Walk to the Crouch

I went for a walk yesterday and this time took a camera. Last year I took some pictures of a water tower that was in the process of being converted into a home, and this year it appears all but complete.

Sorry, but I am not impressed. To me the additions are not in keeping. It’s a bit like someone wanted to extend their home but couldn’t afford real foundations and matching materials so bolted on a wooden shed. Personally I would have enclosed the space below with curved walls matching the tank of the tower and if I’d wanted to extend above I would have used a matching wall too. Perhaps they wanted to retain the water tower’s … water toweriness? Perhaps they weren’t allowed to do more than they did? What do you think?

Anyway, whoever lives there will certainly have a  good view of the Crouch from the upper balcony thingy.

As usual I walked along the road then down by the river. All was grey and bit naff and I was layered up with clothing to keep warm. Here are a few shots of the river and the boat yard but, as I well know, very little looks good when the sun isn’t shining on it.  

  

It was a good day for me yesterday – surprising considering how grey and horrible it was – only spoiled a little by some negative shit visiting my skull in the evening. Was it because I was tired? I don’t know. I’ll take the day as a victory anyway. I still feel a bit crap this morning but I’m fighting it, aware that I can sometimes feel normal/happy.

Putting out the Rubbish

Interesting things happening inside my skull just lately. Over the last four days I’ve had periods when I hit rock bottom. Yes, though I am a rough tough Essex boy SF writer, there was crying involved. But it was all a bit odd because I would go through that then come back out of it quite quickly. I wondered if my depression was being exacerbated by the dull grey weather here and I was heading downhill, but it just wasn’t like that. I then remembered something and checked up on some of the effects of meditation and there it is. This is just one of the many references to it scattered across the internet:

“…initially, meditation can involve a lot of upheaval as those parts of you that are blocking your inner peace and happiness come to the surface to be released.

This means that there will be times when meditation feels very uncomfortable and you may experience a lot of unpleasant emotions.

You may feel very sad for no particular reason, and find yourself crying at the drop of a hat. You may get irritable, anxious, angry, snappy - but you don't know why. You may feel a tremendous sense of grief, or a thousand other types of emotion.

This is all very normal. In fact, it is highly beneficial, for when you experience such emotional release you know you are healing yourself.”

Being me, I would of course prefer a more factual description but reluctantly accept that this covers it. I do, however, pull back when this stuff starts wandering into spiritualism and mysticism. My brain is a computer that has been running for some time. A lot of rubbish has accumulated, some of the programs are a bit wonky and, since there is no ‘reset to factory settings’ other methods have to be found to get it working properly.

Anyway, yesterday I woke up feeling a bit crap again, but soldiered on and went to my 11.00 o’clock appointment with a hypnotherapist. The session was pretty much what I’d been getting from some of the hypnotic/meditation recordings I was already using but, okay, this was supposed to be a clear out of the accumulated junk in my skull. I drove back from this feeling pretty good, but then crashed in the early afternoon. This lasted to about 4.00 when I started to come up again.

At some point I got up and set to work on that chair I’ve been repairing – that one that’s been in pieces on my living room carpet for a week. I cleaned out its joints and glued and clamped it. As afternoon progressed into evening I wrote in my journal, and read (a book on mindfulness) and played on the internet. As bedtime approached I found myself feeling something I had not felt for some time. I didn’t want to go to bed because I wanted to carry on feeling like I had felt all that evening.

So was this the result of the hypnotherapy or did that just top off what I had already been doing with the recordings? Is it my growing mindful awareness working? Who can say? All I know is that I also feel good this morning and really want this to continue. I have further appointments with the hypnotherapist and some reading to do of something called the ‘Thrive’ program.

But, right now, to work. These books don’t write themselves you know.  

