11.07.2006 Cripes. Can't believe over a year has passed already. It has taken this long to produce a truly final version of the book. Once the ISBN is assigned, I'm going to do a short story collection. Much less taxing. I'll do the next and final part of the Tale next year. I need break. I'm also going to start put up my own Room 101 ideas, starting with aerosol deodorant.

4.06.2005 Here we are again. Three months down the line, and not a single entry... sigh. Well, the big news is that Ulysses, A Tale of Transition Part One is out and about. I have decided to forgo the publisher route and just do it myself. A friend pointed out that the big publishers probably want to know you have more than one story in you (he's writing two novels at once!), so I'll put out Parts One and Two of the Tale (which brings the story to a close; the idea isn't to have an endless stream of Transiation books) myself, and probably the third book as well (it will be more straightforward and have no supernatural elements). The fourth book will be a family-based drama that would have mass-market appeal, and that's probably the one to approach the big publishers with, unless, of course, self-publishing goes well and there's no need. Optimism is not a dirty word.

15.03.2005 My father's birthday today. Happy birthday, Dad!! Well, the book steams ahead. I've started to get some hits for the newspaper stories, which is wierd. Still, why put the stuff up if it isn't to share it? Normally there's a story a day, maybe two, which means there's quite a backlog. We'll get there eventually. It actually gets a bid sad when you realise how much crap is going on in the world, especially on the rape/sexual abuse of children side of things.

09.03.2005 Gordon Bennet, it's hard keeping apace of things. Anyway, the electronic version of the Tale is coming along well. Part 2 to follow Part 1 (guess that's how it usually goes...?!). I have added some newspaper cuttings to the site. Don't know if the Metro newspaper is going to get arsey about it if they ever find out, but hopefully not. It's not as though I'm claiming I wrote the pieces, after all. There is an ulterior motive in having some of the cuttings up - it's to show that terrible things take place out in the real world, and any nastiness that occurs in the Tale is no worse than what is actually going on. Some of the stories are just awful though, it has to be said. The man who had his face bitten off by a chimpanzee? Children sold for car tyres and raped by 30 men? what is the world coming to?

05.02.2005 Time continues to fly in its inimitable fashion. A lot has happened on the personal front, the biggest development being a move to Colchester. Finally. Things are really coming on with the Tale. I have almost finished the hard copy edit of the whole piece. It takes forever to then update the electronic version, but things are looking a lot better than they were a few months back. I'm going to set up a site dedicated to the book with some in-depth discussion of Sea of Souls scroll, although there is still a question mark hanging over whether to use that title or not (now that there is a TV program of the same title out there). Then again, turns out there's a band called Sea of Souls, and a female dancer did an avant-garde piece going by the same title several years ago, so the TV program can't really claim prior art. We'll see.

11.10.2004 How time flies. We missed the deadline for the new animation. It would have been good. I'll put the script up on the site. Dallas has agreed to do another script as a 'graphic' novel, aka comic. If it is done well it could be a money-spinner (the idea is to get it printed and used in schools and GUM clinics. GUM? Genito-Urinary Medicine. Yup, you guessed it. VD and all that. Briefly known at STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), they are now known at STIs (Sexually transmitted infections). The strains that are out there aren't like their distant simple cousins who could be cured with a shot of penicillin. The STDs the twenty first century are hybrids and very hard to get rid of. And then there is HIV and AIDS. To be avoided. In the eighties there was lots of fuss made about 'wear a condom' advertising, and we were terrified of getting AIDS from unprotected sex with a woman. More than one sexual partner? You are death on legs. Nowadays the sexually active ten year olds in the UK know nothing of the terror of AIDS; it's just something you see on the telly. The graphic novel takes a quirky look at a young man who discovers someone he has slept with is HIV positive, an event that brings about some unexpected changes in his personality and his until then completely ordinary life.

17.08.2004 Dallas and I have got going on the BBC3 animation. Well, to be precise, I have finished the script and Dallas has started work on the characters. He only has two weeks to do the whole thing, which may prove quite a challenge, but he has a script now, so there's not much more I can do (except draw up character outlines of those who won't get to be seen in the first offering). Dallas has only done a bit, but it's already looking funny and entertaining... so you never know!!?

17.08.2004 Well, the virus is gone. I had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows, which means I have lost all sorts of programs and what have you, but at least I can see Task Manager again, and don't have to worry about an intruder accessing all my data. The biggest pain is that I wiped Microsoft Office Suite off my PC and don't have the discs, so no work has progressed on the Tale for over a week now. The only thing I can work on is the Tarot reading... anyone know a friendly Tarot reader?

I'm entering the BBC 3 animation competition with a short story entitled Two Lions. Should be a laugh! Once it's done I'll put it up on this site. My mate Dallas Caversham (crazy name, crazy guy!) has the other animations, so I'll be whacking them up soon as well. All these things to look forward to, you lucky people!?

04.08.2004 I have a computer virus running on my PC. What a palava... if I log on to the Internet, data rushes out of my machine like the blood out of a beheaded corpse in Kill Bill. It is a very clever virus that turned my virus checker off, and will not allow the installation of any anti-virus software. If I ever meet a hacker, I will have to break his nose. If I ever meet a female hacker, I'll tell her the colour of the clothes she is wearing don't suit her, and nor does her hairstyle. I have yet to meet a female program who would give a shit, but at least I have a plan!

