#amazonfail – What the Hell happened? And my week away from it all.

Sunday evening, French time, I opened my laptop to work on my WIP and, as it always does, Thwirl opened on start-up. It was pretty obvious pretty quickly that something was going on with all the #amazonfail tags flying about. I’d stayed away from Twitter all day up to then as when I looked in the morning something was going on with someone called “Mikey”. So I spent some time reading up on the whole #amzonfail deal – if you don’t know what happened, here’s the BBC spin on it.

If this is indeed an Amazonian cock-up of pornographic proportions, does it really make it okay? I mean, had the reaction on Twitter not been so vociferous and instant, would Amazon have bothered to correct the error? That, of course, is if you believe Amazon’s given reasons.

On the other hand, if this is a deliberate change of policy on behalf of Amazon and the reaction of the Twitterverse has caused them to back track – that has to be a good thing doesn’t it? It shows that the internet has given power to the ‘people’, doesn’t it?

Honestly, I don’t know. What I do know is that either way it looks really, really bad for Amazon. A major PR cock-up. I bet they won’t do it again in a hurry.

Last week was very productive for me. I wrote five, yes 5, chapters in Amy & Will’s story and managed to review the edits for Kissed by a Rose up to the place my editor has got. So I’m quite happy about that. It feels good to have produced almost ten thousand words in a week. And the story is now well on its way to completion of a first draft.

I was also able to spend a lot more time with Mrs Nobbs and Jr than I normally do – which was kind of the point of having a holiday – so I’m pleased with that too.

Of course, I’ve come back to the office today to find my work piles have grown – and just when I’d started to get them under control. Still, it’s the price we pay, isn’t it? And I for one wouldn’t have missed out on the past week for anything.

Still on Holiday

What day is it? Yep, I sort of lost track over the past, however long. It’s easily done when you’re out of your normal routine. It is, I believe, Thursday, which means I have three days left here in Northern France before having to brave the British motorway system again to get home.

The past few days we’ve got all the ‘family’ stuff out of the way. You know, the visiting of relatives and what not. We haven’t been able to do as much outdoorsy stuff as we would have liked because the weather hasn’t been good. It’s been damn and cold. Yesterday, while we were in the hypermarket, the rain came down really badly. So for once I was glad I was in a shop.

Actually, that’s not very fair. It’s normally fun seeking out bargains in the French hypermarkets, but this time with Sterling at such lows, everything seemed a lot more expensive than usual. Spending over a hundred Euros hurts a lot more when you know you’re also spending over a hundred pounds instead of seventy or eighty. I really, really hope the pound recovers soon. But I doubt it will.

We almost died too yesterday on the way back from the shops. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it was scary getting cut up at a roundabout by a damn bus trying to push into your lane. What made it worse was that the bus was then in the wrong lane for the island anyway – he should have stayed where he was.

Had this been in England, I’d have been livid. But for some reason when your in France you just accept it. It’s as if in England, everyone knows the rules and tries to obey them. So when someone blatantly breaks them, you get pissed off at them. But in France, everyone knows the rules, but everyone also ignores hem for the most part. It’s very much ‘everyman for himself’ so you just accept bad driving as par for the course.

Has anyone ever driven in Paris? If you have, you’re a braver man than me. I’ve stood and watched some of the drivers there and swore I’d never, ever try it.

Yesterday on Twitter I spoke about how writing some scenes can be hard on you emotionally. Like this one from Lost & Found that you can find on my website. I wrote a scene like that yesterday. It’s Amy & Will’s story again, which is getting to the point where i should be able to hammer down the home straight with it soon.

It was a really hard scene to write because of what Amy was telling Will. There were some big revelations in there about Amy’s back story which hopefully will make the reader have a lot of sympathy for her and what she’s been through. But I guess that’s not up to me to decide if I achieved what I wanted to. Two thousand words I wrote yesterday. So regardless, I’m pleased with that at least. It seems that, as hard as those scenes are to write, once you start on them, it’s even harder to stop.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I’m off to watch Disney/Pixar’s Cars with my little boy. Again.

