Put on your dead shoes and dance...

First of all... keep the entries coming in my first competition! Remember - Headline are going to have those 5 copies of 'Hell's Belles' hot off the infernal presses pretty soon..! I've had some cracking entries so far - so keep them coming! 50 words or less: 'I want to visit Whitby to meet Brenda and Effie because...'

Other stuff to catch up with!

Go and visit Lancaster's Litfest's website: www.litfest.org, which looks great. I'm on, doing my turn on Saturday 24th October at 9.30pm. I just noticed that the week before they've got Steven Hall and Ellis Sharp on together. I remember reading Ellis Sharp a number of years ago - these wonderful, pithy, surreal short stories - and Steven Hall's a smart fella, too.

In the shops right now - apparently early! - is the second volume of Doctor Who: Hornet's Nest - the Dead Shoes. This episode is set back in the 1930s on the sea front at Cromer, featuring a haunted ballerina and a creepy Museum of Curios. There's some extremely spooky stuff set inside a dolls' house, even if I do say so myself. Jim Smith calls it my 'macabre joie de vivre', a description I love. The museum in real life is actually in Whitby - it's well worth a visit. All the items mentioned by the Doctor are actually still there... including a very nastily withered Hand of Glory. The rest of the Cromer details actually come from trips that J. and I made to Cromer while we lived down that way. That storm-lashed pier and its tiny theatre were simply perfect, I always thought, for a Doctor Who story.

Nice thought from an Amazon reader, here: 'I will say that I highly recommend this title and suggest listening in a comfy chair with a box of violet creams and a glass of cream sherry.'

What else? I've also been scouring the proofs of my short fiction collection with the help of the marvellous Jen from Salt books. 'Twelve Stories' is only a month away from publication and I'm very excited about it. I don't know if I've mentioned, but it includes the original story to feature Brenda and Effie (or Bessy and Effie, as they were back then!), first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1998.

Here in Manchester it's been a blowy week with smatterings of rain and dead leaves everywhere. (See pics above of the view from my study window in South Mamchester). I've been embroiled in new classes and trying to write a thousand words each morning before the sun appears. It's also been a time for mulling over and planning new projects... trying to sort out what I'll be writing this time next year...