Pre-packaged Christmas blog

For the second time it strikes me that I’ve been Doing Blogging All Wrong.

Over at Litopia, the writer’s community run by my literary agent, they put out a daily podcast. I actually believed people were insane dedicated enough to get up early to record this every morning.

But no. Turns out that this is what my agent does with his Sunday afternoons, then preps all the podcasts for a neat daily publication schedule. That way he can put something out every day without actually going mad.

So too the 12 Days Of Christmas feature over at literary magazine The View From Here, was prepped in advance and is now lined up to appear on a schedule over Christmas.

My own article appears on the second day of Christmas. As in – today!

At least it will be – when you read this.

(Btw readers who voted for me to post clues about ICE SHOCK might want to take a look. I give away a juicy bit of plot-line on this article…)

Lightbulb moment. You’d think that I would have cottoned on to the idea from our work developing the ARG that will be co-launched with ICE SHOCK. One of the websites has over 60 blog entries scheduled to appear over a month. We’re hoping that people will become hopelessly addicted and be checking the site every hour or so for updates as the story unfolds. It’s a thriller, so the pace hots up towards the end.

Yet it’s never occurred to me to do this with my own blog.

Until this post, everything you read has been published right away. No planning, just feel-think-write-publish.

There’s glory for you.

I received a brilliant fan letter recently. A boy from Colchester who said lovely things about INVISIBLE CITY and then said he was looking forward to my next book. He then described what he wanted my next book to be about – in quite some detail! Enough detail that I would probably be in trouble if I wrote exactly that plot. I think I’ll write back and suggest he writes up his idea himself. It sounded fab. People stranded on an island and at the mercy of flesh-eating zombies. Cool huh?

Apart from that, I’m having a very Christmassy Christmas, lots of carol singing and advent services and relatives and friends. Today we sampled various bloatation aids – cream tea in Burford, fish and chips, mince pies and mulled wine. And lemon, strawberry and blackcurrant bonbons from an old-fashioned sweet shop.

By the time this post appears I will be a BLIMP.