03.08.2004 The pages they are sent. I was in two minds about sending them to one or several agencies. Approaching a single agent means that if the response is positive, things are nice and simple. On the other hand, if you have to wait weeks for a negative response, you have basically wasted time that could have been spent with an agency that is interested. The high class problem would be contacting five agencies and getting five interested replies, but what happens then? Do you try to haggle on their commission, or the terms they offer? So I have only sent it to one agency, and let us see what transpires.

31.07.2004 Have a list of potential agents, and am busy preparing what to send. Most of them seem to want the first three chapters and a synopsis, or a selection of chapters. I suppose this must be in order to see if the person sending stuff in can write. No unsolicited manuscripts please, they say. Doh! I printed the whole thing off to have a hard copy in case the world ended. Six hundred sheets of A4 weighs constitutes an enormous pile of paper. Imagine receiving fifty of those a week?!

28.07.2004 Now that the novel is finished I am trying to get it published. It seems that the way to get published is to convince an agent to represent you first, and then let them do the selling to the publishers. So I am hunting for an agent...

The Tale took about six months of writing on the train between Guildford and Ascot - I changed my route in order to have more writing time, and I stopped swimming because that was taking up too much time as well. Talk about dedication, eh? The book is written, but I have put on a stone or so, which will take a while to work off. Ah well.

I'm happy with the story and plot development, etc, but really unhappy to discover that in Kingdom Hospital, Stephen King is using the name of one of the main characters in my tale: Steg. Ok, in Mr King's case it's an abbreviation for Stegman, and it is not as though he stole the name from me or anything, but nonetheless...

17.05.2004 Ho Ho! Here we are, six, make that eight months since my last missive. I discovered that my kurt loba email service hasn't been activated for some time. In fact, not at all.

So what has changed in these eight months? Well, I have am about to leave my employer of the past eight years, one of those 'always happens to someone else' events. My role is redundant, apparently. But everyone needs a toilet cleaner, I cry, realising that it hardly fits my job description, but the look on peoples' faces was worth it! Redundant. What a horrible word. It has a blunt, no-going-back kinda feel to it. I challenge you to make it sound positive. No matter how you pronounce it, it sounds bad. Say it with a smile and you appear to be on the verge of tears...

What else? Not much really. I'm going to be uploading some of my 3D animation scripts soon (does that mean in 2004?!), and will let you know how it goes in the search for an agent... apparently publishing houses don't like to deal with authors. Probably because they're a testy bunch? While I'm here though, I will have a short rant about the word blog. It's horrible. A blogger is apparently someone who keeps a log on the web. I think it better describes the kind of enormous turd that comes out in the blink of an eye and clogs up a toilet. Or is that just me?

05.09.2003 Right. Enough of not making use of this wondrous internet space. I am writing a book about a man who is victimised by demons because he used to be mean and nasty, but now he is super nice. They hate him for it. I can't give away too much, but the idea is that I can put some ideas up on this page with a view to getting feedback, etc. There is always the fact that no-one is ever going to find this page, but what they hey. I though I might put some short stories up as well, but there is always the fear that someone will rip them off. Maybe I should get something published first and then put it here? I'll get there eventually.

I'm on page 78 of the main tome at the moment. I only write on the train to and from work, a journey of about 1 hour most days. Once winter comes and the sun stops shining on my laptop, I should be able to increase productivity. Some days I get a ride into work or back home, which takes away writing time. Some days I'll get a page done, others, I'm lucky if I complete a paragraph. The book features several murders that are hard to write about if there is someone sitting next to me (they always have a look; one woman was not impressed. Such a nice looking man, you could hear her think...

19.12.2002 Well, today I am Santa for the 'kids of employees' party being held in the canteen this afternoon. It's the first time I have been Santa and worn a suit and all that. The beard is awful- really itchy and it isn't fastened to my upper lip or anything, so when I speak you can't see my mouth or my lips, which is pretty frightening really. Especially when you are a little child. I am about to go down and frighten a whole lot of them. The cushion under my vest means I am about 3 metres in girth, almost 2 meters in height. I reckon over 50% of the kids will burst into tears. Of those that are left, there'll be the rebellious element who'll try to pull the beard off. We shall see how hard it is to save the beard without being sued. Strange-looking word that. Sued. A lot of words are like that. Flower. I remember coming across that word a few years back and reading it as flow -er, a synonym for river, perhaps. I thought I knew what it meant ('something that flows'), but could not understand why the author had put such a word in the paragraph I was reading. It just made no sense. A few seconds later and I realised my mistake. I also remember learning to read as a child and coming across my first hyphenated word on the edge of a page. Now that was a revelation. You can't do that, I wailed at my sister, who told me that yes you can. Anyway, enough of these musings. It is time to go and frighten the kids...

You may have noticed that the page isn't so basic anymore. Stylesheets, aren't they fantasic?!

16.12.2002 This page, as you can see, is pretty basic. There are no fancy images on it, no fancy flash animations. No fancy fonts or colours. It is a very very basic web page. kurtloba is far from being a site. It is simply a page. But nonetheless, it is a remarkable page. Why? you ask. Well let me tell you why. Briefly. Because it's expensive being online when you're on dialup like me. What is remarkable about this page is that it doesn't exist. It sits out there and forwards anyone who types www.kurtloba.com into their browser to www.kurtloba.co.uk where I lurk. The problem with this is that search engines don't get to see the content of the site, which means when you type Kurt Loba into google you get something else. I tried it, and it appears there may be a Kurt Loba in Germany. Who'd have guessed it?! I know someone called Antonia Fraser who knows nothing about history?!