So, at 05:24 this morning, The Silver Archive: Sapphire And Steel Vol. 1 was delivered tothe editor

I'd been up 22.5 hours, which included the second of two eye surgeries in the space of 48 hours. So, I feel a weekend off coming on.

Time to fulfil a regular New Year tradition and write a least a line of something new as a start as a I mean to go on thing... Though this time it's a couple of short pieces anyway, so...

Of course, now the newly-nodded book will need a new title, as the original one referenced an element that's no longer in it.... And we know how I am with titles... Not that I haven't thought of one, but I expect to get lynched for it... We#ll see what my co-author thinks..

Out tomorrow! Go Buy!

https://ospreypublishing.com/fortune-and-glory

Also from Amazon, bookstores, etc...

Trying to think of a military history subject I know enough about to write about, but - and here's the catch - which *hasn't* been done lots and recently...

YESTERDAY-

So, went to bed about 8:30 AM, after book-finishing all-nighter, woke up about 11:30.. Feeling semi drunk or that irritating-stoned rather than relaxing stoned, due to only 3 hours sleep in 48 hours, and people in town and supermarket (which had neither £4 keyboard nor coffee machine - there’s a bit missing from mine) being moronic zombies…. Which means I’m not up to cooking stuff for tomorrow’s Shire day, but will hopefully be up for shooting longbow and poking people with swords. And I feel some model-building and Tumblr giffing coming on.


TODAY-

Well, the “shoot longbow and poke people with swords” plan didn’t go so well - having tossed and turned all night (can’t get my right arm joints comfy) and rushed out without breakfast, I only hit the target with two arrows out of 18 (and I think Yannick Normandy​
will confirm I’ve never shot *that* badly) and keeled over. (certain people laughing behind me didn’t help, even though they probably weren’t laughing at me) So I got sent home to go back to bed, which, unusually for me, I did. (at least I woke in time to catch the Gand Prix only missed the first four laps)

So, having embarrassed myself this way, I can olnly conclude that either a) the spring and summer of altenating injury and illness has left me more broken than I thought, or b) I just can’t do the long strings of 48 hour shifts while skipping proper meals (the last bit of book was fuelled by dy conflakes and last year’s chocolate Xmas tree decorations that i found at the back of the cupboard) the way I could five or ten years ago…

Apparently I need an actual rest to be fit to have a holiday break… (Raglan week should have been it, but of course was the fighting off anaphylactic shock week)

Dammit, I want to shhot, and fence, and build models, and read books, and play my new guitar, and hang out with people who are all hundreds - at least - of miles away… But I also don’t quite know how to not work, cos my urge is to start typing on the next book…

There's some truth to that accusation of being unreliable and untrustworthy. I never used to be, always had a reputation for reliability, bot professionally and personally - ask any editor still waiting on a late manuscript from me. What happened?

Professionally's the easy one: Had an agent, he didn't do any actual represantation of me, killed my career, then what I got it back I way overcommitted. When the contract famine ends, you feast on too much, which you'd get away with if not for the external factors that mess you up.

Personally, the last two years... bereavement, betrayal, family issues Lesley​ being... traumatised is the word, by an incident at work in late 2013), more family illness and being a carer, rounded off with bereavement again. All with, as I'm sure you've noticed, a side order of guilt It's been pretty stressful. And of course that also affects the professional commitments too.

Feels a bit weird now that the main thread of it is rounded off too. But at least they are rounded off. No more carer commitments. Time to not take on any more commissions until the backlog is cleared to manageability. Time for non-working hours to be me hours. I mean, I have a backlog of models to build, I haven't read a book for pleasure in about four months (and this is most unlike the usual me!). So, time to get me back, and not sacrifice myself to pursuers. Things will happen when they happen.

So, I'm going to have to restart the year's "Recreational Reading" count from scratch, after the book I've been recreationally reading - The Black Count, by Paul Reiss - just got turned into a professional research for work thing, while I'm still reading it...

Well, then... A certain Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is heading back to the front, and I'm writing the third book of this set of four, called The Schizoid Earth...

http://www.kasterborous.com/2014/12/legend-begins-colonel-lethbridge-stewart-new-adventures/

Today I've been mostly writing about El Dorado (the mythical city) and Cibola (also a mythical city).

I should probably also start thinking about the storyline for a novel of which all I can tell you about right now is the mysterious title: The Schizoid Earth...