A few days away...

Spent the last few days in Amsterdam, wandering around and generally emptying my head in preparation for spending the next few months writing my own projects and coming up with some new ideas.

I love this city, and have visited a lot, but each time I get something new out of it. This time around, I hooked into the history of the place and picked up a copy of Russell Shorto's fascinating Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City.

I also chanced across a shop that immediately became one of my favourites in the world. PW Akkerman sells an incredible range of stationery from ridiculously high-end fountain pens all the way down to staples and labels, across three joyous floors of a tiny shop on Langebrugsteeg. I picked up some Sailor brush pens and some Pilot Iroshizuku ink.

Amsterdam has featured fairly heavily in the Aldrich Kemp audio series, but has not made much of an appearance in Pleasant Green. Walking around some of the older neighbourhoods, though, I started developing an idea about a group of people that meet here, in an anonymous building, several times a year. This is a shadowy organisation that almost no one, not even the Department of Works knows about. One woman is onto them though, and is determined to shine a light on their activities - readers of the Saltmarsh storyline on the Pleasant Green Blog will meet Karen Whybrew very soon.

Anyway, I'm back now and raring to go. The response to the idea of crowdfunding more Pleasant Green stories (including a fifth season of the Lovecraft Investigations) has been overwhelming and we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of that over the next few weeks.