I haven’t written anything much new recently, which I suppose explains the withering of this technological creative shrub before it had even reached full maturity.

Actually, I have written The Road to Mitcham, a sequel to See Me, Feel Me. At just over 30,000 words, it counts as a short novel I think. It’s not on here yet, although it might be soon.

I’ve spent much time editing. If you think ‘editing’ simply means ‘removing words’, you’d be pretty close to the truth. The trick is to remove the right ones, as Eric Morcambe once told me. As a starter I removed the last sentence of each paragraph.

High Barnet is now 8,000 words shorter, which is a loss of over 8% of its bodyweight. To put that into perspective, it’s actually what happened to me in January, simply by not eating pork pies or croissants. However, High Barnet has also been remodelled a bit, which is more than I can say for myself. I made some of the boring bits (yes, people told me bits were boring – can you believe how rude they can be?) less boring, I think. Mostly by taking out words. But not exclusively.

Via Bridlington also went on a bit of a diet and has lost a similar number of words. To those of you thinking they might be exactly the same words as High Barnet, I’m disappointed.

My attendance at the London Writers’ Cafe self-help group has been very useful, actually, in deciding how to edit. They force you to read your work out loud to a room full of people. If that doesn’t concentrate the mind then I don’t know what does. I’m convinced that there have been improvements in both works.

Feel free to read and come to your own conclusions. As a celebration, I’ve added another chapter of each to this site. If anybody would like to read to rest of any of the books, just get in touch.