The League of Old Gamers came into being in December 2013, and my daily work on it commenced on New Years Day 2014. After years of starting novels and falling by the wayside, I’m rapt to have found a method of writing that both keeps me going every single day, but also makes it fun. For me the secret has been a very realistic word count target per day, a pretty rigid time of day to write (11pm at night) and a story idea I can see working well over the longer form.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the novel is going well and that I’m confident of having the first draft by the end of this year.

In the meantime, a short paragraph from a little way into the story:

Like a lot of ideas, The League of Old Gamers came to life after a solid night of drinking. These ideas are usually either forgotten or written off the next  morning as piss-induced delusions. Not so for this one – the four of them had been drinking enough to range between wild giggles and teary sentimentality, but not enough to guarantee overnight amnesia. Karen had decided to fire up one of her game consoles. It was the newly purchased Xbox’s turn tonight, though they tended to spend a lot of evenings on Karen’s faithful PS2 playing Silent Hill 2, with Scott being bagged mercilessly by the other three for being the one most likely to squeal. There wouldn’t be any of that during this session – it was one of those special nights when there was a brand new game to play. It sat there on the coffee table in front of them, its shrink wrap reflecting the fluorescent light above the lounge Karen and Joel were sitting on.

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