I’m in the process of developing three new fictional characters for Fabian . I use a combination of methods when creating new people. There’s no right and wrong way to do these things. It’s more a case of experimenting to discover what works for you. For example, with one of these new characters I used a rather direct method. He appears very briefly in Rowan , so I already had his first name and the fact that he’s a musician. I wanted physical contrast with my other main male characters, so choices about looks were easily arrived at. I also wanted a personality which would provide a strong contrast to my other main characters, and so he was given a big, bombastic name to match his loud, exuberant traits and the plot role he plays. For a middle name, I thought of those marvellous Victorian names, heavy with pomp. The surname had been floating around in my mind for a while, and I liked the feel of it and it sounded right. Then I encountered a touch of serendipity. As his is a very

The contents are: Peter Hurd: The Literary Chicken; Carbon Footprints; A Matter of Principle. Tim Hulme: The Sugar Loaf; The Mckechnie Plunger; One More Day. Carol Falaki: Equal Footing; I Am; Eran . Peter Caton: The 437; Grandads; Zi and The Boy. Adele Cosgrove-Bray: Food; Party Time; Shell Boy . Andy Siddle: Old Poet; The Old Wirral Line; The Present. Eileen Brown: Waiting; Autumn . Catherine Evans-Hewitt: Celebrity . Clive McLaren: Crippen's Couplet; Water Refelctions; Handsome Is As Handsome Does. The anthology costs £3 and is available  from Riverside Writers' events; Lingham's Bookshop in West Kirby, Wirral; Hoylake Library; West Kirby Library. By the way, Shell Boy features Rowan, albeit in an anonymous capacity.

Ashton Park’s rose garden has a path lined with cherry trees, and they’re all in full blossom right now. A slow stream of ice-pink confetti drifts down on all who stroll beneath. On the park pond it’s serious nest-building time. A pair of coots are trying their best to attach a pile of sticks to the base of the fountain. That a 30’ jet of water streaks past their little heads is no deterrent. Maybe this is the same pair of coots who successfully built a nest there last year. The dogs and I virtually had the beach to ourselves earlier today. Right now, they’re flaked out - one stretched out along the back of one couch, and other curled up on a tuffet facing the sunshine streaming in through the French doors. Tonight is Riverside Writers’ AGM. Is our anthology ready to go to the printers tomorrow? Will the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer be re-elected (again)? And will we break our own record for the fastest AGM, which currently stands at ten minutes flat? Let’s be honest here - ha

Hubby swears he never snores, and so I filmed him. He challenged me to upload it to YouTube, and here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3RJ9RA2fk8 Soon after uploading the video, I was contacted by a Brazilian death metal band, Máquina Voadora , who asked if they could use a few clips as part of their forthcoming video to accompany their new acoustic song about sleeping. Richard loved the idea! View Máquina Voadora's video here:- http://vimeo.com/8676341 I have been busy creating more new Hubpages . I've rather taken to that site... Recent additions include interviews with a Druid, a green witch, and artist Pixie Wildflower , plus articles on writing, kombucha, cryonics, reincarnation, the minor arcana and Welsh rarebit - among other topics. Browse my Hubpages: http://hubpages.com/profile/AdeleCosgroveBray   Parallel Dimensions , the Fantasy and Science-Fiction event which I organised last June for Hadley Rille Books ' authors, has been invited to retur

This photo was taken during a recent walk along the sand dunes, at Red Rocks in Hoylake. The solitary figure sitting on the sandstone outcrop, gazing towards Middle Eye and Hilbre Island, reminded me strongly of Rowan. This exactly captures the pose which Rowan would fall into, and in one of his favourite locations too. Editing Rowan is coming along well. I’ve almost reached the end of the MS, and my next task will be to put all my alterations onto disc and reprint the hardcopy so I can clearly see what I’m looking at. I’ve gone over the existing paper MS five or six times already. If you’d like to see some of the places where my stories are set, then I’ll invite you to visit http://hubpages.com/profile/AdeleCosgroveBray

