It's beginning to look a lot like ...

... yes, Christmas. It's only just October, and the clocks haven't even gone back yet, but the twitter verse is awash with Christmas books. There's going to be a lot of fab reading sloshing about out there, people!

And I'm bobbing about squeaking 'And me! And me!' The Christmas novella - actually it's more small book, as it's over 60,000 words, now has a title - What Happens at Christmas. And I've had a glimpse at a few possible covers, so it is getting exciting. Until the edits arrive, of course.

spooky, not gory

But in the meantime it is still only the beginning of October and I'm currently knee deep in the thesis for the PhD. I haven't gone back to any of the uncompleted manuscripts yet, but I am kicking around an idea that is set at Halloween - so it's very seasonal. Doing some research on Halloween and spooky stuff is fun, excellent displacement activity and a change from writing about air raid shelters. And don't get me started on how the university computer system seems to have eaten one of my draft chapters. I'm looking at supernatural rather than paranormal, stuff that may or may not go bump in the night, and the usual mayhem.

Well actually, no. My body count has been going down lately. Only two in the overgrown novella - well, it is Christmas - and so far this one only has three. I must be getting mellow in my old age. The two works in suspended animation are much gorier though, and I will get back to them.

At present I'm thinking spine tingling, rather than blood thirsty. I'm still getting to know the hero and heroine - he's called Lucas and is rather gorgeous and very mysterious. She's on a quest to find out about a possible inheritance - at the moment she's called Darcy, but I'm not sure that's right for her. There's a big house, set in a slightly spooky village - in Wales, of course - and a dog, and a secondary romance and two different sets of very nasty villains and a lot of scarecrows and tarot cards, hence the research.

If it looks like becoming more than a diversion from the air raid shelters, I'll let you know.