of North and South (the BBC series with Richard Armitage). Now, don’t get me wrong–I was a fan of Richard Armitage well before this. He was, after all, the ONLY reason to watch the new Robin Hood series. (Why Marian would ever choose Robin over the luscious Guy in that series, I’ll never know). But I’d never really sat down to watch North and South, even though my fellow Lulus have been raving about it for ages. I guess it was the whole grittier feel that turned me off–I like my historicals pretty, just like Pride & Prejudice, Northhanger Abby, and Wives & Daughters. North and South can never be described as pretty, because there was nothing pretty about cotton milling back in those days.  Even Richard Armitage isn’t pretty when you first meet him–he’s beating a man up and its an ugly scene.  But man, does his character grow on you. The heroine good too, but its Richard that steals every scene he’s in (Although I do like the guy who plays the lead union guy–he’s a good character). But the best scene in the whole movie is the end scene, where the two of them meet on the train station. It’s one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen and just ties the whole thing up wonderfully.  If you haven’t seen North and South (and you like historical romances with a bit of an edge) then definitely try and get your hands on it. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Writing wise, I’ve crept up to 119 pages done. Progress has been a bit slower these past couple of days, but I’m still writing more than five pages a day, so that’s okay. And the plot is still being tweaked, although the changes are all minor so far. It’s just that as I’m writing the scenes, I’m realising that certain things won’t work. Or, as in the case of one scene, I realised I’d totally forgotten what had already been written, and therefore I couldn’t actually write that scene as planned, or it would have made no sense at all.  Like the scene I’m currently in the middle of–I have her hunting a zombie that I’d actually killed in the first chapter. Like, duh. 🙂  Luckily that was easy to get around.  Hopefully today I’ll roll over the 30,000 word mark, and be well on my way through to a third of the book done. If I can keep up this pace, I might finally reach a self-imposed deadline and finish this book by the end of Feb.

Riley 7 progress meter