David Davis MP

I’m not even sure how long ago it was now. Four years maybe? While in Crete I received an email from a guy called David Davis. He apparently enjoyed my books and invited me for a beer in the House of Commons. I thought David Davis MP? The guy who fought David Cameron for leadership of the Conservative party and, unfortunately, lost? The guy who was in the territorial SAS and took Bscs in molecular and computer science before becoming a politician? One of the few politicians I have any regard for? Somebody is winding me up. I did, however, do some research and discovering in an interview that some of his favourite books were Iain M Banks’ Culture books I thought there might be some veracity in it. Incidentally I passed this on, I think to Banks’ agent, who then passed it on to him. Banks was apparently much amused.

Returning from Crete that year we just didn’t get round to following up on the offer. I’m not sure why, but things got in the way. The next year, when we returned to Crete, was when Caroline got sick so, that year was out and the one after. This year I got another email and decided I must follow up on it. And yesterday I did.

So, with my head aching from the dregs of a cold, I hopped on the train to Liverpool Street Station and took the tube to Westminster. I arrived about an hour beforehand – I was due to meet him in Central Lobby at about 7PM after some vote. Since I was early I wandered about a bit taking a few photos and looking for a can of coke to wash down the Paracetamol and Ibuprofen I had with me. After failing to find a drink and feeling cold I went into Parliament through the Cromwell entrance. I thought better to wait in the warm, but spent some time in a queue of people going through security checks similar to those you find in an airport.

When I got in I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to wait, but the large numbers of cops and security staff all around were all cheerfully helpful. I ended up sitting in the Central Lobby still wondering if anyone would turn up. He did, I of course recognized him at once and he recognized me. He took me through into a very plush restaurant, where I felt a bit under dressed, and an enjoyable dinner ensued. Conversation spanned books, pilots’ examinations, civil liberties and much else beside. A friendly and agreeable guy.

After this he took me on a tour of the House. I got to stand in the Chamber and elsewhere, saw the Shadow Cabinet room, David Davis’s office. It was all a bit surreal (not my favourite word) and I just wished I hadn’t felt so crap and could have appreciated it more. Thank you the Rt. Honourable David Davis MP.

Oh, some of these pictures are from places where cameras aren’t allowed. I’ve absolutely no idea how that happened. I particularly like the one of me standing by the statue of Margaret Thatcher, mainly because of how it will annoy so many…

Off to the Smoke

Bit of a wasted day today. I got up with all good intentions to do some work, but the cold I have had was still lingering and I felt thick-headed and a bit rough. I had myself a nice breakfast determined to get to it, but then felt incredibly tired. I fell asleep on the sofa for an hour and a half, woke up feeling cold and with a stinking headache. Not much achieved I’m afraid.

But do not despair. My current work has just passed 60,000 words and advances nicely. I just need to find the concentration to work in some further needed plot elements and characters and it should roar along thereafter.

But back to this damned headache. It has occurred at a quite inconvenient time since I’m off to London to meet someone. This is an interesting development that occurred some years ago. I got an email I at first thought must be a hoax, but further investigating showed that it wasn’t. There’s a guy, high up in the British political establishment who likes and has read all my books. He also likes Iain M Banks but I guess that won’t stop those on the left sneering. Anyway, things got in the way of meeting him – obviously – and only now do I have the opportunity. I may write something about this later, if I can and if I feel I should.

On the mental front I’m getting somewhere but not sure where. The meditation has definitely stirred things up inside my skull and the immediate results of that have often been good, but sometimes have been unpleasant. I also went to see a hypnotherapist yesterday for an initial consultation and will be seeing her for my first appointment tomorrow. She seemed to grasp my problems straight away and is confident she can do something.

Onward and upward!    

Shaking Loose.

Interesting experiences with the meditation. It seems that sometimes when I reach a certain depth of relaxation something in my head doesn’t want me to go there and I get a panic attack. However, the mindfulness stuff is helping in that I now manage to divorce myself from the attack and just watch it pass. Sometimes when I feel one coming I can stop it.

Interesting yes, but is this doing me any good?

I do often feel calmer and more in control afterwards and, if I don’t let the anxiety go too far I can kill it with a session. I felt I was getting somewhere until yesterday when the phone rang three times during a session and instigated a panic attack each time. Afterwards I felt really low – everything was black. But, standing back from that, this period wasn’t long lasting.

