Pub Scrabble

This weekend has furthered my assertion that I really love Oxford.

Yesterday I met up with a bunch of hypnosis people in town for drinks, dinner and a spot of pub hypnosis. I had a lot of fun and as usual I've written all about it in my other blog, BlackMeridian.

Anyway, today I had the pleasure of meeting up with a couple of them who had stayed overnight in Oxford before facing the long drive home. We found a nice pub, the Lamb and Flag, and sat down to some lunch and a game of scrabble.

There is just something about the pubs in Oxford that really appeals to me. They're my kind of pub, even late in the evening. The atmosphere is always friendly and it's actually possible to socialise because there's no loud music and you can hear what other people are saying.

In any case, I have yet to be in any other pub where the loudest source of noise is a heated debate in very posh accents about the intricacies of Viking battle dress. I kid you not!

I have also confirmed to myself that I am still rubbish at Scrabble.

A novel concept

For several years now I have had the outline of a fiction novel taking shape in my head, and I've already put quite a lot of time into laying down the structure, both of the setting and the plot. I want to get it all properly organised before I start with the actual text of the novel.

Yesterday I did a bit of a word count on my BlackMeridian blog and was quite startled to discover that in the two weeks since I started it I have already written about 7,300 words. I don't think that's at all bad considering that it was all written during lunch hours and in the evenings.

3,000-4,000 words per week, in spare time.

My target length for my book would be 60,000-80,000 words, and this would represent a short to medium length novel. This sounds less daunting if I break it down into approximately 20 chapters of, yup you guessed it, 3,000-4,000 words. So if I could write the bulk of my novel the same rate as I have with BlackMeridian I could in theory produce a chapter a week, and have a complete first draft in 6 months!

I really need to get that plan finished I guess.

What is a Herveum anyway?

Greetings and welcome to this, my personal blog.

Whilst I expect to be directing most of my current efforts toward my BlackMeridian hypnosis blog, I have also registered this blog because I occasionally have other thoughts that I would like to jot down.

A number of people have asked me why I have adopted Herveum as my gmail address. The short answer is that "HERVEUM" was 7 letters that I or a friend (I forget who exactly) had on a scrabble rack once. I think it's great because it's short, phonetic, and nobody else has it. I can take ownership of this fictional word and make it my own.

My dad has warned that, because the only hits "Herveum" seems to bring up on google seem to be old records kept by the catholic church, using it as my email address may end up in my getting caught up in some kind of Dan Brown narative. Somehow I think I'm willing to take the risk.