Back on the scene

I've been away in Turkey for a late summer holiday--hot and sunny, since you ask--but sadly that's all now in the past.  Summer holidays are great reading opportunities for me, and the best book I read was RJ Ellory's A Quiet Vendetta.  Ellory has become a crime writer of the finest class: challenging plots, beautiful prose and a superb control of voice.  Highly commended too was Sharon Penman's Here Be Dragons, which after a slow start grew into a powerful and moving political and personal drama.  I'll be reading the others in the series.  On a less exalted level, Robert Harris's Lustrum marked a welcome return to form.  The late Roman republic is well-tilled soil, but Harris finds something new in giving us Cicero's unmasking of the Catiline conspiracy.

I had hoped too to think through some questions on The Fall of the Fireduke, and although I made some progress here it was less than I had hoped.  Instead, my mind found itself perversely exploring a different novel idea entirely, the result being that I now have an almost complete novel outline in my head.  If the idea's good enough, it will keep, so this one's filed away for future use.

I probably won't get much writing done for the next couple of weeks: it's the Chichester Writing Festival this weekend, and I am presenting training courses at work--something I enjoy, but which leaves me too enervated to write.

At the weekend I will also be taking delivery of the long-awaited Kindle.  Next year's summer holiday, I hope, will not be accompanied by a bag filled entirely with books...