Certainly this meditation and mindfulness seems to be shaking something loose in my skull. For example, some unpleasant memories have been surfacing. I’m also more aware of my own thought processes and can quickly detect the slide into negativity.

Sometimes wonder if this is like belting a malfunctioning engine with a hammer. Yeah, sometimes it will work, but it’s hardly ideal. I’m shaking things up but there is no guarantee that the shape they then fall into will be a good one … except… I have to take into account my own will and desire to push my mind into a certain shape. Surely this factor is why so many people get a good result from meditation?  

Neal Asher Quotes

Heh. Seems I'm not the only one playing with my quotes. It seems immortality beckons!

Here on Brainyquotes...

Here on Goodreads...

AZQuotes

Quotables

Topfamousquotes Paradisequotes

Writing Update.

Okay, I’m back on it this week – writing my 2,000 words a day. On the first day I made numerous corrections and continued with a piece that was, well, drudgework. The next day I sat down and didn’t feel all that interested in what I had been doing. I was feeling restricted by the plot and following it to a conclusion that is now there vaguely sketched out in my mind. So I escaped the plot.

 

Many times before I’ve mentioned the quote above (and now, since I’ve been running out of writing quotes, I’m making my own which I will scatter here). In my own way I did the same thing. I decided to up the stakes, throw in something new, spice the mix, in fact, disrupt my own plot. And I was quite glad that I did so because, well, the thing has happened. What thing? Well it's when I stray like this and introduce a new element. In other books these elements were the Golgoloth, Sverl, the Jain squad recorded in the Spatterjay virus - the weird shit. 

This time it is something called the Clade. Here's a little sample:

The Clade was a late product of Room 101 and a failure. Its component drones had been made to penetrate prador war machines and seize control of them. But something had happened post-production that caused them to hive together as a single unit. It had been scheduled for destruction but escaped. It was insane, dangerous and, knowing the right buttons to press, a very useful ally...

… which, since I posted it on Facebook has now become this:

The Clade was a late product of Room 101. The drones had been made to penetrate prador war machines and take control of them. But something had happened post-production that caused them to hive together as a single unit, which named itself the Clade. It had been scheduled for destruction shortly after this but, ruthlessly efficient, and amoral, it had murdered its way aboard a departing dreadnought and escaped. It was insane, dangerous and, him knowing the right buttons to press, a very useful ally… 

On day three I took the plot twists a bit further to introduce a strew of red-shirt disposables. This is because I am seeing something wrong now. So consumed have I been by the high tech and the weird, by the powerful non-human characters like the Clade, that I don't have enough weak ones, with their own entangled goals, for contrast. 

It is one of the problems that can develop in both SF and fantasy. If you create superman he has to have people to protect and you have to create kryptonite, else there is not much of a story. If you make everyone superman and kryptonite doesn’t exist, there is no story at all. There must be weakness and the possibility of failure. There must be characters who can suffer and die. 

Here endeth the lesson.

Bad Stories

A bugger. The first 3 days of this week I’ve managed to do my 2,000 words a day. I’ve also been getting in plenty of meditation sessions and this has been making me feel more stable, more in control. My reward this morning for that seems to be a sore throat, phlegmy cough, aching body and a nose full of snot. But no, the world doesn’t work like that.

It is only the human mind that tries to impose some pattern, some logic on disparate events. It is the human mind that links such events together in a story. My mind of course is a lot more practised because I’ve made it my job to link up stuff like this. I write and find new interesting toys as I go along, and impose upon them the order of a story. This ability is the source of my success but it is also a factor contributing to my present fucked up mind.

Take a storyteller. Screw him over with trauma – oh, I dunno, make him watch his wife die of bowel cancer – then step back and watch him fall apart. It’s a bit of a truism that writers are often depressive personalities anyway, so after that scenario depression is guaranteed. The loss can also create anxiety and concomitant panic attacks (especially if he was a heavy drinker and stopped doing that to ameliorate the depression). Sprinkle this with a soupcon of paranoia and you have the perfect recipe for some seriously negative thinking. You have someone telling himself the bad stories and failing to believe in the good ones.

