promise that it will be tomorrow, but it should be soon. I am actually quite excited about it, but I need to get a bit further ahead than I am at the moment before I launch, as if launching Demon Pigeon has taught me anything, it’s that it’s generally a good idea to keep your updates regular. Something we have become a bit shameful at lately, which I shall add to my list of ‘stuff that I need to sort out once I summon the courage to use my computer more.

But enough introspection. Tomorrow I shall return with some thoughts on some of the many TV shows I have been watching, including the terrible end to the otherwise excellent recent series of Desperate Housewives. Yeah, that’s right, I’m in touch with my feminine side, and my feminine side gets pissed off when shows are wrapped up in a ham fisted and illogical way.

*Facelift achieved, shiny new theme installed. I hope that once Blood On The Motorway is done properly that I’ll get the theme for the blog to match it, but this will do in the meantime.