Re-energised, revamped and relaunched

Even by my own appalling standards the time lapse between my last posting and this one has been shameful, for which I apologise. By way of excuse I’d like to say I don’t know where the year’s gone but if I do that it makes me sound old and I really don’t want to do that regardless of how I actually feel! The simple truth of the matter is that things seem to have just escaped me this year with lots going on family wise and by the time I got around to remembering that I needed to post here I was frankly too tired or unable to focus after an already long day on the screen. Add to that the fact that for a good many months (April to September to be precise) it felt like I had lost the ability to write a constructive sentence let alone a blog post or short story and you can perhaps understand or at least empathise.

And then one day in September, something happened. I don’t know quite what it was, but I suddenly discovered the will and motivation to write again and within 4 weeks I had 6 serviceable short stories and by the end of the month the fantasy novel I had been working on for nigh on 3 years, was suddenly completed. I felt like my old self again and the buzz was back.

There will be lots of news regarding my books both old and new over the coming weeks and rather than use up all my arrows telling you about them now I will instead spread it over a number of postings.

The 6 short stories I mentioned above were all entered into writing competitions. The first 3 have recently announced their winners and I’m delighted to say that the very first to do so informed me that I had been shortlisted (highly commended) and would as a result be published in an anthology of winners and would receive a free copy. As this was the first story I had written in nearly 3 years I was double delighted and I can’t wait to see it in print. The next 2 competitions to announce were a blank unfortunately, but as my entries to these 2 were the weakest out of the 6 I’m not too despondent. I am, however, keeping everything crossed for the next 2 competitions the winners for which are due to be announced at the end of this month and in mid-December.

Okay, that’s it for now, but don’t forget to check out my Facebook page and Goodreads page from time to time, the latter of which will be running some free competitions over the coming weeks.