Guess how many entries there were into the art competition…3!  Seriously, I was offering £500′s worth of prizes and there were only 3 entries.  It said in the T&C’s that there must be 50 entries into the competition otherwise it will be null and void, so I was well within my rights to say the competition wouldn’t go ahead and leave the prizes for the next competition, but I felt absolutely terrible for the people who had entered so instead I refunded their money and closed the site down.  The site wont be closed forever, it just needs to be looked at.  I need to reorganise the competition structure and include smaller competitions with no prizes or smaller prizes or something.  The site is a great idea, I’m just unsure what I need to do to make it work, so at present I just need to have a think about it and do some more research.  I had been trying to find a members gallery plugin so artists could upload their paintings to their personal profiles, which would have been a great conversation point, but none of the plugins worked with the program I am using and other plugins don’t seem to exist, so it’s back to the drawing board.  Steve said he would write a gallery when he has more time, which is brilliant, but until then Easel Challenge has been put on the back burner.

Steve made a fantastic full english breakfast to help cheer my spirits and after we had eaten I got on with some more reading and dissecting.  I think I have picked quite a hard book to work from as it includes about 10 short stories, which have no real relevance to the main story, so as I read I need to think carefully about the story I am going to write.  I’m halfway through the novel and I think i’ve worked my story out, as the story progresses I can tweak my idea more.

After tea I painted the watercolour for the lady who said she would be returning tomorrow to collect one.  I spent more time on it than I should, and it’s better than the others, but I couldn’t help myself as I wanted it to look nice for her as she said she would go to the effort of coming back.  Most people don’t come back as they have other things on their minds and other things to do, but if she does it’s ready for her and her new home.  I should have taken her phone number really, but it didn’t occur to me at the time.

When I finished painting Steve and I watched the Exorcist and Horrace had a run in his ball, but he didn’t run far and instead chose to sit in the corner in the dark.  I’m feeling a little bad for Horrace at the moment as i’m worried that he may feel a bit caged in and lonely.  We give him lots of attention, but he doesn’t like being handled, so we can’t take him out of his cage unless he’s in the ball and sometimes I think he may like another hamster to talk to or curl up with, someone of his own, who understands him and he can spend time with.  On the other hand I may be worring about nothing and he may be quite happy and not lonely at all, I have no idea, I don’t know how deeply hamsters think about life.

I hoped to get halfway through the novel today, but I never managed it that far as taking notes takes much longer than I thought.  A good story is coming into mind as I am reading and I am learning a lot.  I read a lot so I thought I knew a lot about books and story structure, but now I realise it wasn’t really the case and novels are much faster and don’t have as much info in them as I thought – an awful lot is left up to the readers imagination.

Steve popped to the shop to buy some wine and after tea we watched some comedy on TV which was a nice change as all we have been watching is americans being shot and murdered in 24, Prison Break and Dexter.  Then it was time for bed.

The new site has wifi so Steve can get on with the final bits of the software and make it available online, which is great news.

The pitch we are staying on is mostly clover rather than grass, so hopefully there is a four leaf clover on the pitch somewhere and we will both have lots of luck with what we are doing – let me know if you can see one in the above photo and I will go and pick it.

It took a little while for me to set up the display, but as soon as it was done I started dissecting the novel.  Wanda has travelled all over the world and she has lots of stickers on her backside which have been put there by all of her previous owners, so I think Steve and I need to add a personal sticker to the collection.

The display attracted a little bit of attention, which was nice.  A nice lady in a long pink dress came over and had a look and then complimented me on the painting by stating she wished she had my talent, an older tattooed gentlemen also came over and had a look at them for a long while, but he didn’t say anything and a lovely little boy who was about 8years old and was passing on his bike shouted out “is it ok if I look at your pictures Miss” came over and had a look.  Then a lady who had just recently moved to the area said she would like one of the large paintings for her new house, but she would like a view of Looe from the bridge, so I told her I would do one for her and she said she would be back on Monday to collect it.