But fuck that shit.

The meditation is working. Directly after each session I feel normal (or at least my version of that). I think more clearly and find myself dismissing trains of thought leading down into the pit. The time when I feel ‘right’ is getting longer and longer. This is all good, but I’ve also made an appointment to see a hypnotherapist to see what else can be done to straighten out my head. Maybe I should see a doctor too though I fear that would lead to pills. But that would be my choice, and I would choose to avoid them.

I will beat this.

On a final note. Though this post might appear a bit negative in itself it is not. Negative is when I don’t write a blog post at all. Negative is when I’m sitting staring into space wishing I felt better or at least in some way functional. And negative is not me getting ready to whack out another 2,000 words! 

Banks and Meditations

Well, I didn’t manage to get to doing any writing as mentioned in my last blog post. Just after finishing that post I checked my emails and saw one from my solicitor. Apparently a deposit I made with her company was paid from the account of Mrs C Asher. WTF? I’d had a joint account with Caroline until more than a year ago when I put it in my name alone. My statements and my card all come with just my name. However, when I looked online I saw that on the main account page they had removed my name and left Caroline’s. I tried to change that online, but when I looked at the bit where personal details were my name was there. I therefore phoned HSBC and of course did not know my telephone banking security number. This resulted in me having to go through a series of robots before talking to a human being. I ended up on hold while my telephone banking was sorted. The human had then misunderstood me and when I finally got my problem through to her I was put onto online banking, and put on hold again. Finally I was told that this would be resolved in seven working days. And there went my writing day.

Another thing that has been using up my time is meditation. Over this last weekend I’ve spent about two hours a day doing this. I feel it is time well spent because, if I can get my mind straight, writing is no problem. When I started out setting myself a daily word count I found it difficult to get 1,000 done in a day. This went up to 2,000 in a day with the time it took me to write them steadily dwindling. If I told you how long, when I am ‘in the flow’, it take me to write 2,000 words you would start yelling at me and asking why I don’t write a book a month. It doesn’t work like that, and I’m not telling you anyway.

The meditation seems to be working. Any of you who have read my posts here or on Facebook will know that I am pragmatic and about as unmystical and irreligious as it is possible to be. I was of course very cynical about ‘mindfulness’ – about meditation. But I am aware of the plasticity of the brain and how it can be changed. I was also desperate for something effective that didn’t involve SSRIs or other drugs and their side effects. Meditation, I have found, relaxes and calms me and this lasts for some time after I stop. While I am doing it I find I can consciously cause a pleasurable relaxation throughout by body. It is also the first time I’ve found an off switch for my brain that hasn’t involved quantities of alcohol that would have a ‘health professional’ wincing. Then this Sunday something else happened.

I've been meditating using various hypnotic recordings. I just used one done by a guy called Benjamin Bonetti that was 55 minutes long. Quite swiftly I was very relaxed, so much so I couldn't feel my hands. Then, about halfway through, I had my first experience with hypnogogia while meditating - a hypnogogic hallucination. Just for a moment everything got really bright, and a blue sky appeared above me with mackerel clouds fleeing across it. My reaction was a brief panic and I switched that off as if clicking a switch. I then instantly regretted doing so because it simply felt good. I want this to happen again. Ain't the mind a strange and wonderful thing?

That’s all for now. I will get on with some writing, then some Greek reading … supposing I don’t have another email I need to react to…

Moving...

Okay, time to get back to work and I’ll ease in with this blog post.

