Mission Completed.

"Don't be a fool", they said. "It can't be done. It's impossible. You are a busy man, learning two new important jobs. Where are you going to find the time?" Brushing the naysayers aside, I cracked on with with the endeavour. And today, with 6 days left before the 100-day deadline, I did it. Explore Gower's Beaches, Coves & Bays is complete and will be available to purchase on November 1st. 😯

Nearly There...

Working on the final draft of the final beach of my new Explore Gower Book.

Thank U Welsh Water

Not a bad start to the week 😀. The office closed before lunch due to an incident at Welsh Water. This spare time really was a godsend as it gave me a whole five extra hours work on my Gower Beaches book. There is now just 9 days left to complete the project, but I only have 7 more beaches to correct, plus an introduction to write. Its looking more and more likely I am actually going to complete this book on time!

The Pressure's On

10 days to complete my Gower Beaches book! Will I get it done on time? You bet your life I will.

Fall Bay

I finally revisited Fall Bay yesterday evening after a gap of over 2 decades. The path down to the beach was perilous, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unable to undertake a lot of scrambling. That said, when we finally reached the sand, we found we had the whole bay to ourselves for the entirety of the sunset. And its moments like that which always make me leave Gower to the tourists in the summer months.

I had hoped to capture a pic of comet  tsuchinshan-ATLAS, not seen since neolithic times, but as you can see from the later pics from Rhossili, the clouds over the horizon, where it was positioned tonight, put paid to that ambition. 

Working on the Final Draft

Final draft, working round Gower Peninsula. Swansea finished. Mumbles Beach completed. Bracelet Bay done and dusted. 12 days to finish this tourn book.

Plans Update

I am not really enjoying working on my Gower Beaches. It has been a bit of a grind, to be honest. I think the reason is because I haven't needed to go out and take photographs for it as I already had the imagery needed for the book in my portfolio. I do need one trip out in Gower though as  I lost a lot of my stored files in the housefire earlier in the year and havent got photograpgs of the caves down Fall Bay. We are holding out on heading down for the moment as Mrs E is hoping that there will be another northern lights display in the next couple of weeks so we might be able to put two projects to bed in one outing.  Whatever happens, the Explore Gower Guide to Gower Beaches will be available from Amazon on November 1, 2024.

After that, I will be spending November working on my next horror novel, Familiar. I hope to get a full first draft of the book completed by Christmas.

My research on familiar folklore continues...

2025 should be a quieter year for my writing. Famiar should be out sometime in the first half of the year, and my only other blook planned for next year is Issue 2 of my Avalon guidebook series exploring the town of Glastonbury. 

Other than that, the only other publication I have planned for next year is another Guy N Smith zine. This one will see me more in the role of editor, designer and publisher, however, as this issue will feature the creative work of  varied creatives who fans of GNS. At the time of writing this, this new GNS zine has the promise of being something very special...
 

Gower Beaches Progressing

Continuing work (just) on my Gower Beaches guide.

Gower Beaches | Day 61/100

Day 61/100. I'm cutting this project fine. Listening to #seashanties whilst working on my guide to the #Gower shoreline

Look at those whisers!

Tidal Gower Cover Work

I'm starting work on the cover of Tidal Gower. Though I like the cover pic of my home village, Penclawdd, the typography is definitely a work in progress...

Proof-reading

Spending time spotting the errors in the proofs of my Guy N Smith book that arrived yesterday morning. As well as fixing them, I will change the answers to the x2 quizzes to a feinter print so they don't stand out too much and spoil the fun. The publication date is just a couple of weeks away now 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀.

Tomorrow marks Day 1 of my next 100-day project - my fourth Explore Gower guidebook, Tidal Gower. During this time, I will also revamp some of my other Gower guidebooks.

Catch Up

Gutted I missed out on this year's May Day festivals in Glastonbury yesterday (especially after seeing these pics by someone who did attend 1  2 ), but I made up for it by getting a lot of work done on both my Swansea and Gower websites.

It's been a busy few weeks, as regular readers of my blog as facebook page will be aware, so I thought I would use today's post to publish some recent photographs I haven't has the opportunity to publish yet.

I'll start with this pic of our 8-year-old chickens, who remain at our old home while it's being refurbished but get daily visits to ensure their wellbeing. Here they are, photographed sometime during mid-April freelancing around the garden:

Next up are a few 🪴 pics (yes I still like to keep my fingers green).While I lost one Mandrake during the awful wet Welsh winter we have recently emerged from, this one survived and has sprung back into leaf: 🙂

And while my Mandrake is doing well, this gorgeous Crassula ovata (money tree) is currently displaying a Ruby flush that is gorgeous:

And finally, for now, here is my prize cactus, which is now sitting before the landing windowsill of our temporary home:

Well, that's me all caught up here now. Until my next post, keep well and happy.

Chillax

A quiet day, spent variably chilling with my cat, working on my GNS and Explore Gower projects  and writing.