Impressions on week one...

Afternoon all,

Well, as I'm coming to the end of my first week of freelancing, I thought this'd be as good a chance as any to think about some first impressions. It's been a bit odd adjusting to working at home - I've perpetually had some music on just to avoid sitting about in utter silence. But it takes time to get used to anything new, so I'm sure in time it'll be second nature.

The week on the whole has been very 'formative', in that I've been sending lots and lots of emails, booking a host of meetings and just trying to make connections with a range of venues and organisations out there. Lots of promising links at the moment, so hopefully many of those will come to fruition. I'm trying to get myself into some teaching and workshopping, which has been going pretty well, and am also looking to continue on with my proofing and editing work, so those are threads I'm very much working on.

Last night I was at the Gollancz annual party down in London, which was a really good night - a great chance to catch up with a lot of folks including Ben Aaranovitch (who will always be first on any alphabetical list), Sandy Auden, Alex Bell, Mark Chadbourn, Mark De Jager (and his terrifying contact lenses), Amanda Foubister, Graham Joyce (who made the train journey back great fun...), Stephen Jones, Paul Kane, Marie O'Regan, Sarah Pinborough, Rob Shearman, Michael Staton (of Cola Factory), James Swallow (a great writer I worked with at Black Library) and no doubt more that I have criminally forgotten here. It was cool to see so many familiar faces, and indeed meet a few people I've not managed to do so before.

Friday winding-down time sees me planning another lesson for an 8-week course, which is currently four down, four to go. I'm considering shifting things around a bit to take in a session on editing your work, which I tend to think is an under-rated skill on behalf of writers.

I've also managed to finished off the first draft of a story for a historical Lovecraft story, which I was pretty pleased with - all very Victorian :-)

So for now it's back to the grind, until tonight at least. I'll be putting up some more events news up here over the weekend and into next week.

Cheers!

Alex