Change is good...

It's been a funny couple of weeks with a couple of u-turns. The most significant was my return to fiction writing. I decided on a change of genre and wrote a psychological thriller - they say write what you know! I 'd had a big break from fiction writing because of disillusionment with the publishing world during the recession, but now I've decided that I can do it for fun, it's is fun again!

It was like riding a bike. The familiar rush of excitement at the plotting stage, the waking up in the night with a new idea. Of course, I was doing the novel for National Novel Writing Month, and reached 50000 words just in time. This time, though, it would be different. I'd been reading Scarlett Thomas books for a while, and really resonate with her writing because it has a scientific and philosophical edge to the content. So I decided that I would try to write something along the same lines. I actually felt like my brain was going to the gym, waking up the imagination neurons and the storytelling axons that had been resting for a little too long.

In previous novels I have written a love story, or a story about relationships, and inserted some quirky, sometimes, downright weird, scenes. So I decided to write something weird and just outside the field of normal vision, and insert a relationship! It's going really well and I'm glad I managed to change my mind about fiction writing. It's fun and a big part of my life. Watch this space for more about 23 Acacia Road.

I've also moved offices to a more modern place outside the city centre. One Central Park is a beautiful workspace and a perfect environment to work, a very different place to where I spent the past fifteen years. My office on Piccadilly, Manchester had a prestigious address, and looked good on paper, but was dirty and cold inside. It just didn't live up to expectations once you really got to know it. My new office hasn't such a good address, but just stepping inside gives a sense of serenity and well being. I was dreading leaving the city centre, but after just two weeks I'm very happy to be working in Newton Heath.

Change is good. Finally. Risky, but good. I've always been a safe routine kind of person - even holidays are a stressful break from the day to day, week to week, year to year. Yet now, I've managed to change two major aspects of my life and I'm feeling pretty chilled out about it. Maybe I'm finally emerging from the my caterpillar constraints and learning to fly? So all I need to do now is take a risk and write some fiction in my new office and who knows what might happen!