I’m peering out at Cock Robin, who is standing on my lawn under the bird feeder and peering right back at me.  I had put up a feeder on the weeping pear tree in my garden, cutting out a little window around it so I could watch them feed. We get a variety of birds, even in winter, many of them nesting in the bushes and stone walls that surround my ancient house and garden.  But we also have resident magpies that are inclined to ambush the feeder and are capable of emptying it in a day.  But then my wife Googled the problem and came up with a suggested solution.  I should tie something reflecting, like a redundant DVD, to the tree right next to the feeder.  I went one further. I dangled a redundant DVD right in front of it.  Big birds like magpies would have to approach the window in the foliage from the front, where the DVD dangles, meanwhile the smaller songbirds can easily come at it through the foliage from behind.

Hey presto!

No more magpies.  Songbirds feeding frenzy!

So how’s the writing going?

I’m engaged in something really unusual. My fantasy publisher has suggested I take a fresh look at The Snowmelt River to make it more amenable to foreign language translations.  When translating a book into another language the foreign publisher has to pay by the word.  A lengthy epic, such as The Snowmelt River, is too long for easy translation.  Would it be possible to reconstruct it as two volumes? 

The answer is readily. 

So that’s what I’ve been doing this week.  I’ve put aside the new fantasy I was working on – which is now at the stage of a complete first draft – and I have returned to Snowmelt River to break it down into two volumes.  The logical place for a break in the narrative is at the place where the Temple Ship breaks out of its prison of ice and first enters the liberation of the Snowmelt River. So that’s what I am doing.  I shall, of course, have to rework the closing chapter to round it off as a final chapter in volume 1.  But that’s actually a simple enough endeavour.  But I have also decided that I would have to read through the entirety of volume 1 to ensure it reads as a volume in itself.  In doing so I’ve simplified the text here and there – to make it easier for a translator.

It’s the first time I have ever undertaken an exercise like this.

Ain’t life full of surprises!