No-Go-November

Image: Rob Bell

As Scotland shivers awaiting the arrival of snow this weekend, the first time it will have snowed (if it happens) before Christmas in something like 30 years, Edinburgh Council has lived up to its reputation of Idiot Kings by arranging for the installation of a huge snow-making robot.

The 3.5m tall robot is to be pitched in St Andrews Square on Friday 3 December and will spray artificial snow 10m into the air as part of Edinburgh’s Christmas festival programme. How delightfully ridiculous. Gee, just what we need guys!

I’m praying that if it does snow it isn’t bad enough to prevent me getting out of town tomorrow. I’ve got some things planned in Glasgow that I simply cannot miss this weekend, and I’ll move heaven and earth to get there if I have to—especially for Saturday’s gigs: Madness x2 at the Glasgow Academy. Tomorrow night things will kick off at the SECC with a rock explosion of the Biffy Clyro kind. Really looking forward to that one.

Here’s an interesting statistic: 1% of all Americans are millionaires yet so too are 49% of the American Congress. I wonder if there is a similar stat for the population of Great Britain’s millionaires to those that sit in the House of Lords? Something tells me there could be a similar trend.

I simply do not know where November has gone and my writing has suffered terribly for it. The first week was given over to the intensity of a paedophile trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court, during which I found myself picked for jury duty: fascinating, sickening and a great experience I can take to my writing, but the aftermath took me several days to get over. NaNoWriMo was already suffering by this point.

All that out the way and it was time for my annual trip to Spain for a few days with The Diners. Benidorm played host to our merry little gathering where much laughter and drinking ensued, but it meant more lost writing days. Meeting the NaNoWriMo challenge was now further away than ever.

The third week of November saw me pick up the ball somewhat, but the Beaujolais Breakfast at the weekend there put paid to any hope of me catching up enough to be in with a shout of crossing the finishing line. The day job took over this week and I’ve had to work 10 and 11-hour days, which killed off any dreams I had of getting to the end of NaNoWriMo. With this weekend’s Madness gigs looming, it just ain’t gonna happen.

So I’m going to have to restructure things. I had hoped on completing a new draft of a new novel this month to go towards my GDR but that’s out. I’ll have to make room for it elsewhere. Perhaps, just perhaps, if I’d planned November a little better this might not have happened like this but it has and I’ll just need to pull my socks up and get on with it.

November had too much going on and had I pre-planned I would probably have said no to NaNo. Never mind. Worse shit can happen. If I move forward with other things I can actually get ahead; BACARRA BURNING isn’t going to edit itself!

I’ve launched some Christmas deals on all my books, poetry and fiction. Now’s a great time to get buying if you want to save some cash and give someone a gift that’s a little bit different and special.

Get 25% of any order of my poetry books, FRINGE FANTASTIC, POOLSIDE POETRY and SILLY POEMS FOR WEE PEOPLE VOL.2, when ordered from www.colingalbraith.co.uk. Use code CYBERUK305 at checkout. Offer ends midnight on 29th November.

Get 25% off STELLA, my spy novella with a twist, when you order the e-book from the publisher’s website at www.eternalperss.biz. Simply quote 612JMZN67VZX at checkout.