Location, location, location. As long as the location has chocolate and ice cream.

Sunday 10th of August:  Wordcount 15,040.  Units of alcohol consumed 0.

Oh come on, it's only just lunchtime!  I know you think all writers are wizened old soaks who brush their teeth with whisky but...but...  Look, I hate whisky, all right?  Anyway, look at that wordcount, go on, just look at it.  You don't get to bang that many words out by being smashed by half eight in the morning, or, if you do, you have to go back and redo most of them because they've all got too many 'wvrrkks' in them and the punctuation is all to cock.

So, anyway.  I am continuing to make progress.  Next on the agenda is going to be Research.  Now, I know I always say that my research consists of simply Going Outside, but for this one I need to visit a Place of Interest.  I am quite interested in shops that sell chocolate and ice cream, but on this occasion I am going to visit a house. Nunnington Hall, actually.

It looks like this

And yes, coincidentally, they do have a shop that sells chocolate and ice cream, but that is purely by the by and nothing to do with me visiting, much.  Nunnington is the model for Monkpark Hall in the book in which I have just reached the 15,000 word mark, and I feel that I need a little kick up the historicals to get a little bit more Local Colour for the book.

Oh, not that the book is an historical, no, it's purely contemporary.  But even contemporaries have to have a location, something that will make people want to read on.  Most of my other books are set in York (apart from one in Nevada, where I still have never been, and, unless the Nevada Tourist Board want to recruit me and my book as a publicity aid, I am unlikely ever to go) and, from the comments of my readers that are repeatable in public, people like to read about places that are atmospheric and have a definite role in the book.

So, off I pop to Nunnington, to take in the furniture (oh, not literally, I'm not going there to make off with the Louis Quinze, always supposing they have any.  Most of the places round here have furniture that looks as if it was made by nailing entire trees together, and you're never going to get away with shoving it under your coat and walking out) and the sounds and the smells of the place, in the hopes of stuffing my book full of the feel of a sixteenth century house.  Am hoping that the sounds and smells consist largely of people unwrapping chocolate and eating ice cream...

 Also to find a likely location where someone might see a ghost...