New Years Blues!

Hi Guys,

Well I meant to start this year off with a bang (no not the one half of you are thinking of!). But things haven't gone quite according to plan. At least not my plan!

Still, there is some good news. Manx' first draft is done, and as soon as I've finished the first draft of my current space opera - sadly it can't be titled Lost in Space even though that precisely describes the plot - I'll move into the starting edit.

Manx is the story of a man who can talk to cats - but who would want to! A cat who's really above all the troubles in her servants' lives and just wants to be fed and groomed and maybe have a nice shoe or two to take a dump in! And a three eyed woman who can see into other realms. After all what would be the point of a third eye if it didn't let you do that! I suspect the book cover is going to be a problem!

The bad news is that summer has finally arrived in Rotorua, and as I sit here typing, I'm more or less dissolving in front of the keyboard - which may or may not be melting. It's hard to tell when your eyeballs are sweating!

Anyway, I'll try to keep going through the heat and the perspiration. And I'll bravely ignore the cries of my neighbors as they discover that I'm typing in the nude! (Hysterical blindness isn't a real thing!!!) And I hope you all have a great year.

Cheers, Greg.

Hi Guys,

Just a short note to let you know how things are progressing. I just realised that it's been over a month since my last post and I've been somewhat remiss in my duties to this blog.

Days of Light and Shadow is continuing to be written, but every day that I write it seems to get longer and longer. The pains of being a free form writer as opposed to someone who writes to a plan.

Currently its over two hundred k and though I think I've got the back of it broken, there are still another ten chapters at least to write before it goes through its first edit and proofing. At some stage I have the very real fear it may have to become two books simply because of its size.

Other than that life goes on. The back of winter has finally been put behind us, something my toes are infinitely grateful for. There have been far too many frosts this year, and my power bill will be unthinkably high. But of course with the advent of spring comes the storms, and we've had a few of those already. One of them tore my gardens apart pretty thoroughly.

One of my cats, Brutus decided to develop a psychosomatic injury. Maybe he's playing the sympathy card. All I know is that he started limping very badly, a couple of weeks back. And as always it was on a weekend. Naturally being the sap that I am I took him to the vet on a Sunday - why is it always on the weekends? An x-ray and two hundred and some dollars later he was sent home as having a sprain. Four days later, having recovered not at all, and having had my neighbours at my door worrying about him, I took him to my own vet. Another x-ray, another two hundred and some dollars, and this time some pills, anti-inflammatories, and he was sent home with 'just a sprain'.

This time however, when I parked the car in the garage, he decided to do a little running away, he's not a natural driver. And as I watched him sprinting away I suddenly realised that he didn't have the slightest trace of a limp! Since then it's been on again off again. He limps when he wants to as far as I can tell, usually when he's after food, playing on my sympathy. I'm thinking he's been taking acting classes behind my back!

So that's been my life of late. And sorry, I now don't have a date for when Days of Light and Shadow will be ready.

Cheers, Greg.