Showing posts with label Familiar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Familiar. Show all posts

Last Day in Mumbles

Tuesday, 12 March, 2024

This is our last day at the Mumbles Airbnb. We picked up the keys to cheaper accommodation today on the other side of the peninsula before heading to our house and clearing more of the damage to make it safer for the builders who start work there next week. Fudjcat has settled in nicely here, so I hope the upheaval tomorrow doesn't upset her again. We've transferred the last of our Japan savings (we have had to postpone most of this year's planned trips), so we can hopefully afford to stay at the caravan/trailer until we can move back into our home. This should help ease fudjcat's anxiety and let her settle for longer. Loathe to post here without any pics, so here are some parting pics of Mumbles, all taken from the car as we drove to and from this particular let. These include some daytime shots of that strange scene I happened upon the other night. Onwards and upwards!








fudjcat chillin'

Nothing takes you out of your stressful situation better than
putting yourself into someone else's.
Continuing work on my 2025 novel, Familiar.

Winter's End (2024) Update

Friday, 01 March, 2024


It is Spring at last! That was one harsh winter, wasn't it? Anyway, we are through it now, and it is time to look forward to better things...

Healthwise, I am hoping for a fantastic season ahead. My new meds, seen as a wonder drug by my consultant, have proved as good as promised and I officially return to my day job next Thursday.

Over the past winter, I have managed to progress my Cold Comfort novel and it is just a matter of formatting the thing now prior to its publication, which still has its official release date of March 31 intact - although this may stretch into April if anything gets in my way of progress it this month.

Progress of my Guy N Smith book is also going well, with all my Lego photography completed (I still don't know what to do with all the GNS Lego dioramas I've created over the past few months). I have one field trip lined up before completing this particular book. This was originally going to involve a visit to Hopwas Wood, the scene of The Sucking Pit and numerous other GNS tales, with Knighton being a reserve alternative should the weather prove too wet for woodland walking. With the continuing uncertainty surrounding the location of the bomb crater in Hopwas Wood (whose rain-filled depths inspired The Sucking Pit), I have decided to delay this visit for another day (and probably another year). Instead, I have now decided that my field trip will be to Shell Bay, the location of GNS' classic Night of the Crabs. This change of location came as a relief to my wife and son, who will accompany me on this field trip, as there is far more to occupy my family's time on the coast of North Wales than a meander through a single woodland. Knighton remains in reserve if the weather forecast proves too gloomy for beach camping at the time. The GNS book is still scheduled for a close of June 2024 release.

Prior to the above field trip, the three of us (and hopefully my daughter if she can find the time) have another trip planned, this time to Glastonbury so I can take photographs for Issue 2 of Glastonbury guidebooks, Avalon. This should be my third publication of 2024, scheduled for the end of September.

After that, I will be working on my fourth Gower guidebook - Tidal Gower. 

After that, my prospective 9th novel, about a girl's unusual friendship with a toad - Familiar - should lead me nicely into 2025...

Here's hoping the nice weather brings good times for myself, my family and all my friends, readers and site visitors. Have a love Spring :)

Familiar Progression

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Taking a short break from One Night Dead, I thought I'd spend a couple of days working on another project, one that I've left gather dust of late. And so out came my Familiar notebook once more:


 Familiar will no longer be a novel, but will, instead, be a collect of folk horror short stories. Given the amount of books I have planned for publication, I can't really envision this project seeing the light of day until 2024, at the earliest. Though, as in Solstice, if any of the short stories are completed well before the publication of the larger volume of work, I may publish them as individuals and alone titles as well...

Skipping Work

Monday, November 21, 2022

Didn't go into work today as it was raining and the office heating is broken and there's no running hot water there. I'm getting older and I still haven't fully recovered my health and the thought of sitting in the office, wet from the rain and shivering in the cold, was enough to stop me going in. Now, in the warmth of my own home, I can continue with my own work, in the fine company of this one:


Familiar Notes

November 18, 2020

It begins...


A New Notebook

November 17, 2020

I am happy with my new notebook. I am now ready to start outlining a new folk-horror novel - about a girl who stumbles upon something unusual in the forest...