Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens!

Did you know that Charles Dickens was born on this day in 1812? Which means that he was 31 when he wrote A Christmas Carol. My first novel The Dead and the Damned* was published when I was 31, but that particular book certainly hasn't endured like Dickens' novels have.

And despite having had the idea several years previously, it wasn't until I was 46 that I actually started to write the first Scrooge and Marley (Deceased) story, The Haunted Man, which takes as it's premise, 'What happened after the events of A Christmas Carol?'

But it is pure chance that meant I was writing a new Scrooge and Marley (Deceased) story actually on the occasion of Dickens' 206th birthday. Maybe that's why the story, which I had really been struggling with up until now, started to come together at last today.

Let's hope I can finish it tomorrow. After all, the submission deadline is on Sunday...

* More a glorified short story collection than a novel.