Query summary

I stumbled across The Query Shark, which is terrifying. (Fortunately I can't even theoretically send a 'query' for critique because I don't have a word-count yet... and suspect that even once I do the automatic answer is 'too long, you need to revise before any agent would consider this for submission'.)

But as a result I wasted an evening trying to devise an 'idea pitch' style summary of Arctic Raoul; one advantage at least is that this is apparently supposed to be a teaser rather than a complete run-down of the plot, so the fact that I have about four acts of action and only have room to mention the start of the first isn't an issue here ;-) (Convincing the agent that there is a lot more plot to justify the remaining hundred thousand or so words would probably require an additional paragraph, I feel...)

( Teaser summary )

Demon Red

I've ended up with about a 50% ripening rate on the Demon Red chillies, I think -- the same or better than I got from the full-size chillies last year. (Unsurprisingly, given the late planting date, none of those have yet ripened, although a couple of the smaller ones are still trying!)

But I'm pretty pleased with the eventual outcome from the dwarf chilli variety. It was just a bit nerve-wracking along the way.
(click for full-size)