I managed to dissect 3 chapters of the novel before it was time to pack up for tea and i’ve already found a few something interesting.  When I write a novel I include something in chapter 2 and then mention it again in chapter 6, or chapter 3 and chapter 10 etc and although this author does do that she does it in a completely different way, a much better way.  The author mentions something in the beginning of a chapter and then puts the info I would ordinarily put in a different chapter at the the end of her chapter, it’s as if she is confirming details in the same chapter to make sure the reader understands, then she will bring it back into the story at a later chapter.  I also realised how fast the pace of the novel is, usually I would mention a party or some kind of occasion that is going to happen in a different chapter and then include a lead up to the occasion in other chapters, but this author writes about a party or some kind of occasion in one paragraph and then BOOM the next paragraph you are already at the party.  It’s amazing how little you need to write in order to make the reader feel that they know a character and understand their feelings.  The dissection is going really well and a plan is already coming into my mind how to tackle the new novel.

After a lovely Barbecue cooked by the wonderful Mr Steve I decided I needed to paint some more local scenes as I am sure people will want to buy paintings of places they have been, so whilst Steve watched some Green Wing I got on with 3 more paintings and before we knew it it was 1.45am!  Definately time for bed.

I scratched the idea of using Danielle Steel and researched more about romance novels, which are hugely frowned upon.  This is thought to be due to the fact that women write these stories and they are read by women so men poo poo them and their worth in a writers world as they give women an unrealistic view of love and they all have happy endings, which isn’t like real life – last I checked Star Wars is completely unrealistic and it has a happy ending, but as it’s not written by a woman men are fine with that – it’s like going back to the work place in the 60′s where womens thoughts and ideas are deemed to be worth less than men.  In defence of the romance novel – which I personally don’t read, as I thought they were just a kind of soft porn – they are the best selling novels in America and Europe and from my research I have found that unlike other genres they haven’t been touched by the recession, in fact they are thriving.  Since the start of the ebook sales of romantic novels have soared as the women who formerly didn’t want to sit in a public place holding a book with a scantily dressed woman being held by a big butch man on the cover are now reading these romances in secret on their kindle or iphone, therefore they are selling more.  One romance publisher sells a new romance novel ever 4 seconds!  That’s incredible.

After some research I found my chosen romance novelist who I shall use and I will buy one of her novels tomorrow so I can dissect it.

I also read about plagiarism as I was a little worried that using another authors novel as a structural guide may be plagiarism, but it worked out that everything is hunky dory and it’s not plagiarism at all as all the words, location, characters and story will be different.  I have no problems thinking up characters and stories, it’s punctuation and sentence structure I need help with, as the more I read about literacy the more confusing it gets.  Also I am never sure when I need to mention details which I will be referring back to in the future, like snippets of childhood memories that are important as they have made the character who they are today, but they’re not really part of the present story.  You can pay people to go through your novels, but they only advise you on what you should change and once you change it you will need to send it back to them to be checked again and at around £400 a pop per check I think I will do it my way instead.  I did a quick test to see if my idea would work and it seemed to work perfectly so I am incredibly optimistic about this novel.  I’ve never really wanted to be a romantic novelist as I found it a bit of a cliche, so I’ve tried lots of other genres including children’s, horror, sci-fi and fantasy, but in all honesty I think I will be good at writing a romance as i’m a hopeless romantic at heart and if they sell who am I to argue?

Whilst I was researching about romantic novels I found out a funny fact – usually the only sexual content in a romantic novel is a passionate kiss, but when romantic novels are translated into German they insert far more sexual scenes and content as the Germans find British and American romance novelists too bland.  That made me laugh.  The Germans also don’t accept certain titles if the authors don’t have an anglo-saxon name and they make the author use a psudonym.  I’m going to write under another name, but I’m not going to say what it is yet.

Whilst I was researching novelists Steve made a fantastic Carrot and Orange soup, which is my favourite and it was fantastic.

Then when the research was done we walked to the shop to get some wine as Steve is on the brink of celebrating finishing the software!  Whooppee.  When we got back Steve played the guitar and we enjoyed a drink together and a nice chat.

All in all we both had a great day.

