Why I've been a bit quiet recently
I don't normally share personal things on my websites, but since I spent the early part of the year promising books and sequels to everyone that I met, and then have still kept you all waiting, it's only fair that I tell you something of what is going on and why there was a delay.
After the unexpected death of my mother in mid 2013, I spent a few months looking after my father and making sure he was alright living alone. He was, and everything settled into a new routine, until mid 2014, when he had a cancer scare. A long series of consultations, tests, and operations then followed, and along with everything else that was going on at the time that left no space in my calendar for writing - even assuming I could concentrate on vampires or crime given what he was going through.
By early 2015 everything was pretty much back to normal. His operations were a success, and we were just waiting for the final results to show that he was clear of it once and for all. In March those tests came back, and as expected, he was clear of the cancer.
On the same day he got those results, we went for quite a long walk around town, and he had a minor collapse. There was apparently nothing to worry about although he did feel a bit woozy for a day or two, but the following weekend was our first convention, the Sci Fi Weekender in north Wales, and he insisted that we went as he would be fine. So we did, and whilst up there I assured everyone that my first priority would be to finish Blood Origins and get on with the next writing project. Nothing was going to get in the way.
Except that on the day we were due to come back, I got a call saying that my father had been admitted into hospital with a possible heart attack.
Cue more weeks of tests, this time with him as an in-patient, as they tried to work out what was going on. Then after a particularly panicky night when they blue-lit him into London from our local hospital when they thought they might need to do an emergency operation, he had a pacemaker fitted two days later and he's back to normal.
Convalescence from all that has been a little slower than he would have liked, but in the last few weeks he has become his old self again. The all-clear from the cancer has been repeated, and his pacemaker is ticking along nicely without him even noticing it's there.
And that of course frees me up to work on the writing at last! There was another short hiccup as all my websites across several businesses fell over in one hit, so I needed to get them all going again first, but now I'm planning the end of Blood Origins, the completion of Ring of Roses, and have great big diagrams of the plot for an as-yet untitled Sci-Fi / Fantasy crossover novel all over the place.
Writing... I'm coming for you!