Following a nice article in the Athens News (which Maria kept the page for me), I read up on the Guardian’s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction (part 1 and part 2). Sarah Waters’ advice to write at least 1000 words a day is a good one, and while it isn’t a difficult target to achieve, I chose to start low, 500 words.

At least 500 words, every day, including the weekend. if I struggle, just write any old 500 words, even if it is for a later chapter (sometimes endings to events are easier to write than the beginning or middle of one!). If I’m inspired, there’s no rule to say that I have to stop at 500, so I can even go on to 1000 or more if I want.

500 words, seven days a week, means 3500 in one week, 14000 in a month (assuming 4 weeks), 45500 in three months, and finally 182000 in a year, more than enough for a first book, no?

Of course, i won’t stop writing my fanfiction, and that can be done on the weekend. Case in point, Ranma and the Doctor, chapter 17, and my Haruhi fic The Lost Child updated to chapter 4.

Anastasia’s wedding was nice, a tad stressful, but the landscape chose to let out some beautiful sights for us:

The motif for the wedding, white and blue roses.   

My writings have appeared on many sites, most are old, due to obsolescence, others due to not updating properly, and simply mentions by fans of them.

Mediaminer (old site which is fairly boring to use)

WhoFic.com (not uploaded my story yet since it needs to be converted)

Naru’s Diary (site made by a famous fanfic writer, who liked my story enough to put on this old site)

Fan History Wiki (created automatically for all authors on fanfiction.net)

I’m even mentioned on TVTropes.org for Haruhi and Ranma fanfiction.

Gaia Online seems to like my 28 Days Later/Love Hina crossover too.

There are many sites out there which like my writing, which I won’t bother listing here, but just by googling the names of my stories, they can easily be found.

Taking some well deserved leave in the form of three long weekends, so April is going to fly by without my noticing it.

Also the new episode of Doctor Who was actually really good, I was wrong about my first impressions of the 11th Doctor, but he is a quirky character, and, dare I say it, more like the Doctor should be than Tennant.

The score by Murray Gold was once more, emotional, a great deal more than the previous series more epic tone to it. I’m looking forward to hearing the new tracks for the next few episodes, and for the soundtrack to be released.

No reviews though, which is a little sad, but it doesn’t affect me so much, since I like the characters.

Vermilion Concerto No 1 – Nerima By Moonlight

Aside from that, last weekend Maria and I went to see The Ghost Writer (I decided to link to IMDB for films from now on, instead of Wikipedia). Although it seems to have had fairly good reviews from people, I didn’t particularly like it, too convoluted at times.

Though we knew there was a mystery in the story, and the ghost was trying to uncover it, we never really knew what it was! I know this is what the whole point of a mystery is, but surely, we must need to know whether or not the mystery was simply that important to find out? To say I was disappointed when I left the cinema would be accurate.

Other news, since I’ve gotten into the habit of writing once a week at Starbucks, around 6 hours is good enough, I’m back into my writing, and brought out another chapter of a sequel to one of my loved stories (by fans no less). After a year of waiting, chapter 2 of ‘In My Arms, In My Heart’ is out.

I’m working on my Ranma/28 Days Later crossover now, trying to get this horror story out the door before I lose the impulse.

Now it stands at a mere 97,178 words in total, and I feel I have at least 10 more chapters to go before I finish this story, before I move on to it’s slightly more epic sequel.

That’s what 6 hours in Starbucks will do to you… That, and a large cold chocolate drink, a chicken wrap and a bottle of water.

Currently on chapter 5 of the book I plan on publishing, slow going writing your own characters, you can’t tell if they’re in character yet, because they by definition have no character because they are new.

What a Catch 22… Speaking of which I should really read that book one day…

Take your time and read my fanfic, think Love Hina vs Fast Zombie horde, and you get the picture.

When my computer was stolen in 2005, I lost most of the original copies, these are the few stories I’ve managed to find from before then, or these were written afterwards.

Yesterday we had a blackout for about 5 minutes, thought it was around midday. Computer shut off badly, but it was fun upon turning back on again. Perhaps a UPS would be handy, seeing as how things like this do happen regularly.

Graduated from my beginners Greek class, and got 99% correct (just around five mistakes throughout the whole paper). As expected, there were more errors in the written section, but surprisingly I did manage to put out some coherent sentences there. Maria was impressed by my knowledge of the language, and even showed it to her mum and sister.

We all went out as a group to Τα τρια Χουρούνια, or, The Three Pigs. Had a hot choc there and we chatted for a long time, Voula was interested in my writing seeing as I wrote about it in every ‘personal dialog’ that we wrote. She was impressed, as were the others who were listening (the music was very loud, leading to deaf ears at some point). We gave her some chocolates before she left, and she was quite moved. I hope we get her as our teacher again for the Intermediate class, as she was very good and an inspiration to us all.

Talking of writing, Maria and I were discussing my stories, and then asked me if I created any original characters… Well, that was the end of good sleep, we talked for 4 hours about the teenage/young adult book I had in my mind. I discussed each individual character in detail and their description, personality, and abilities. Suffice to say, she loved the whole idea, and insisted I go through with writing it. I’ve already written bios for the four main characters, and one day I would like to write a full book of this.

As you may know, some of my parcels went on a little trip inside the Greek postal service over Xmas, resulting in late gifts.

Well, another one, Jamie’s Italy, really took the biscuit. It never arrived. Complained and the reissued one never arrive. Final complaint and we agreed to send it to London, whereby my parents would send it off to me in a jiffy bag (and thus arrive at my door as opposed to getting lost, stuck in the local post office, or what we thought of as stolen from our front door).

Imagine my surprise when Maria receives a small note saying two have arrived in her name. We go check, and yes, two Jamie’s Italy book… And a third is on the way…

We still cannot imagine what the hell went on. I can only surmise that they took the lesser known postal route from Jersey to Greece, via the USA and Russia. There’s no other human explanation, other than the Greeks fouling it up somehow, but even I doubt it could have gone so spectacularly bad.

Purchased some stuff from IKEA, a new white bookshelf, one of the main items I’ve been wanting, two rugs, a red and black one, Maria’s lovely glass desk (which we needed to return the surface as they ‘misinformed’ us, thankfully, the service was excellent and we got our money back two days later) and 2/3’s of my sofa.

2/3’s you say? Well, they never seem to have the mattress in, it’s really popular. So I bought the red cover, and the metallic base. It becomes a bed, and as it’s double size, you can imagine it’s going to be pretty handy when people come over to sleep. Can’t wait until the whole thing is complete, my room will be finally finished!

Uploaded Chapter 8 of my Ranma fic, 21 reviews in two days, a good return I’d say. Going to focus on my other main project for a bit (FLCL/Evangelion) as the last update was in 2004!