A Merry Christmas!!

Here we are again, snow on the roof in the north and beachside barbeques in the south. But it's Christmas everywhere!(Also Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Mid-Winter Fest, Yule, and belated Rohatsu.) Have a wonderful time... feasting, family and friends, not to mention gifts! Many of you will be getting Kindles, notepads, or gift vouchers in your stockings. …

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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 …

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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 …

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Heading for Year-End

First off, belated HAPPY THANKSGIVING from snowy Luxembourg! No, there wasn't this much snow, yet, but it's a lovely photo of the town in midwinter. NovaCon Sci-Fi Convention in Nottingham, UK Was this a convention to remember! I got serious food poisoning on the way there and my (newish) car broke down on the way …

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Getting Hissed

Can you hear that? No, you probably can’t. But I can. Tinnitus: ringing or buzzing in the ears. That definition just does not do it justice in my case. A concentration-shattering, perpetual whistling, more like. A shrill, hissing, sibilant, headache-inducing screeching that eases off to a whispering susurration at times. Or maybe you can hear …

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Onward and Upward

It's a sunny day here in Luxembourg. The heatwave has eased, the rain has stopped, and it's perfect weather for sitting out on the patio and pouring thoughts and words into my laptop. I started looking through my Scrivener folder of "Unfinished Works". More accurately, it should be called, "Started and Stalled". Some authors struggle …

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Mid-Year Thoughts

Here we go again, sliding past the year's halfway point - the longest day (or the shortest day if you're Down Under). The Earth just clocked-up another 470 million km (282 million miles) - a half orbit of the sun - since a cold and snowy December 31st. And what's changed? Well... the UK is …

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Final Flight and Win-A-Kindle

   I've finally had to admit it. I'm over-committed. I never planned to spam my blog followers with daily ramblings. Twice or thrice a month would suffice. But I'm down to one post a month. So I changed the tagline in my posts to "An occasional blog". Truth is good. (Unless, of course, you're a …

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Struggling Author

It's been a long month. Apart from the usual writerly stuff (you know, the stuff a writer thinks s/he's going to be doing like... er... writing) authors across the world have been struggling with Amazon's widespread and apparently random deletion and blocking of reviews and trying to navigate the European Union's new GDPR law. Read …

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Happy News/Strange News

Happy News #1 Had a great time at the UK's annual Sci-Fi and Fantasy Convention (Follycon) in Harrogate. Met some old friends and made some new ones. Learned a lot and had a few new ideas sparked. Delighted to say that my friend David Allan got his first publishing contract. Congrats, David! Happy News #2 …

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