Diversionary Tactics and Lightening Strikes

I haven’t written a word in nine days. Count ‘em… Go on, I dare you… Nine whole days from last Friday to now. Ten if you’re being picky. But really nine. I’ve been on holiday, see. I thought I needed a break – just a few days – but a break sure enough.
I’ve been to Bournemouth – a town which puts the “seaside” back into beach-holidays, for a bit of sand, sea and torrential rain. Yes, it pissed it down, but it was sunny enough to get a tan, and Sarah and I spent lazy days roving the great beach by the pier, chatting, drinking ice-cold beers and generally relaxing. I was even allowed to indulge in my obsession of “who’s stocking my book” in probably the best bookshop in the UK: Borders of Bournemouth.
This bookshop, to my mind, beats any of the sellers in London, and in Yorkshire there is no equal. So what if it’s from a chain of bookshops - this one’s fantabulous. The Sci-Fi/Fantasy section is the most extensive I’ve seen, and if it weren’t for Sarah dragging me away, I would have spent hours perusing before settling to buy two US imported fiction magazines that I find difficult locating up here in Sheffield (Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction).
For me, a holiday isn’t a holiday without some kind of imaginative anthology to dip into during the infrequent bouts of sunshine.

Borders of Bournemouth also happened to stock several copies of The Secret War. Depending on whether you’re a half-empty/half-full person, seeing several copies of your book on the shelves can inspire conflicting emotions. Either that feeling of joy that a bookshop would order in so many copies and that someone might/could/will buy one; or the opposite where you might think “why are there so many copies left? Doesn’t it appeal to anyone?”. I’m more of the former, with a leaning to the latter. But really I was just chuffed to see The Secret War sat on the shelves.

I’m always chuffed to see it sat on the shelves.
I’m sad like that.

That apart, the other thing of note from our trip down south, was that Sarah and I survived. I say that not in an overly dramatic way, but in a “we-were-struck-by-lightening” way. And I’m not being metaphorical either. We were actually hit by a lightening-bolt while walking around Christchurch. Not the first time, I might add. We got the tail-end of a bolt in Katoomba, Australia, several years back. But this was a little closer – straight down our umbrella.

Good job I wear rubber soles.

So now I’m back. Alive and unfettered, and eager. Back at the word processor, back writing this blog before I embark on editing chores – chapters 10 and 11. I’ll be quick to avoid torrential downpours between now and the end of August when I at last turn-in the final draft of the new book, which also has a new title by the way: Soldiers of Fire.
After debating the whole title thing again with friends, this was the one that everyone seemed to like, echoed by Brian McGilloway in a recent e-mail. Soldiers of Fire pretty much matches the whole mood of the sequel, and like “The Secret War” is a no-nonsense moniker and is sure to remain where others have fallen due to suspected pretensions or downright cheesiness.

Unless I get struck down by lightening, that is.

Which might happen…

…Again.



Coming soon: a less rambling blog entry. Honest.