The word count for Bethany Rose now stands at 11,000 words. Only 89,000 to go. No! Don't think of that!! Today's tally was 2,000. It was 3pm before I realised I'd forgotten to have lunch. Did I mention that I'd begun writing the new version of BR ? Anyway, it began to appear on my puuter screen on January 16th. I hadn't intended to spend that evening working but TV was as boring as it usually is, and while busy washing dinner dishes the start of the novel came to me. My fingers started itching, and so it began. Do your fingers itch, literally burn and itch, when you've got a tasty idea demanding to be written or painted or photographed? I find myself pulling odd facial expressions as the images of the idea flows through my mind. It's like watching a cinema screen in 3D inside my head. Who needs a remote control zapper when with a flick of Will you can rewind, rewrite, bring details up closer or move away as the story bursts into life internally? Then

...Another year, that is. And yikes what a chilly start! I'm wearing four layers and I'm still cold. Stew for tonight's dinner--which I'm not looking forward to as I loathe stew, but there was little else I could do with the mountain goat which was supposed to have been lamb. Lamb?!! A howling chainsaw would have struggled to make an indent on that thing. Bleeeurch!! Here's hoping my culinary efforts can render it tolerable. Tamsin is finished; all edits done. Unless a publisher wants any changes to be made, it will now remain as it is for all time. The final full-stop is in place. And the word-count now stands at 85,000 words, which is only 1,000 less than on the previous draft. Now I'll begin editing Rowan , which I'm looking forward to doing, actually. Plus there are two short stories on the back-boiler, and I need to start thinking about what to do with Bethany Rose , as last year I wrote 50,000 words of that before admitting that I hated the

Dark of the Night: An anthology of shadows Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,491,928 in Books Publication Date: October 24, 2006 That's interesting... I was updating my bio details on my Amazon Connect page just now, when I spotted this. Jason, who features in my contribution for Dark of the Night ... also features in Rowan . With The Club you get to learn how Jason first came into David's strange, vicious life - which later has desperate consequences for Rowan. So the short story links to the novel, which is something I enjoy playing around with. Monday's Riverside Writers meeting was well attended, though partly because we were joined by another writing group who are linked to John Moores University. First, Antonia Prescott talked about her ten years experience as a children's book editor, and about the things which agents/publishers look for (originality, flair, marketable product) plus common mistakes which writers make when approaching these (format, addressing

1,626 words this morning - and chapter one of the total re-write of Bethany Rose is now underway. The draft I'm working from was originally titled Cry for Innocence but this doesn’t fit in with the theme of my two other novel titles so I simply changed its name to that of the main character, as with the others. The old draft is only 50,000 words long, so I need to double that. I have a solid plot in mind, to amend this. Also, there are many character and plot details which need to be changed so that everything blends with the mythos I’ve developed since penning the first draft of Cry…. For those who are now totally confused, I’ll explain that I wrote Cry… first, followed by Tamsin then Rowan . They can all be read in any order, so this won’t matter in the slightest. However, I’m not happy with Cry… at all; and so it’s about to be totally re-written with a whole extra plotline in the second half, and big modifications in the first. In a way, it might be easier just to start

May I relate the tale of the tail – Saffron’s tail, actually, which I managed to grab hold of just in time to prevent the little darling snaked her way off up the newly-opened chimney. The cat was not pleased. But a grumpy cat is easier to contend with than a huge bill from the Fire Brigade for rescuing the daft moggy. Yes, we now have a new fire, hearth and surround. We also have an unexpected heatwave, so relishing the former will have to wait until the latter has subsided. Maybe autumn sometime. Ah well, I always was one for forward planning. Over the weekend we watched Sommersby , which we both enjoyed. So was he her hubby or wasn’t he? Richard says he was; I’m not so sure. The Gere hubby’s feet were two sizes smaller than the original hubby. Women notice such things, despite rumours to the contrary. One thing I was sure of was that the heroine’s pregnancy must surely have been the fastest in all human history. The tobacco crop hadn’t grown an inch taller from when the pregna

On Friday 4th, I attended a supporters' event at the new Echo Arena in Liverpool. Due to my role as an ambassador for the city throughout its status as the European Capital of Culture 2008 , I had been invited, along with other ambassadors and volunteers, for a preview of the building. Several local bands, including Major Major, Forsaken and The Farm, performed on stage, with local radio DJ Pete Price introducing both them and braving the mic to sing When you Walk Through a Storm – a rather clichéd choice, in my opinion. This event enabled the arena staff to have a dry run prior to its official opening celebrations. While the plain interior is entirely utilitarian, this new arena can seat 10,000 people, and will herald a new era of entertainment in Liverpool, which apparently boasts the fastest growing economy of any other British city. However, a cardinal crime was committed by the catering, which ran out of milk. No milk for my cup of tea? Bah! Sooooo, what else is new….

