Swings and Roundabouts.

Okay, washing my Flashpen was a bit silly, but get this, it works! Seriously, a PNY Attache, it did a full wash and dry in a shirt pocket in an Indesit and after drying out, it works. None of the others came back to life, so this is a real good pen, and I suppose its fold-in-on-itself motion is what helped save it. Although at least one of the others might have been thrown into the old washing machine, but I'm pretty sure that was an Indesit too, so the only other factor would be the quality of the shirt, but it was a thin cotton shirt, so you know, it just looks like the pen is a toughie.

So, you know, that saves having to scan all the stuff into a new drive, to move it around, so I'm quite happy. That doesn't balance out the day, which has not been great, but it is a tick in the positives' column.

Anyway, I mentioned the new work for the older book idea well that's what got soaked. I was really upset because the hard stuff, the actual drawing and writing had been going okay, and then I worked through the boring scanning bit and then the Photoshop malarkey, only to lose the darned pen...and well, the rest you know. But that's all water under the bridge now, I have the finished hi and lo res drawing back, without having to do it all again. Yippee.




It is, as I mentioned, now three smaller books but as the story goes forward it also adds to the back-story, so I'm kind of literally beginning in the middle of the thing, rather than at the start. Now I am utterley convinced that author/poet John Burnside taught me this trick about working back in the story as well as forward, when he did a stint at Stirling University, but it's such a good idea I want to pretend I dreamed it up.

Here's an interesting fact (oh, no); the characters are cycling up Ellens Glen Road, and will turn along Lasswade Road, and make their way to Liberton Brae, or Libby Bray, to use the vernacular; which is an area in Liberton that was full of allotments and apple and pear trees. It is the place we used to go 'scrumping', and I write about as Lepertown. Well, I happened to be reading a Tweet from my Twitter chum, author of Going Bovine, Libba Bray, just when I clicked the pen open - Libba Bray, Libby Bray, - spooky, huh?