Well, apart from Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, and Mathew Mark Luke and John?
The things that get in the way or writing a book. Like Covid, although it has kept me indoors doing far more writing and suchlike gubbins than I would otherwise have done. But it brings its own problems: I’m now up to 34 medical appointments this year, including dentists, and four emergency nights in different hospitals, Plus Covid jabs and tests, opticians, CT scan, MRI scans, and a suspected stroke. Plus one operation cancelled, a different one scheduled, and a cataract fixed.
A lack of ideas? Nope. Never been a problem. A view, a sentence, a character on the street, in the pub, on the television - anything can give rise to the germ of a story. It's written down or forgotten within five minutes, Then it's a matter of fleshing it out with starts, endings, PoVs,
We still haven't had a proper holiday for three years (Proper meanss at least a month somewhere foreign and hot. But we did manage one day fossiling on the Yorkshire coast, instead of the usual 20 p.a. Not had a party except for New Year's Eve; only one meal out with friends; and one with family; no theatre visits, or even a day round the shops – I wrote the poem Retail Fever about my inebrious desperation to spend a pound or two. That's inflation for you - we used to spend a penny. But it all gives more time for writing.
Overkill of oneself. What I found at one stage was that I was burning out. Doing too much, always thinking "I must get that done". And when it applies to a dozen different things, and they are all dependant on the computer/contacts/sites behaving - and they never do - the self-imposed pressure blows wide open. I took a month off.
Hectic time on the publishing front;
1. Short story book - "Go Girl" a month ago. Every one with a lady in the lead, for better or worse on the roads; the girl in the office; or the woman easing God into his proper, more lowly, place.
2. Then a sci-fi book, "Continuum". Also in November on Amazon. Visits from the Gods, Aliens and a ship-sized cat aren't enough? Try wearing the Emperor's new clothes, or spending three years in an alien PoW camp.
3. Next, it was "Foundling" - Book 1 in the "Realms of Kyre" Epic Fantasy series. The extended saga of a stranger who appears in a swampy corner of the Acon Forest, and the world will never be the same again. Out now, after around fifteen years writing, editing, proofing and holding my breath.
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