When I was in junior high I skipped a lot of school, and one of the shows that was still going around on basic cable was the dreadful Mission Impossible. I never saw this particular episode until a friend mentioned it over dinner last night. Barry Williams (Greg Brady!) in drag with Leonard Nimoy, with both of them doing unforgiveable latin accents.

I've gradually worked out this BC publishing thing (I think). Although I've got another story here, someone else was kind enough to navigate the process for me last time, for which I am now much more grateful than I ever was before.

Anyway, I tried publishing the first chapter of my new novel A Turn of the Cards, but it turns out my chapters seem to be too long for the site (I get repeated 503s), so I'm going to post each section of the chapter instead. I aim to post a section every 2-3 days or so. We'll see how that goes.

I'm about 85,000 words into a new novel, which I think will top out around 100-120,000 words. I gave my editor, Geoff, the pick of three 30-40,000 word stories he thought I should expand upon about seven years ago, and he chose one entitled "A Turn of the Cards" as being the most promising.

I've been a little depressed these last few weeks, and usually when I'm depressed I avoid people in real life and I spend more time online. This isn't exactly the greatest cure for depression.

This usually lives at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site, at: http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for..., but it's also used by a friend of mine who teaches a MFA in writing. I'm not much of a one for science fiction, but these are pretty good rules for writing anything. Don't feel bad if you've broken several - as far as I can tell Martin Amis has broken at least two of the rules here, and I know I'm a sinner in at least as many ways - I'm definitely guilty of "squid in the mouth" and "pushbutton words".