Update 24/05/2014

There hasn't been a whole lot of progress on Chapter Twenty-Two this week, if I'm honest. I've got the plot nailed down but the details are, for now, eluding me. I'm happy enough to let it turn itself over in my mind until it figures itself out, which hopefully won't be too much longer now. That's one of the luxuries of not being a part-time writer, I suppose: if I was reliant on the next book to feed myself I suppose I'd just have to keep writing by brute force.

While it hasn't been a particularly good week for writing (or for UK politics, for that matter), it has been a good week for reading. I've had Jack Kerouac's On the Road on the to for a while and this week ended up reading quite a lot of it. It's a fantastic book and I'd definitely recommend it if you've not read it, particularly if you've ever been to the USA.  It's not a typical novel, in that not a lot of any great drama seems to happen (I've not got to the end yet, I should point out!), but it conjures such a wonderfully atmospheric image of travelling through late 40s America, and the characters and situations inside feel strangely relatable. Oh, and the Penguin Modern Classics edition is, as always, a quiet masterpiece of book design.

It also helps that whenever the book finds itself back on or around the West Coast it seems to make a point of passing through the same places I visited while on my own Great American Roadtrip in 2012. Reading On the Road is making be want to write something about that and the dozens of stories it produced...so watch this space.

I'm not usually a filter kind of guy, but some shots practically demand it