I will be sad to be leaving the wonderful showers here as I know they are few and far between, but after a long while of searching I finally found a nice looking and incredibly reasonably priced site with free internet access in Looe.  What gets me is that sometimes they charge you for the pitch and then charge you extra for electric.  I don’t really understand why they don’t just charge you for the whole pitch if it’s a pitch with electric and put people who don’t need electric on pitches without electric, it doesn’t make too much sense, but it was still a bargain – £13.50 without electric or £16.50 with.  Some of the prices of pitches in high season are a little ridiculous, especially the bigger places, which doesn’t make much sense to me either.  It’s all well and good to charge more for a site with amenities like a bar, restaurant and swimming pool, but the facilities aren’t free, you still have to pay to eat in the restaurant and drink in the bar, so you are simply paying more for the priviledge of having a bar, restaurant or swimming pool on the site.  It’s not like the beer is even cheaper than usual or the food is great, beer is still expensive and the food is just like eating at a Harvester really – ridiculously huge portions of deep fat fried pub grub – so you may as well pay for a cheaper site and go into the local town or village to eat nice food and drink in an adult environment without screaming kids everywhere.

Steve judges a hotel on the sausage they give you at breakfast, if it’s a crap hotel they will give you a crap sausage, but if it’s a good hotel they will give you a good sausage, I now judge a campsite on the showers so I am sincerely hoping that the next site will be a fantastic site with fantastic showers.

I have decided to get on with writing my novel when we get to the next site – until Steve finishes the management system, then I will help him sell it – in order to do this I am going to buy a cheap trashy best selling novel and disect it.  Different novels are set at different speeds and different character develop in different ways, so i’m going to go through the trashy best seller chapter by chapter and make notes on everything that has happened in each chapter to find it’s skeleton – time frame; how the characters develop; when characters get hit in the face by a kipper; time of day; setting; speed and pace of each chapter; etc.  Then I am going to mould the novel I have already started writing and the characters I have already developed onto that skeleton.  See if that works. Apparently there are only 7 stories in the world – romance, nemisis, heros journey, can’t remember the others -  and all other stories are similies of those seven stories so I am going to use the skeleton of another novel to make my story into one of them.  It’s hard to explain – the characters, setting and story will be different, but the actual structure will be the same, kind of like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are the same.  They are both a heros journey (Frodo/Luke) and all hero’s journeys follow the same structure, they are simply set in different genres – one is sci-fi set in space in the future, the other is fantasy set in middle earth in the past.  I know what I mean anyway, they are the same to me.

I’ve been writing for about 10 years, i’ve written 7 novels so far and it gets a bit annoying being continually rejected after you put so much time and effort into something – I should probably get the message and give up, but I can’t seem to be able to do it, writing novels is quite addictive.  I realise that the stories I write aren’t mainstream stories, they are a little deep and complicated sometimes and in order for a literary agent to take on a new writer they need to be able to market you.  Literary agents aren’t looking for the next big thing, they like tried and tested methods and having writers on their books who they already know will sell, therefore the stories I write need to be mainstream – at first – so I need to write something plain and predictable (which I find quite hard) as that’s what people like.  I’m not writing a children’s book, but in one of my stories I really want to include an invisible hippo who likes wearing stripey jumpers, as it sounds like fun.  I will try to restrain myself until I am published.

After tea Steve and I played cards and Steve set up some night photos on his camera, I am really looking forward to seeing what they come out like, then it was time for bed.

In  an uncanny series of events we found the job advertisement when looking for wardens positions, went to the village, needed a campsite, there was one two doors down. Needed to know when the pub was open, asked the campsite owner, she worked at the pub and is best friends with the present chef who is leaving, so she contacted her. The husband of the chef phoned to see me that afternoon. He said he would have a word with the chef and I might be able to trial there, within an hour he phoned to ask if I could work that night… to be working in a pub kitchen and finding a campsite (at £8 a night) two doors down was an unexpected end to the day.

Stacey has been down to the Kennels and dog rescue centre looking for work and produced a Pet Portraits poster to display there. It might be that there may be opportunity at the pub also.

We are basically waiting for the owners of the pub to make a decision. This should happen tomorrow. Though, we are still not 100% sure this is what we want to do. The owner is going to present a package to us tomorrow. However, at breakfast this morning I found out there is another chef coming to stay on the campsite tomorrow, who is after the job. The owner apparently has someone interested in leasing the pub. All this will have an affect on us and our immediate future.

In the mean time I have updated my IT CV and will be sending it off later today to recruitment agencies in the area.

