Steph and I went to a reading by Neil Gaiman last night. He's an excellent reader and has a dedicated fanbase, so there were a lot of people there. He read The Wolves in the Walls, which is a cool a fairly frightening kids' book. In fact, I think it's more frightening than anything else of his that I've read. There's something about the stripped-down, elemental style of writing for children that allows the emotions to be so much clearer than in adult fiction. Adult fiction carries expectations, cynicism, self-awareness and awareness of what has come before. All of these can, potentially, coat the emotions in a layer that hides their truth. Perhaps it's simply that writers are a little scared to lay their souls bare to adults.

One of the best things about going to an author reading is that it re-injects you with passion and ambition for your own writing. After the reading, when we got home, I started working on a query letter for my own young adult novel that has been sitting around for a while. It's time for it to get out there and try to make a living for itself instead of lounging about, making the house look untidy and inviting its disreputable friends around.

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Today I'm going to lock myself in my office at work and finish off the latest rounds of spreadsheets for different unlikely scenarios. Commands have come down from on high to do these, even though everyone knows that if the project went so far wrong it just couldn't happen. Last night I dreamed of spreadsheets.

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The sun is back with us after a few days off. It's a beautiful autumn day outside. I think that if I can get the spreadsheets done, I'll promise myself a short break to go for a walk.