Where's Daphne?

After the last little diversion on here, pondering how my Geordie-exile-in-the-Potteries Daphne Randall might have cast her ballot in the recent by-election, it's time for me to get back to where I left her in my latest draft novel.  Without giving too much away, she's on a late spring cruise downstream towards Shardlow but, this being Daphne, her plans have been derailed by a suspicious death. 

I've been making quite good progress so far with what is essentially an old-fashioned whodunit (not that I've decided for sure yet who did) with a few threads from the previous stories woven in.  The action takes place along a stretch of waterway I know well and enjoy cruising, plus I've invented some new characters who are great fun to work with.  All that would be marvellous material if I didn't have my social conscience nagging me that I should actually be working with my other cast of characters on another benefits-focussed story, as there have been so many further cuts to entitlement since we left the Solent Welfare Rights Project on the final page of Claimant Commitment.

I've tried the riding-two-horses approach to writing before, when I took a long break during the second draft of Limited Capability to write Grand Union - and it didn't work well.  While GU probably benefited from the National Novel Writing Month discipline of a tight deadline, I lost the thread of the longer, slower story and took a long time to get back into it, hence I'm disinclined to try that approach again.

Instead, I might do a few short stories on this blog to fill in the gaps between where we left the Hampshire-based characters in 2013 and were we might rejoin them in 2017.  Alternatively. I could just get on with Daphne's latest adventure, finish that off quite briskly and then get back to the serious social security stuff.  With one of the real-life counterparts of the SWRP gang giving evidence on PIP to the Work and Pensions Select Committee tomorrow, who knows whereabouts in the corridors of power Hilary, Toby or one of their colleagues might find themselves? 

Meanwhile, if you spot a bloke called Gary wandering around Westminster in his best suit tomorrow, rest assured that he is one of the good guys, despite supporting Portsmouth!
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/7b123d6e-0555-4b2d-ba6a-d2fdb799c871