New Year and all that

Christmas is over. I guess you already knew that. That little spark of a smile and goodwill that emerged briefly in my stubborn, middle-aged and bad-tempered mind has disappeared and probably won't be seen for ten and a half months again.

Thank god.

Seriously though, I know Roy Wood's done well out of the concept but if it really was Christmas everyday how bad would that get? I'd end up overdosing on cheese and chocolate within a month, kids would emerge uneducated, obese and spoilt and Chitty Chitty Fucking Bang Bang would be on every other week. No, bad idea, Roy. Bad idea.

So to the highlights of last year.

I finished writing my first ever book, Spies Lies and Pies. Despite trying for twenty years, I finally finished it. Agents and publishers didn't like it, but what do they know? I also wrote my second book, Too big To Fail, which is now locked in limbo, waiting to be rejected for the Terry Pratchett/Transworld competition.

On a brighter note, I had a few short stories accepted Need more blood being one of them. Detective Inspector Britwell's first outing, Pleading and Bleeding will be published in Out of the Gutter magazine and just before New Years I found out one of my short stories will be in an anthology in the summer. So not all bad. In fact, quite good.

This year I'll hopefully finish the partly written un-named failed assassin book and submit both that and Too Big To Fail to some agents. I also got another idea over Christmas. A brand new story starring DI Britwell, this one has enough plot to be a full length book. I'm tempted to start writing this first, but poor old Jim, the failed assassin, has waited too long already to be written, so he definitely comes next.

Finally, 282 people from 14 countries visited this little blog over the last year (most of them undoubtedly by mistake). Thanks to all who stopped by, especially the ones from Ecuador, Croatia and the United Arab Emirates. The most searched term that led to this blog was, surprisingly, "children swimming in pits filled with brine".


So anyway, happy new year y'all.