The last few months have been interesting … in the Chinese sense of the curse, ‘May you live in interesting times.’ Mentally I hit a bad spot. For one year and ten months I’ve been fighting against depression with exercise but it obviously wasn’t enough. Only when I came under a new kind of pressure and came in danger of losing something I really cared about did I realise how far I’d gone down. I actually got quite scared because I was crazy for a while, really crazy, not the jokey light-hearted isn’t it good to be a little crazy nonsense you’ll find in photo-shopped Facebook posts. It was from then that I realised I needed more weapons in my armoury for this battle. If you’ve read the posts before this you’ll see where I went – drugs first and now meditation and mental reprogramming. This is all still very much a work in progress…

So, I travelled back to England 13 days ago. Despite the above I decided that I must continue as if I don’t feel like curling up on the sofa, under a blanket, and never coming out again. Some years back Caroline and I had thought about moving. The idea was to be somewhere we didn’t have to get in a car every time we wanted to go out and do something. It never happened but even since her death the thought never left my mind. I also want a change. I’ve never lived in a town before so why not? I chose the Hastings - St. Leonards area of the South Coast because having visited it over many years (to drink far too much red wine with my editor) I know it and like it. And I mean why not take on the supposedly third most stressful thing one can do? What could possibly go wrong?

While in Crete I started looking at properties on Rightmove and the moment I got back I compiled a list of properties I wanted to look at. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted other than a bit more space. I then visited the aforesaid editor and began looking. I had quite a stack of houses and apartments to look at but in the end saw only five. One was the kind of pad a millionaire might live in built into the top of an old school in Hastings – the highest point with a roof terrace giving expansive views all round. Another was so big another buyer was thinking of moving in a grand piano. But I chose something smaller and more discrete: a maisonette with three bedrooms, spacious but also cosy. The day I saw it I thought go for it. I looked at it a second time that day then walked out the door, got on my mobile and put in an offer, which was accepted.

Meanwhile in my house in Latchingdon I’ve been clearing out. I’ve made five trips to charity shops and the tip to get rid of accumulated junk. I’ve had a movers’ rep come in to give me a price on shifting everything. I employed a solicitor to do the conveyancing and provided all the information she needed. And of course I’ve encountered my first episode of lawyerly arse-dragging. Now there is little more I can do to push this through. I was told on one hand that it could take 5 to 6 weeks and on the other that it could take 10 to 12 weeks. I have to be patient, but also prepared to get on the phone whenever necessary. But now I must get on with other things…

First this blog post. Next I’ll open up the 50,000 words of the book I started while on Crete and get back to work on that.  

Be Mindful.

And all change… So, I was suffering from panic attacks, anxiety and depression and started taking an SSRI called Escitalopram. I did notice a rapid change and I did lose the panic attacks and much of the anxiety. However, then there were the side-effects. I’m not going to to detail them here - you can go look them up yourselves - suffice to say they were unacceptable. I read up on the full gamut of these, how long it can take one to get off the drug and the possible withdrawal symptoms. I didn’t like what I was reading at all.

So I quit.

I was taking 10mg a day for 13 days. The next day I took 5mg saving the next quarter pill for the next day, but in the end I threw it down the plug hole. To then counter what I expected to happen to me I started on mindfulness, meditation and relaxation recordings. I didn’t have much hope for these and expected to just have to grit my teeth and get through. However, I was very surprised. My first 10 minutes of ‘Headspace’ removed the feeling of stress from my guts. A free Paul McKenna relaxation recording put me into something near to a trance. And I felt good afterwards.

There are other things I’ve been doing which have probably helped too. I’ve been drinking an awful lot of tea and the caffeine doesn’t help with anxiety etc. I reduced this intake to zero on the first day. I instead drank camomile and peppermint tea - both of which have positive effects on the whole depression fuck up scenario. And I’ve continued, considerably reducing my caffeine intake.

In retrospect I see that the SSRI probably brought me up enough so I could use these techniques. Withdrawal has consisted of night sweats - the opposite of one of the side-effects which was feeling incredibly cold sometimes - and maybe other symptoms I can’t really distinguish from my previous problems. I wake in the morning with panic attacks and anxiety but these have been reducing over the last three days. They go once I get up and get moving. A session with headspace of some other form of meditation usually clears the last of it. 