My software is complete, but we have been without the internet for nearly two weeks now so I haven’t been able to progress it online. No matter what happens the software will be part of our future. A lot of time and effort has gone into it and it is a fantastic system.

I’ll try and let you know what happens (internet permitting)

I tried to do some work, but my brain is a bit unco-operative. So I ended up watching Murder One which has taken the best part of a week to download.

I am supposed to move on tomorrow, but I have no idea where to go? I need to finish the sales website, then start selling the software or I’ll be destitute soon. I think I’ll probably stay here until Monday unless I hear from Stacey.

I had a good chat with Bruce last night and he has offered to help with the software sales plan, it would mean returning to Yorkshire though. At the moment there is nothing keeping me here, it was a joint dream.

I tried to go to bed early. That wasn’t too hard, going to sleep on the other hand was a different matter. Given I went to bed around 9ish I was not happy when I saw 1:31am on the clock. I didn’t sleep well. I got hot and cold shivers, and the same coding dream of exactly the same bit of code recurred all night.

I hope tomorrow is a better day.

Going to Morrisons took until around 2pm. I made some sandwiches for lunch, then I set to do some work. I couldnt quite motivate myself though. I ended up watching Volcano. It is a terrible film.

I had snacks for tea, then fell asleep in bed watching Gandhi. Tomorrow I hope I will be in a work mood.

I made a bacon and egg sandwich and tried the watch the grand prix on the iPlayer. The intenet was up and down though so I eventually gave up.

I was bored so I went to the pub. I got chatting to this amazing old guy, Jimmy, he told me how he’d been to prison and then ended up being a sniper for the government in South Aftica and in Northern Ireland. I asked him what his wisdom for life was and he said: There are two ways you can go, left or right… That confused the hell out of me so I headed back to Wanda.

I watched some TV then went to bed. Its odd being alone. I’m not used to it.

I was up at 7:30 today. I was amazed at how busy the toilet block was. Who gets up at 7am on holiday? Crazy people! Anyway I had loads to do so I set to work coding. By midday Stacey was up and I needed her to do some graphics. Only the big laptop has the software on so while she would do this I would go to the shop as we needed some supplies. I got the big rucksack and walked into Pentlyn.

When I got back Stacey hadn’t done the graphics, but she had done her blog. As I was unpacking the shopping Stacey suggested we stuff it and get drunk this afternoon. Easily persuaded I opened the wine.

We sat outside most of the afternoon and chatted. I then washed all the bedding as I am sure that the biological liquid it was washed in last time was making me itch. I then made tea. We had a keema curry. The sauce was very bland.

To cut the rest of the story. We argued and Stacey called her mum to collect her and Horrace.

I got up at 6am this morning! Get in! I spent all morning working on the Site Administration section. Prettifying it (there’s that word again!). By half 10 I was hungry so I made us both an english breakfast. That was very nice. I carried on coding (with Sid James) while Stacey washed up.

Stacey had some admin to do on Easel Challenge, so I faffed around a bit while she did that, then it was back to coding. I coded on through until 5pm. Wow, I did a 10hour plus day! Jesus, it’s been a while! Then I caught up with the blog before making tea.

Tea was Griddled chicken breast with mash, cabbage and gravy. Very nice it was too. Stacey had a commission to do this evening, I really wanted to get on with the shop, but my brain had just had enough. I watched a bit of TV while Stacey painted, then I remembered I had some films on my external hard drive. I eventually found ‘The Exorsist’ so we watched that before bed.

Surprisingly I didn’t get straight to sleep, but it was a fantastic day.

I transferred all the files from the little notebook and set it up locally on the big laptop. I created a theme for the demo site, and set to work prettifying it. (It’s a word now!) This basically took until fourish when I became coded out. I did achieve a lot though. The site was working, and I’d sorted the main demo site website areas. The remaining bits were the management and site administration. I’ll crack on with those tomorrow.

Next I started on the shop for this site. As well as Stacey selling her art outside Wanda, we thought we may as well put it on here too. I was coded out like I said, so I gave up after an hour.

I was very happy with myself, it was a gorgeously hot day, it was Saturday night, so I thought we deserved a treat. I cycled to Spar at Pentlyn for some wine. When I got back I made a Spag bol, which was lovely. We drank wine, watched TV and then went to bed. It was around midnight by this time though. A very productive day.