I have just submitted a story to an anthology. This piece was a little different from my usual fare. It is a bit of alternate history with overtones of supernatural horror.

Researching the necessary historical aspects of Elizabethan England proved to be fascinating as to almost take over from the actual story telling. I had to remind myself that I was not writing a history but story within a particular historical setting. There is a significant difference.

So what next?

I have a script for a possible feature-length film under development. It is a romantic comedy. The comedic bits proved easy to do as did a comedic subplot. But the dramatic scenes are proving more problematic to get down. I shall keep plugging away at it as finishing such a large project will be a good test of my ability to stick at things.

I have been incredibly slack with recording things in my Writing Journal. But last Friday evening I attended a poetry reading with Australian poet, Les Murray. I sat there, scribbling thoughts on a scrap of paper as they occured to me. I also had the opportunity to talk to Les afterwards and tell him how I had adopted him as my internal Censor during poetry studies at university last year. It was a thill to speak to someone of that stature/

Those thoughts I captured have to be written up in my Writing Journal as the start of recording in it on a regular basis once more. I also have various other thoughts and ideas scrawled on random bits of paper that also need to be transcribed into that Journal.

I have a program of anthology targets that I wish to submit to over the rest of 2009. The next target is an anthology of zombie poetry of all things. But how to tackle such a thing?

First some research into zombies, looking for clues on what to write about. Next thoughts about possible poetic style. I was recently reading some of Kipling's poetry and was struck by its story-telling nature - I think that is the way to go with this piece.

The first draft has some twenty stanzas although a lot of editing is required yet.

Stay tuned to see how I go.