I’ve also been thinking of the reasons behind my recent fall. Sure, the death of my wife Caroline pushed me right down, but I didn’t realise how far down until I came under pressure to do more than just get through each day, and be more than just a survivor. I realise I’ve been on the edge of a precipice for the best part of two years. 

But also there’s something else that has occurred to me. For a good portion of my life I have been a heavy drinker who sneered at unit limits (I still do really) and would often binge. However, age has given me the two-day hangover, and drinking doesn’t go well with being depressed. I had to stop for months after Caroline’s death because drinking took me down and then I dropped lower still with the hangover. The hangovers and depressive effects have been building in me an aversion to alcohol. I am pretty close now to giving it up completely. But here’s the rub. I’ve lost the crutch that was alcohol and this in itself can be a cause of depression, anxiety and panic attacks. And what about smoking? This was another crutch I used. In the last two years I’ve become a vaper. Sure I get the nicotine but you get more than that from cigarettes…

Anyway. I will continue with the mindfulness/meditation. I’ve realised I do not want to get on the drugs bandwagon. I will control my mind and I will not let it control me.

Go steady out there. It’s dangerous.

Go Drugs!

So, I didn’t wait until I got back to England to start on the antidepressants. I got tired of feeling like shit and decided I must do something about it now. Past experience of depression has led me to believe that my problem is the usual one i.e. lack of serotonin. When I had before I tried everything but going to the doctor. I tried St. John’s Wort, B vitamins and stuff like that, but what really worked was 5-htp (to quote: a metabolic intermediate for the biosynthesis of neurotransmitters like serotonin, melatonin and tryptophan)  Anyway, I’ve been reading up on various drugs and their effects and from what I read it struck me that the newer SSRIs were pretty good. Also talking to someone who deals with prescribing them helped me come to a decision.

From this person I was talking to I got the name of an antidepressant she thought best for my problem; escitalopram. I wrote this down on a piece of paper and went to see a doctor in Koutsouras. He checked me over and then sorted out a prescription for me. I even got to use my health card and reduce the cost. I got the drug I suggested and Xanax to deal with the worst of the panics. He also lined me up for some blood tests and a heart check which I haven’t been able to get to yet.

On the first day I took half a Xanax, which very quickly started to work on the tight stressed feeling in my chest. In the evening I took 10mg of escitalopram. Now, subsequently, I have heard from people that it doesn’t work for them, or it takes months to work, or you get worse before you get better. Others told me that it kicked in in a few days or, usually, 10 to 14 days. I felt better immediately on the next day. The stressed feeling was coming down and when I had a sleep on my sofa I woke up for the first time in a while without panic attacks. Whether this was still due to the Xanax, or the other drug working, or due to the fact that I felt good about actually doing something, I don’t know. Don’t care much either.

The next day I felt slightly shaky in the morning, as if from too much caffeine, but that quickly passed. While in the local town of Sitia, waiting in a hairdresser’s for someone, I suddenly realised I felt good. I felt calm, confident, no stress, no anxiety or nerves. Later this transformed into a euphoria. Everything looked brighter and I seemed to be seeing my surroundings more. I in fact felt a little manic, a little high. Later I went down a little but not much.

In subsequent days the panic and anxiety left me. I’ve felt a little low on occasions but I think this is more due to some present circumstances than the chemicals in my brain, or maybe I haven’t been on the drug long enough to lose the depression yet. I don’t know. We will see. In the mornings I feel quite sleepy while in bed and often during the day too. When I get up and have some tea I feel a little shaky too, but briefly. Last night was my first 20mg dose so it’ll be interesting to see what occurs. 

Go drugs!     

Not a Happy Bunny

Updating again in here. As predicted the weather turned nasty from Thursday (it is Monday today). I managed my 2,000 words a day up until that day then on Friday only managed 1,000. At this point I started crashing with panic attacks and depression. The weather doesn’t help since I’m always better when the sun is shining (aren’t we all) but it’s becoming increasingly evident that I’m only keeping this shit at bay with exercise. 

