Sunday 26 January 2014

The Apocalypse Codex

I started reading The Apocalypse Codex, another volume in the Laundry series, by Charlie Stross that I ended up finishing in one day, which should tell you how much I both enjoyed it, and how much I was drawn in to the story.  

Our hero, Bob Howard, is again sucked into the machinations of the Laundry and manages to come out of the shit smelling of roses.  Charlie has a great way with phrasing things, and a light touch that just makes this a fun book to read.  I stand in awe.  Great characters, good dialogue and a compelling story.

We also started watching the second season of The Professionals this week, which despite being dated in many ways from the way it's shot, the pacing and the time it's set in, remains interesting viewing for many reasons.  It's also great for period research into what was around in the late seventies and early eighties; no mobile phones, and no pagers are used until the third season.  

All grist to the mill for me as I work on The Bureau.  Needless to say it fails the Bechdel test big time.

Writing wise this week has been good for me with a total of 8,612 words produced.  So I now have 32,167 words done, and I have sent the revised first eight chapters to my alpha reader that nicely forms Act one.  In my opinion, quality of writing aside, this is from a structural perspective the best first opening act I've written to date.

More important than the number of words I wrote this week, was the amount of editing and revising that Scrivener allowed me to make during the weeks work that has allowed me to transform the mess I called a plot into something that works.  

I love the way that Scrivener allows me to switch stuff around and make the job of writing a novel more straight-forward than just using a word processor and some other means of managing the research and character files. 

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