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 is not even a poor second best.
Ah, well. As the poet said, Continue reading
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 with weather-related woes.
Last year, I planned to be touring China about Continue reading
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!
Continue reading
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 to find ideas. I’m of the other type: story ideas constantly tumble through my mind, especially when I’m in the middle of redrafting a story. (I HATE redrafting.) So I type out a few notes in my “Unfinished Works” folder and get back to the task in hand.
(It also happens when I’m swimming, which is a terrible time to get an idea as my iPhone is not waterproof!)
Every now and again, I look through my Unfinisheds to see if there’s anything worth developing. It’s usually an unfulfilling task. I find sketches, first lines or paragraphs, or even whole chapters that lead nowhere I can follow – yet. Worse, I find the plots of movies and novels released AFTER I noted down the original idea. I really wish I had one of those author mind-reading gadgets! Continue reading
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? Continue reading
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 learn about current trends in Science Fiction. And I did all three!
I was really pleased to meet Geoffrey Carr of the Economist and chat about a zillion things, including his first venture into Sci-Fi, Genesis.
Sadly, our intense chatter left little chance for anyone else to get a word in.
Happy, too, for my good friend David M. Allan, who just signed up for a sequel to his novel The Empty Throne.
I returned home to a garden badly in need of attention. We sanded-down and re-stained the shed, which had badly deteriorated in the past 4 years of weather despite the 7 years’ guarantee of the original coating manufacturer. (Huh!) Of course, the work was disrupted by blazing sunshine, rainstorms, hailstorms, and even a fluttering of snow.
(Happy Spring, everyone in the northern hemisphere!)
The Luxembourg ban on using power tools on Sundays and public holidays didn’t help. (FYI, there are three midweek public holidays here in May.) But I do appreciate the quiet Sundays when I don’t need to get out and make noise.
As usual, life intrudes on art. I am way behind on my online critique group contributions but managed to complete two short stories in time to submit to anthologies just before their deadlines. I also had to make serious changes to my upcoming classic noir novel, Private Vices, but that should be off to my trusted advisor this month for a final overview before I send it out to Advance Readers.
RIGHT! Back to work.
No, not another “Game of Thrones” review.
It’s snowing in Luxembourg, Halloween is here and there’s only 55 days left to Christmas at time of writing. (To keep track of how time’s running out for your gift shopping, click here.)
And it’s been another month of ups and downs in a writer’s life…
“Your Secret Library” Online Magazine – Halloween edition!
Here’s your free read of seasonal horror stories
It includes my short story “Let The Children Sleep”
Like many other authors, I’ve had to change my newsletter mailing company as they weren’t delivering on the promised delivery. There’s so much admin involved: migrating my mailing lists, setting up new signup forms and “thank you” mails, creating newsletter templates, changing the links to my signup form in all the books and everywhere else I published it.
Amazon continues to have problems retaining valid book reviews. So far (touch wood) I’ve not lost any more, but other writers are again seeing theirs erased. I’m watching and waiting…
And so to the stuff I am supposed to be doing – writing!
My classic noir is in final revision with a target publication date of January 1st. A dozen of my short stories are with various online critique groups.
The new covers for my sci-fi trilogy seem to be doing the job, as my sales are climbing. (Someday soon, I have to write the sequel.)
I’ll get back to making imaginary things happen to people who don’t exist.
Happy Halloween!
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 on… Continue reading
I recently had a great time at the 68th British National Science Fiction Annual Convention: meeting old friends; making new ones; attending some fascinating panels…
The panels prompted my restless mind to explore tangential threads, as they should. Example… Continue reading
It has been a long journey, but here I stand on the verge of publishing my first novel.
I always wanted to write, but my first High School English teacher convinced me I was barely literate. I think he resented me being taller than him, as a later (taller) teacher promoted me from bottom of the class to (almost) pole position.
Too late!
It was my final year of school and my small fantasies had been strangled. Hurrah for education! Continue reading
