So, it's the new year, and the weather's been lovely so we've had a few barbeques and dinner parties. At one of them, someone asked me whether being a writer was like in the movies, which she characterised as follows:

So, it's now 2015 - Happy New Year to you, reader! - and I'm reloading most of my CDs onto iTunes. Before you condemn this as some kind of new procrastination activity (now that I've deleted Minesweeper from my computer), I have valid reasons: I originally uploaded my CD collection on 128 bitrate which has led to some thin sounding reproduction when my ipod is hooked to the stereo, which (here's the clincher) annoys my good wife. I'm doing it for her. That's not procrastinating, not in the slightest...

It's THAT time of year: I finished the manuscript for Ascendant's Rite (Book Four of the Moontide Quartet), right on deadline day - 30th November 2014 - and sent it off to Jo Fletcher, my Publisher-Editor-Goddess. Job done . . . sort of. Now comes the waiting!

They say Art is never finished, just abandoned. I'd go along with that (he says, making the lofty inference that what he does is art!).

When I had just arrived in India in 2007, my plan was to complete a financial planning diploma, to try and stay current in financial services (though I'd just sent a manuscript to a publisher and didn't know it then but it was soon to be accepted and change my priorities). I was sitting at the computer one morning, my wife Kerry on whose ticket we were in India was at her office (which happened to be 100 yards away on the same compound), and I was checking the news before knuckling down to do some study.

Hello! A couple of weeks ago, the translator for the German edition of Scarlet Tides got in touch with quite an interesting question about the story. He'd picked up that in the prehistory of Urte (the world of the Moontide series), an asteroid strike destroyed an isthmus linking the western continent of Yuros to the Eastern Ahmedhassa/Antiopia. I'd dated that at 1500 years before the action of the Moontide Quartet, and he was asking: "Isn't that too recent? Wouldn't everyone know about it? Wouldn't there be visible traces", which are really good questions.

Greetings! This is my self-published blog (I've guest-blogged on a couple of other websites in the past, but have until now not written anything for my own website.). But I think it might be worthwhile sharing some thoughts of my writing as the audience for the Moontide Quartet steadily grows. If you've found yourself this far in, please have a read and I hope you enjoy and find it interesting. Here we go...