Prediction fiction - serial update

I've updated the two prompt-led serials running since the beginning of the year.  To John Pettinger's tale, 'A change of focus', I've added episodes forty-five to fifty-two, to  'Tao escapes from Rhodes'  episodes thirty-one to forty-seven. [Links in the page bar at the top of this page]

As ever, the words supplied dictate direction, plot and the arrival and departure of  a variety of characters, mostly nefarious, and I am, as ever, immensely grateful to Colleen for the hosting of Prediction Fiction.

Next week's are muckrake, gloss and trappings.   Should be fun.

My space, today

Took this at 06.45 this morning, with the intention of posting it on a new group. 

 Not done that yet, but will.   

Tells it like it is - I write and I read - all the books on view are on my to-be-read pile.

Also tells you I don't do tidy.

Approaching the end ... off the map and a change of gear.

Earlier, in July, I sorted out who caused the death and why and how.  Where and what the implications were.
But I have struggled with the writing of it;  have not seen how it can be put down, spelt out, made convincing.
In the end I resorted to writing conversations.  Conversations Baz had, with Susannah and with Luke; with John and Col and Billy.  And with Adam.  Gradually, they are telling me what happened.  Not always straightforwardly: sometimes they lie, deliberately deceive.  Lead me to believe one thing, only to be tripped up when I realise that's not possible.  It's a lot of writing, deleting, and re-writing.  A lot. A ridiculous amount, when I am already guilty (no, I don't think 'guilty' either) of writing without prior thought to a considerable extent.
But, it's my time I'm wasting (and no, I don't believe 'wasting' either) - and anyway, what else would I do?

But it's more than a little disorientating, disconcerting, especially because the man I thought was guilty seems not to be after all.

Losing Faith - and accurately justifying it.

This is one of the eight books I picked up in New York, this from the wonderfully-named 'Mysterious Bookshop'.

A typical example of the title (spine only visible when I selected it) i.e. font plus colour initially attracting my attention, and then the blurb, which began "We are burying her today."

Speed-reading, I omitted the next paragraph and read the first line of the third: "Faith had been dark, disturbing, a Goth" which presumably (because I remember no conscious thought) removed all expectation that it would be at all religious.

Third paragraph of the opening page describes a breakfast which "sizzles and giggles to itself"; egg yolk described as "a malevolent yellow eye watching me from the plate."
And I am hooked.

And continue to be so throughout the book.  My Goodreads review was as follows:  "I did enjoy this. Disconnected. Fractured. Slow to start, hard to see for much of the time where it is heading. Not at all consecutive and the main character un-named and of dubious character, but a thoroughly engaging read. And one I'll read again."

And two novels more by Daniel Blythe are on their way from Amazon (despite the fact that I subsequently discovered he also writes Dr. Who books!!!)
He also kindly sent me the image for the cover since it does not appear on Goodreads

Prospective TV series for wanna-be writers ...

A short clip (twelve minutes) presumably from a pilot, can be seen here 

Delphine, with her very first manuscript, gets an opportunity to show it to Carol Blake, who has taken on just two writers in six years (from at least a dozen submissions a day)

Daily exercise

Oh! the pleasures to be gained from limbering up one's brain with an at-first-sight-impossible cryptic crossword .

New York books ...

My notes for this day say:  Pouring rain so sans umbrellas we head for Times Square - tiny - just a set of junctions;  its impact in the tallness of its surroundings. Colour flashing while we stand in puddles, rain in gutter, shiny drains and gridded, griddled covers of the subway.  Others had umbrellas, all to be avoided and several had shed new-bought skins as nylon litter.

Damply we lunched in a Brewery eating place; the sort of room and ambience we had expected (hoped for) of New York.  Copper vats, lots of wood and wallpaper.   Apricot Summer beer and a pile of chicken crispy-wrapped bits, orange sauce too spicy but the white a well-chosen accompaniment.   And, as always wonderful bread.

In the evening another place of the same ilk.  Serious, large b/w photos above picture rail height.

I'd taken Philip Roth's 'Exit Ghost' to read but from the firs three pages I suspected it would depress me.  Soon after my daughter finished Colum McCann's  Let the Great World Spin 'Let the great world spin' - a tale of a tightrope walker in New York, written in beautiful language.
Equally beautifully written, with nastier characters but an eventually positive sort of ending was Vince Passaro's irresistably-title Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel
Followed this with another  Colum McCann - This Side Of Brightness  picked up, to my surprise in a local charity shop.  This was more harrowing than enjoyable, yet the writing kept me reading. 
And yesterday, at the Tynemouth Station bookfair, a copy of Jesse Kellerman's The Brutal Art

Musty in here isn't it?

Yes, it's been a while, but I have been away and have not yet got photos, notes in any sort of order, plus lots of catch-up to do.
HOWEVER I was directed to this site which amusingly deals with one of my bêtest noirs: book cover clichés