First off, just wanted to say congrats to Josie on the publication of Silence and the launch. It was good to meet Cath and Carys again and to meet Alys for the first time - she's really funny. We now have our first ever book signed by the author. (Not counting the copies of 8 Hrs we signed to each other. Still can't figure out whether this is sad or not.) So, well done Josie and hopefully, one day, we'll be inviting you to our first novel launch. We've already been planning it. We're thinking Halloween decorations, live band and maybe holding it in a haunted place like Llancaiach Fawr or Castell Coch.
Speaking of novels, we've been really busy recently. We've just sent off 3 novels for a first novel competition. There wasn't a limit on entries and we had 7 to go, but when we learned they wanted the full MS with 1 inch margins and double space, we decided to cut it down to 3. We've also sent off about 8 short stories to various competitions and magazines, and have just finished writing another one, so fingers crossed.
We've also just started a novel each and are about 38 chapters in. Cat's is about demons who escape from hell to collect souls for Hades' army against god and Lynx's is about ghost hunters. So we decided that for authenticity, we'd get ourselves a book on haunted places in Cardiff and go exploring. We've already been down a supposed haunted lane off Caerphilly mountain. We deliberately went in the dark after watching an episode of Supernatural. The thing is, we don't actually believe in ghosts or demons or any of the dark stuff we write about, but it still fascinates us, so we know the ghost hunting's a waste of time, but we're still gonna go. Next on the list is a road in Aberbeeg where a policeman was murdered in 1911. We've just finished watching the film 1408, about a sceptical writer who stays in a haunted hotel room. It was recommended by the cool cashier we mentioned in the blog about our cars. He said we had to watch it just before ghost hunting, probably so we'd be completely freaked out. Except the film wasn't scary, but it was funny. He mentioned the film was based on a story by Stephen King, so we were telling him about our ambition to knock King off his throne by the time we're 30, but we're now half way through being 25 and realise this is a bit ambitious. So we figured the only way we're gonna acheive this is to run him down and take him out of the game. (Joke. Although the last time this happened to him, he wrote the brilliant Kingdom Hospital programme whislt recovering. What if our attempt makes him into an invulnerable genius? We need a new plan.) Luckily, he laughed, which is a good sign. Usually you can see people smiling politely whilst they're trying to figure out how they can reach their phones and call for the chuckle wagon without attracting our attention. So King, next time you see a raven, watch it's not driving a car.
C L Raven, preparing to hire a Cadillac
You two put my one-novel-in-six-years to shame! But it was great that you were there. Ghosthunting sounds fun. I can lend you a witches’ cat if you need one. She’s very sensitive to ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. Especially in the middle of the night just when you’ve dropped off to sleep. A handy cat to have around. No trouble, doesn’t eat much.
Posted by: Josie | July 28, 2008 at 12:44 PM