I apologise for not having posted for a while, but things have been more than a little hectic with one thing and another, and that’s without the added Christmas factor. The last couple of weeks have been one carol concert after another, as well as a million other school things to remember. Don’t get me wrong……..it’s great, I absolutely love this time of year, but two children, at two different schools…….just so many things go on. It’s mindboggling. In between the buying of presents, meeting up with friends, my birthday and all of the school stuff, something really quite exciting happened. It was only a little thing really, but it sent shivers down my spine when it happened. Bentwhistle the Dragon in A Chilling Revelation (my second book) arrived through the post in paperback form. What’s so extraordinary about that? Well, it’s only been available as an ebook since its release in March, so to see a physical copy was really rather nice. It all stems from the fact that the publisher of my first book, Authors Online, went unexpectedly out of business nearly two months ago, owing money not just to me, but to many hundreds, if not thousands, of other authors. It has been incredibly time consuming to sort out, and in some respects that is still ongoing. So there was all of that to be sorted out, which thanks to my wonderful wife, it now is. The stunning looking new paperback of Bentwhistle the Dragon in A Threat From The Past can now be bought from Amazon and the second book should hopefully be available within the next few weeks in that format. Given that all I’ve been trying to do for the last two or three months is finish writing the third book, Bentwhistle the Dragon in A Twisted Prophecy, all of this has been a very unwelcome interruption. But I am getting there. I’m about to start looking at the second edit (I hate editing………it drives me nuts) and I would hope that I’m no further away than a few months from it being ready to be published. This one has been extremely hard work given everything my family has gone through in the last year, with my elder daughter continuing to be very unwell, and only attending her new school sporadically. With Christmas on top of all of that, things at the moment feel very difficult and most certainly not like Christmas at all. Despite having got everyone’s Christmas present, we haven’t been out anywhere on a Christmas shopping trip at all this year. With everything that’s been going on, mainly my daughter’s illness, it just hasn’t been possible. Normally a nice trip out to Southampton, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, or my particular favourite at this time of year, Bath, are usually the places we can be found visiting, with a view to Christmas shopping. But no. It all feels very wrong indeed. At the start of the month we managed a walk along the beach at Bournemouth for about two hours, the kids hunting to see who could find the best shells, after which quite accidentally we stumbled across a wonderful ice rink that had been set up in the Winter Gardens there. Despite the long walk, and having played a high tempo game of hockey the previous day, we conceded to the children’s request and all four of us went skating. It was brilliant! I can thoroughly recommend it if you’re nearby. But that is the only thing remotely Christmas-like we’ve done all December, and even with all the decorations and the tree up, to me, it still doesn’t feel like Christmas. On the positive front, at least we’re not stuck in hospital like we were this time last year.

Anyhow, enough waffling from me. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you get everything you want for Christmas, have a wonderful time, and have a fantastic New Year.