(An update of "Mid-year Review, 2022") Belated "Happy Longest Day" greetings to half the world and "Happy Shortest Day" in the other half. Summer hit with a vengeance here, melting the flowers, browning the grass, and melting my brain. Then it rained... off and on... for days as if in apology. Ah, well. I write …
Category: Work In Progress
Mid-year Review, 2022
Summer seems to have hit Luxembourg already - blazing sunshine in recent weeks with enough occasional rain that I don't have to water the flowers. Of course, the lawn-mowing has become more frequent! Sigh... swings and roundabouts! At least the Covid restrictions have been easing at long last. More good news: Galaxies and Fantasies (my …
HAPPY YEAR END !!
Hi there! First, let me wish you a Happy Christmas, Hannuka, MidwinterFest, New Year, Hogmanay, or whatever you celebrate. Hoping the New Year brings relief to us all!(And yes, I said the same thing last year...) So what's that odd image above? It's the all-seeing Eye of Horus, the symbol of the Pax Diktat, the …
Empires Fall
Last time, I ended with, "But that's another story, for next time." And here we are, so... I was always fascinated by the way empires fall. Gibbons' tale of the Roman Empire and Asimov's Foundation series (inspired by Rome's collapse) sparked my interest. In older days, the empires of Rome, China, Persia, Egypt, Huns, Mongols, …
About a Story, Maybe
Let me tell you a story... about a story. Or maybe it's about a writer. Seven years ago I started to write a story. It grew like topsy. I was squeezing an epic series spanning thousands of years into a single novel. So I found break-points and spread the tale over three, then four, books with yet …
Waking Up?
Well, that's been a weird few weeks. Groundhog Day all over again every morning. "What day is it, today? Is it yesterday or tomorrow?" The writing community seems to have fallen into two camps. Some were fired up, churning out thousands of words a minute, mainly about fictional global virus infections, it seems. (Good luck with sales.) …
A Winter’s Tale
February I look out the window at the storm-wracked forest beyond the rainsoaked fields and long for Spring. My personal "writing place" is my garden patio in the sunshine with rock music on my headphones and coffee within reach. Sitting in my attic office with artificial lighting to compensate for the all-day, gray-sky dullness outside …
Almost February?
Wow, time flies! I am SO glad I renamed this an "occasional blog" a while ago. Luckily, the world ducked Father Time's scythe as December slipped into January, despite Middle East issues, although China's upcoming New Year of the Rat (starts January 25, 2020) is plagued with spreading Coronavirus problems and Australia is still beset …
April & May
BSFA Ytterbium Chocaholics and parents might have noticed it was Easter again last month. To me, that meant eating chocolate at the British Science Fiction Association's Annual Convention! Code-named Ytterbium, it was held this year at London Heathrow's Park Inn. As always, I rolled up ready to meet old friends, make new ones, and …
Twenty Percent
Greetings from Luxembourg, where the early morning snow has melted away (just like 2019 is doing). (The photo is of the city looking beautiful in deep winter: we only had a scattering of snowflakes this morning and this looks much prettier.) Wake up call! Almost twenty percent of the year is already lost in the …
Andy McKell, Speculative Fiction Author 
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