A New Year

2021… “Phew. That’s gone. The worst year of my adult life and I’ve had a doozy or two.” 2022… “Hold my beer.”

I’m determined to turn over a new leaf (yes, I know it meant page) this year. The last year one was from a gympie-gympie and had been used in lieu of toilet paper. I really hope this year isn’t ‘hold my beer’ year, although early signs are not looking good, with our first wuflu on the island and some people behaving as if it was a Mongol horde, and all the economic indicators for Australia that I can see flashing red. Anyway, what can we do but press on. I am determined to try and make this a better year.

Every cloud has a sliver…er… silver lining, I suppose. It might be a good time to be selling escapist, hope-filled books. That is the second New Year’s resolution for me: to get some more books out. The first was to give up coffee, so I could get my breaking my primary New Year resolution out of the way really quickly. A sort of sacrificial resolution, as it were.

Seriously, last year was a trainwreck, largely down to the ongoing fight with our petty bureaucrats about our home and Barbs’s health issues through it. One day I’ll write that book. When it is done – it’s a really ugly story, which needs a good ending. I managed a little writing, but far less than I can do, or should do. Stress and worry… and instead of my mind spending most of its time working on whatever book I am busy with, it keeps turning back to the problem they have generated, and demand I fix. Government – don’t we all love them? I’ve engaged a professional now, and I hope by making it his problem, I shall at least be able to focus on writing – which I’ll need to do to pay him and the costs of this entirely pointless exercise.

Sometimes I feel my books are unwittingly predictive (SPACE GYPSIES -which I started at least 15 years back has a corrupt President Harris (well before this was on anyone’s real possibility horizon) doing dirty deals with the Chinese – so I hope I am wrong on that!) but the previous two have both been about medical issues (the black plague, and an inflammatory allergy related condition) and the latest is about what amounts to libertarian overthrow of dictatorial power, so let’s hope…

Anyway, the goal is to get 10, possibly 11 books out – which is ridiculous… Of course there are two features in this: I’m aiming for a very tall giant. If I hit anywhere from the middle of the forehead to bottom of the abdomen, I’ll be doing well – even 5 would be good. And I have CLOUD-CASTLES finished and now Kindle formatted and just doing last tweaks. One of those was to re-activate my mailing-list. I found mailchimp had eaten it. So I will have to start again… ah well. I’ll blame 2021 for that too. I have the rights to DRAGON’S RING and DOG AND DRAGON back so I will be re-issuing those – with the intent of a final sequel (not this year!) and I also have SAVE THE DRAGONS which I used a fundraiser to help with the vast expense of moving our beloved dogs and cats to Australia 12 years ago and provided as a free e-book to those who donated. I feel that could now be re-issued too. Then I have two older books (HUY BRASAEL and TOWER) which could use an edit, but I might as well get out, and five more (HOW MUCH FOR JUST THE CRAZY UNCLE, THE RISE OF ATLANTIS, SPACE GYPSIES, THE RAVEN AND THE ROSE, and compiled BOLG, PI (with 3 more stories and linking material)) that are in various stages from 30% to 70%.

The list just goes on and on – a final sequel to RBV ,wrapping up the war, and taking humans in pursuit of the Khorozhet conquered worlds, and a follow-on series in space about that, two or three more SLOWTRAIN novels… yeah. The list is long, I need to get writing. Let’s have no repeats of last year… The two before I was less than writing productive, but at least I was building and moving and succeeding against the odds. Last year was just proof that government is not here to he’p you.

Anyway. I feel having goals is important, otherwise I don’t strive for them. If I had none, I might as well be dead. Writing them down is important to me, so I can cross them off… or I for one am inclined to forget the progress I have made. I’m not there yet, but I’ve made some distance.

Strength to your arms and minds, friends.

Nil carborundum illigitimi