Holidays – Day 1

The first ‘proper’ day of our holiday has been great. The weather has been kind with lots of blue skies and it’s been nice and warm but not too hot. We’ve been out for two long walks with Jr and I managed to take some nice photos on my phone. They’d have been better pictures if I’d remembered to take the good camera with me, but they’ll do for now. I have also managed to write just under a thousand words – so I’m happy on all fronts.

This morning we went for a walk around the market in Le Grand Place – the main town square. It was packed and seemed really odd seeing those market stalls seeing recordable DVDs and sexy underwear next to those lovely old buildings.

Then this afternoon we went to a nice park calle Le Parc de la Gare d’eau. It was a lovely day for a walk along the canal and Jr really enjoyed playing on the slide when we got there.

And now it’s time to put Jr to bed. Night, night all.

Settling in

We set out this morning bright and early at quarter past eight expecting a nice easy drive down the M1, round the M25 and along the M20 to Dover. We had meant to leave dead on eight, but that’s besides the point.

And a nice easy drive is pretty much what we got. It is Sunday after all so there wasn’t much traffic on the roads. The stretch of the M1 that they spent all that time and money widening over the past 18 months or so has made a huge difference. In some parts it’s six lanes each way one, which I can tell you, is just really really weird to drive on. We did encounter some Scunthorpe supporters on their way down to Wembley for the Johnston Paints Trophy at the South Mimms services, which was a bit intimidating for the little one. I don’t think he’s ever come across a large group of fully grown men chanting and being generally blokeish. Still, they got beat by Luton in the match itself, so I bet they weren’t quite as loud on the way home.

We got to Dover at midday having stopped twice on the route. You can do Northampton to Dover in under two and a half hours if you don’t stop and get a good clear run, but to do it in less than four having stopped twice is pretty good going. We timed the arrival well as we didn’t have to sit around on the docks for very long before getting on the boat – the Sea France Rodin. Very nice boat. Crossing was smooth and calm. It’s been a hot and sunny day so it was strange to see quite so much mist coming off the Channel.

And, as always, driving on the Frrench Autoroute is a dream. You rarely see another car. It can be quite tiring, but I had Mrs nobbs to keep me awake with her mouth (she talks a lot you dirty minded pervs. My son was in the back seat remember.)

So, here I am, not sure if the clock on my laptop has set itself to French time or not after realising it’s connected to a French wireless broadband hotspot. I’ve already written a couple of hundred more words of Amy & Will’s story, so that’s not bad. Hopefully, I can write a couple of hundred a day and I’ll be happy.

Here’s to a relaxing week.

ps, I’ll try and twitter when I’m writing, but for some reason my mobile phone isn’t receiving a signal yet here in France. It always has before so this is odd. Mrs Nobbs’ phone isn’t getting a signal either. Very strange that but it does mean I can’t send tweets by text. Anyways, have a good week everyone. TTFN.

Tough Week, Now for some R&R

It’s been a tough old week for me, just as I thought it would be. I’m not going to bang on about it because, frankly, my stresses and pressures would bore you silly. Who wants to know about a multitude of invoices and hitting a Friday afternoon deadline for a host of reports to the boss? I don’t think I would.

So what would I want to hear about? Well, how about the status of my WIPs? Yes, plural. I know it shouldn’t be and that I really should work on one at a time, but I’ve got two major projects that  I’ve started and am working on. Having said that, recently I’ve been focusing on one of them at the expense of the other.

The piece in question has a working title of “Professional Misconduct”, although as the story has developed this is no longer an appropriate title.  I need to think of a new title, something to do with second chances, but I’m not stressing it right now. Instead, I’m simply referring to it as “Amy & Will’s Story”.

Amy and Will are the protagonists and I’m finding myself enjoying spending time with them. In the past week I’ve written three chapters – the count is now up to 27 and is rounding the third turn, approaching turn four and heading for home.

This coming week I’ll be in France visiting the in-laws and allowing my little boy to soak up some more of the language. So that means next week will be as low on twitter tweets from me as last week was. It will probably mean that this blog will be low on posts and I hope it means I’ll be able to write another couple of chapters of Amy & Will’s story. We’ll have to wait and see.