Chris Stanley's Bazaar

It's becoming a bit of a feature on this blog that I spend most of the first half of each new entry apologising for my tardiness in coming up with a new blog post. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but after my last entry, which read pretty much like a suicide note, I did get some people advising me to take a holiday, or failing that, treat myself to a KitKat Chunky with peanut butter. In the event, I did both. I feel much better for it, but as we know, these things can't last forever. I can destroy a KitKat in less than four seconds. So as I'm coming to the end of my jollies, what's new in the world of Stan? It's been a productive break. The Sad Club is well into draft two, which is a place I'd never imagined it would be, and on my off days, I've been working on another project which I'll keep secret for now. It's another novel, a much shorter one which I'm looking to have 1500 words a chapter. It's vaguely plotted in my head, but ...

It's been a while since I blogged, mainly because writing has been going pretty well for me over the last few months. My major work, which is my novel , has been first-drafted, sat on, re-read and annotated with a fine-tooth comb in preparation for a major re-edit. There were times in the last twelve months that I didn't expect to be able to say anything other than "I'm writing a book", so to have one should be excellent news. But it isn't any more. Because I've had another piece of work rejected. You may recall in my podcast and from an earlier blog post that my and my friend Tom, who runs the Thank Book For initiative, wrote a spec script of a sitcom years ago. Well, BBC Writersroom had open submissions for sitcoms back in April, so we spruced it up, crossed our fingers, and waited. And waited. And now, after four months of our work being 'in progress', it's dead in the water. No matter how much we told ourselves it would never get pick...