Anyway, last year I did have quite a neat idea for a new novel – a kind of literary sci-fi-ish sort of thing – and I duly started writing it. Unfortunately, what with all the running around (actual and virtual) promoting Mrs Darcy, I got interrupted, with the result that when I came back to it towards the end of last year, I found that I’d lost momentum.

So I did what any normal writer would do and reanimated a completely different project instead. This is a non-fiction thing (no clues yet, sorry) that I started work on several years ago and then dropped because I couldn’t see how to pull it all together. What’s interesting is that, having completed a novel now, I’ve got a much clearer idea of how to structure a narrative and the new version is (to my mind, at least) several thousand orders of magnitude better.

Ironically, having got stuck back into this project, I then found that the other one suddenly unblocked itself, so it looks like I’m going to be working on both simultaneously for the time being. I’m quite cool with this, because I can use each one as a distraction from the other – provided, that is, I don’t come up with a third project to take my eye off the ball, such as a sequel to Mrs Darcy.

Incidentally, if anyone out there has read Mrs Darcy and desperately wants a sequel, this is what you need to do:

1) Make sure you’ve “Liked” Mrs Darcy’s Facebook page.

2) Tell ALL your friends to go out and (a) buy it and (b) “Like” the Facebook page.

3) Give it an utterly brilliant a searingly honest review on Amazon.

And speaking of reviews, I’ve been catching up with my reading lately, and I really must get around to putting up some reviews myself. Wow, there aren’t half some wonderful books out there…

I have absolutely no idea who is behind the Hard Luxe Living blog, although she’s obviously got some significant form as a writer. I don’t think I know anyone who fits her profile, so I’m going to assume she’s a complete stranger – which, as I’ve said before, is the best sort of person to get a good review from.

In other news, Amy McLean and I were both a bit stunned to see that her video (see last post) has been picked up by the “Tim Burton news” twitter account (presumably unofficial but with a very high follower/follow ratio). Will be interesting to see if it spreads any further…

A week or so ago I tweeted that someone had found their way to the Mrs Darcy web site using the search term “darcy versus the aliens film”, which resulted in a brief exchange of ideas between myself and the lovely Amy McLean (remember her review?), in the course of which we both decided that Tim Burton would be a perfect choice of director for such a project – if only because it would mean we’d almost certainly be able to get Helena Bonham-Carter as Charlotte that way, to say nothing of Johnny Depp as Byron.

What follows is entirely unsolicited, with no further input from me. Apart from, as you can probably imagine, a vigorous shaking of the head when she asked me if I minded her doing this. Do please share this video as widely as you can. For Amy’s sake, obviously. Not mine. Definitely not mine.

And that definitely is it for 2011. Have fun tonight and don’t do anything silly, OK?

Also today I found out that my story “How I Became a New Man, and What Good It Did Me” has now been published in translation in the German magazine WortMosaik, alongside Valerie O’Riordan in the Internationale Literatur section. I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on a print copy, just so I can see my work in a language that I don’t speak. The original may be found here, by the way.

In other news, I’m really pleased that Camille Gooderham Campbell, head honcho of Every Day Publishing, has chosen to recommend Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens for the Advent Book Blog. Whilst I’m on the subject of Every Day Publishing, I’d also like to draw your attention to their latest project, Every Day Novels, which starts in the new year with K.C.Ball’s “Lifting up Veronica”. K.C. is a superb writer and I’m really looking forward to reading this.

Finally, I really should have been writing Part 2 of the Mrs Darcy Christmas Special today. But instead it struck me that Wickhampedia really should have an article on Regency Christmas. So I wrote one. Wickhampedia is one of the things I’m most proud of this year and I’m slightly sad it hasn’t attracted more of a fanbase outside the people who know me already. Maybe it’s just a bit too odd. Or possibly just not funny enough. You can never tell.

In other news, my good friend Oscar Windsor-Smith has come up with a Christmas present guide which for some reason includes Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens, alongside such other gems as The Archangel and the White Hart. Do you need any more recommendation than that? (He’s also spot on about Vanessa Gebbie’s The Coward’s Tale, which I’ve only just finished and is absolutely wonderful. Make sure you buy that one as well.)

Finally, this year’s Christmas Special for Mrs Darcy has turned into a bit of an epic. The first of two parts may be found here. To make things even more complicated, it’s actually a sequel to last year’s special. Thinking about it, it’s only a matter of time before the word count in the specials outnumbers the original.

In other news, we’ve had a rash of mentions for the VWC anthology, “The Archangel and the White Hart“. Scott Pack picked out a couple of stories in it for his Me and My Short Stories blog (making a total of four so far!) : Katie Carr’s prizewinning entry from the 2010 Get Writing competition, “Beating the Blues” and Oscar Windsor-Smith’s splendidly peculiar and somewhat filthy “Camera Segreta“. We also got a nice review for the anthology as a whole on Amazon, from someone who isn’t in it as far as we know.

Finally, I was more than a little stunned to read (via the wonderful medium of Twitter) that John Harding (of “Florence and Giles” fame – you have read it, haven’t you? If not why on earth not – it’s utterly brilliant) had lunch with none other than PD James today and gave her a copy of “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens”. The bit that I’m struggling to get my head around is that apparently she was thrilled to bits. Sadly, I’m guessing this means that the challenge to a duel didn’t get any further than her agents, but this may actually be better still.

Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens is filled to the brim with my sort of humour – lots of in-jokes and obscure TV quotes that I needed to share with anyone who’d listen. I’d like to tell you about all the funny bits but would probably end up reading the book to you.

Not a book I’d recommend to Austen purists but for everyone else it’s a ‘must read’.

Couldn’t really ask for more.

I also received an e-mail from an old chum of mine, with the subject “Critique”. Here is the entire body of the e-mail:

Ek – Ek – Ek – Ek!!

Ek

PS Ek – Ek

Spot on, I’d say. (For more information on kk’Ekk, see here.)