"The Rare Purple Fox Travels East In Winter"

# "It's a new day, it's a new plan, I've been waiting for you..." # - Bryan Adams

Welcome, everyone to my newly-improved and spy-errific writing blogspot. Hopefully you've all come along equipped with your waterproof watches, unmarked silver briefcases and dark glasses - Yes? OK, then, we can continue...
For those of you wondering if you've stumbled onto the wrong blogsite, this is still the online writing journal of Chris G. Allan - it just looks a bit different to how it did last week. As I continue writing my first novel Moon Crater and develop the themes and events that occur within that story, I decided I wanted the look of my writing blog to reflect those themes - and so here we are with a mysterious "Top Secret" memo pad for me to post on from now on...




To coincide with this, a new secret page has appeared on my writing website over at http://www.findthemissingreel.com/ - have you spotted it yet? Just hover around the homepage for a bit with your mouse pointer, a bit like a spaceman with a rocketpack gliding over the Martian landscape, and you might stumble upon the "Lost Property" page... There'll be more on how to "unlock" this page properly in the months to come, both here and on the website, so keep your eyes open!
The "skin" or template for this blog has changed but with the switch to Beta Blogger comes "new and improved" features too! Scroll right to the bottom of this page and you'll see a full list of all of my blogspots, the others contain my various collections of short stories in different genres (or will in the future, as I build on what's there, and the content of each grows). I also have a brand-spanking new display picture - anyone who knows me knows I like garden gnomes, so this new friend, let's call him Gned, is there to welcome everyone to my writing journal and point them to my writing website... It's a shame to lose my old display pic of the construction of the Tyne Bridge - that has a lot of significance for myself, coming from Newcastle and also because legend has it that an relative of mine helped paint it in 1928! But it was definitely time for a change, because I feel as if the first phase of my online writing portfolio is over now, and that I'm in the "further development" stage, so a new picture was maybe overdue (OK, it's only a picture, I know - I'll get over it!)
I'm going to gradually change the way I title my blog posts too - up to now I've been using song lyrics but have realised that anyone using the new "Search" option on Blogger for my old posts might find it easier if I give each post distinctive titles. I love writing to music, as I've said before here (http://cgallan.blogspot.com/2006/06/got-call-from-old-friend-we-used-to-be.html ) and so I'll still use my favourite lyrics as subheadings within my posts, like the one above, but I'm going to wade back through my archives gradually and change the titles of the old posts to slightly more accessible headers as the next few weeks go on...
I'm gradually learning how to read and write html too, just by using Blogger, so when I work out how to do it, I'm going to add a panel of links to my old posts which can give a quick overview to the ones in which I've written specifically about Moon Crater, just so that newcomers to this blog can gain a quick "catch-up" to the story that I keep harping on about with each new post... (Amendum, April '07 - this links list has now disappeared and will reappear in a different form over at my official site from October 2007 at: www.findthemissingreel.com/timecapsule)
For anyone who did check out that History Matters Blog Day from my previous-but-two-posts, by the way, my entry is now online and you can read about what I did on that day (Tuesday, October 18th, 2006) by clicking here
The final thing I want to tell you about is what I hinted at towards the end of that previous post too - the exciting news that I've collaborated with a real live artist for one of my short stories. King Of The Jungle is one of my best-loved stories and has been posted over on another of my story blogs for quite a while now - but recently I got the chance to have my words inspire a few paintings and now those masterpieces stand alongside the story for your aesthetic pleasure - you can re-read or enjoy the story for the first time now at:
http://tryingtobeliterary.blogspot.com/

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