I had to scrape frost off the car this morning. The sun was just coming up and it shone white through the autumn leaves. The air was so crisp and clear it rang like a bell.

Becky and I spent the evening on the SS Great Britain. At the time of her launch in 1843 she was by far the largest ship in the world – not to mention probably the largest metal object in the world – and the first screw-propelled, ocean-going, wrought iron ship. She was the fastest way to cross the Atlantic – the Concorde of her day.

I also printed out the first draft of my new story ‘A Hundred Thousand Billion Years’ – the tale of a doomed holiday romance in a doomed universe.

The final exam took place this afternoon. Beforehand, I went for a walk through the quiet back streets of Clifton with their three storey town houses – now divided into flats and solicitors’ offices – and Georgian crescents, with black iron railings fencing off their private gardens. I’d been listening to a Tom Waits CD in the car, and I couldn’t get ‘Grapefruit Moon’ out of my head. There was a Croatian waitress in the coffee shop where I had lunch. One of the other girls behind the till was explaining to her that in English “to lie” also meant “not to tell the truth.”

I saw a famous comedian in the street. He wore a Ramones t-shirt and sunglasses. He moved like he had a camera crew following him. He looked jumpy.

The shop assistant in the bookshop on Whiteladies Road gave me a lovely smile. She had blonde hair and tan cowboy boots. I was nervous about the exam, so I treated myself to a book by Elmore Leonard. I’ve wanted to read him since being influenced by his article ‘Ten Rules of Writing’.

The exam took place in an old church on Whiteladies Road. I got there an hour early and sat on the hard stone steps, flicking through my new book. The bell clanked. There was a Honda opposite, under a curving Victorian lampost. One by one, the other candidates arrived. I knew two of them from earlier sessions, and it was good to see them again.

And then, three hours later, it was all over. I think it went well. The results aren’t due until mid-October. But tonight, I’m celebrating anyway. Tomorrow, I have to throw myself back into the world of software marketing, but tonight I’m going to sink a few cold lagers and sit at this keyboard until I’ve written something I can be proud of.

The exams for the marketing qualification I’m studying for are being held on Monday and Tuesday. That means I’ve been spending most of my evenings revising, so I haven’t had time to get much writing done. However, I have been working on two short stories (switching from one to the other as the mood takes me) and I hope to be able to devote more time to them once the exams are over.

I had a story rejected by Interzone today, but I’m taking it philosophically. Over the last year or so they’ve bought two of the five stories I’ve sent them. That’s a forty percent success rate.

My writing time has been in short supply this week. In addition to holding down a full-time job and raising two wonderful daughters, I’m currently studying for a qualification in Direct Marketing. The first assignment – a 3,000 word marketing plan – is due tomorrow.

Carol Pinchefsky has written a good article about SF writers who blog over at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

I’ve always intended this blog to be a collection of updates on my progress as a SF writer. As such, I guess it probably falls into her “me, me, me” category.

One of the questions I’m asked most often is how I come up with ideas for stories. And I never have a good answer. Sometimes an article or a memory will get me writing. But the final version of the story is often far removed from the initial idea that sparked it off. The text evolves over successive drafts. Different themes come to the fore, or drop away. In the end, I can’t say exactly what prompted me to write this or that story in a certain way.

For instance, with THE LAST REEF, the initial inspiration for the story came from a dream about riding a quad bike across a desert. But when the main character, Kenji Shiraki, stepped down off his bike, he arrived fully formed in my imagination. I immediately knew what he was looking for, and how he was going to go about getting it. His personality shaped the direction the story went in. Once it was over, I was sorry to see him go – which is why I wrote HOT RAIN, his second adventure.

I went into Borders bookshop in Bristol at the weekend and saw a big pile of Interzone #202 on their shelves, with my name on the cover. It was a proud moment. I bought a couple of copies to give to friends and relatives.

I also finished another couple of drafts of the manga monkey story, and I’m quite pleased with the way it’s turned out. My next project will be a major re-write of SIX LIGHTS OFF GREEN SCAR. Reading back over it, I can see there’s room to broaden the scope and flesh it out a bit. I’ve grown quite attached to the characters, and it will be fun to revisit them.

I’m not a full time writer; I have a day job. I work 5 days a week in marketing for a European software company. My writing gets done in stolen moments at the weekend, or late in the evening when my wife and daughter are asleep.