Gardening can be hard work, as Ygraine demonstrates in this photo. Emily has discovered how to jump over the fence. As we'd like to keep our dog (and not be sued) we now need a higher fence. Ygraine has never once escaped. Emily has earned the nickname Houdini, and is currently under house arrest until the fence can be installed. It'll be delivered on Friday. But before it can be errected, the thorny hedge which I've been coaxing to slowly grow since we moved in now needs hacking back again. Now, when I say thorny I mean thorny. Think of 3" needle-thin spines every finger-space along every branch. As a deterent to two-legged pests it's done an excellent job. A certain four-legged scamp, however, just ducks underneath it then scrambles over the old low wire-mesh fence. So we spent part of the weekend pruning back tree branches and branches from a long and towering (not-thorny) hedge. This afternoon I began the task of pruning back the thorny hedge. I've do

I finished chapter 3 of Rowan today. I'm trying out a new-to-me method of writing. Actually it's a pretty standard process which is used by many. My working week runs from Tuesday-Saturday, and I'm aiming to write a minimum of 1,000 words of Rowan on each of those days. Any extra is a bonus. I'm not going to give myself earache if I can't keep to this 100%, but certainly I intend to try. Also, I'll be writing this first draft without labouring over any revision. That will be tackled in the second and subsequent drafts. I began Rowan on Monday while Richard was in bed sleeping off the awful migraine which kept him awake and in pain for much of Sunday night. He spent most of Monday asleep and took Tuesday off work as he still looked pale and felt lethargic. The dogs took him for a walk on Tuesday afteroon, and clearly he survived that.

Remember that Warholian line about everyone having fifteen minutes of fame? Well, in this age of supposed equality, this seems to have been extended to spiders - the one living in our bird house, to be exact. Yup, dear ol' Incey Wincey made page two of the Wirral Globe this week. On the TV news, there was a brief piece which announced that British fruit growers have lost up to two-thirds of their crops due to the wet weather. Apparently this has been the wettest June since records began. (This in itself doesn’t mean much, as the records only go back around 150 years which, in the life of this planet, is like a blink to you and me.) The bulk of my raspberry crop has been ruined. The fruits are rotting on the canes, which renders them absolutely useless. But that’s nothing compared to the problems other people are having right now. Read this:- http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23402936-details/'We've+all+been+forgotten'+say+30,000+UK+flood+victims/articl

Note: This post was originally in the form of a clickable poll, published on LiveJournal. Having spent the better part of today trying to settle on a name for a young male character in a short story, I have finally come to a decision. I’ll sign off and do something else! PS. Baby name dictionaries make for very boring reading. Poll #936357 name a character Which of these is your favourite name? Oliver Dominick Elisha Tavion Rowan

What exactly is the point of Christmas cards? Why do people who've not picked up the phone to say hi once during the last twelve months suddenly feel compelled to mail me images of bloated snowmen? One card arrived with "write soon" scribbled in one corner. Hmm, if memory serves me well, this same person had written a similar message on the card she sent last year, and when I did write a letter no reply was forthcoming. I won’t be bothering again. Bah humbug. Certainly we’ve had no real snowmen here this year. In fact, we’ve not even had an overnight frost. It’s so mild that I’ve got roses coming into full bloom in the garden, and around the village are cherry trees in flower. This is not normal winter weather! Anyway, half of the seasonal nonsense is now over, and the shops are desperately trying to sell us the same junk which we didn’t want before the 25th. We had to brave the insanity of Birkenhead on the 24th, unfortunately, as my digital camera isn’t working pr