During the last days of last week I felt I needed a rest to give my body time to recover. One of the reasons I felt I needed a rest was because of my arms frequently feeling heavy and numb after a sleep, which I assumed was from the kayaking. Big mistake. I ended up with about a day and a half of panic attacks rolling out one after another. Also, my arms went numb during this, which I now realise has bugger all to do with the kayaking (this numbness can be part of the panic attack thing). Annoyingly these confined me to the house all Saturday and most of Sunday when they were having the kazani next door. 

On Sunday I got dragged out by my neighbour to join in. I was frightened to drink any alcohol at first because I know it contributes to panic attacks. I then thought fuck it and drank raki and ate brisolas. I did feel better until about 8 when I headed inside and slept for a few hours. 

Today I was okay until I felt tired and took a snooze on the sofa. Again I woke up with panic attacks, but not as harsh as before. The rain had stopped today so at midday I headed off into the mountains for a long walk. Yeah, I feel better, better enough to have written a bit more, but things are still not right. I have been fighting this for the best part of two years and I think I’m losing. When I get back to England in the middle of next month it will finally be time to go and see a doctor. Give me drugs or even give me ECT, I don’t care. I just want this to fucking stop.

Sorry about this post being a bit of a downer. Not a happy bunny today. Anyway, 40,000 words done on the new book if that's any consolation!  

30,000 Words Done

Okay, time for an update here. The weather has turned a bit nicer so it’s been warm enough down in Makrigialos for kayaking, and not yet cold enough up here in the mountains for me to light my stove. Well, I did light it a couple of times but that was due to lack of adaptation on my part, and lack of food inside me to fuel the burners. The house temperature never got below 21, which is what I have my heating set at back in England.

But kayaking, or walking, or trips down to the coast have not been my main aim over the last weeks. I’ve been aiming to write my 2,000 words a day 5 days a week no matter what and that I’ve achieved. This weekend I have 30,000 words of a new book done (first draft obviously) and I’m pretty damned happy about that. Since my books thus far have ranged from 125,000 to 175,000 words that’s a respectable chunk. One more week at this rate and I can say I’m a quarter of the way there. But are they good words? Is this good writing? That’ll be for you to judge.

The ideas are kicking in now. I’ve been teasing readers on Facebook with some mentions of what I’m doing. Thus far I’ve mentioned Old Captains, Dragon, Orlandine, assassin drones, Jain tech, a wormship and a legate… Those of you who have read all of my stuff might get some intimation of where I am with this. I’m starting to see that maybe there’ll be three or more books in this but, for now, I’ll just write and run with the story, and its inevitable twists.

So all is good here in Papagiannades!

Coming Through the Fog

It has again been a while since I’ve written anything in here so time for an update. The weather here is changing and I’m more inclined to walking than heading down to Makrigialos to use my kayak. I’ve also reached the stage where I’m getting a bit bored with the thing — like I’m going down there to use it almost out of a sense of duty.



As the season progresses my chilli plants are producing and I’m making plenty of chilli sauce. I also made some quince jelly. Earlier on I spent time repairing some chairs, renovating a cupboard, plastering a wall … but in the end none of these things are what I am supposed to be doing! None of these things are what most of you who are reading this come here to find out about.


Excuse me if I’m repeating myself … well, fuck that. Suck it up. When Caroline died I was well on top of things on the writing front having written the three books of the Transformation trilogy before I even needed to deliver the first. I’d reached a high point while doing these — banging out the words daily and thoroughly enjoying the process. Then, having my face rubbed in harsh reality, I lost all interest in fiction. I stopped reading books completely. I watched a few daft things on DVD but mostly watching TV was of no interest either. As for writing … I tried it for catharsis in the first year but that just fucked me up even further. Thereafter the thought of doing anything at the keyboard other that the ephemera of Facebook and Twitter just stressed me out.


The reality of my situation is that all the walking and kayaking are to keep depression at bay. All the other things I do, like the chilli sauce, repairing furniture and other items, the gardening and occasional jobs in other people’s houses, are easy tasks that don’t require me engaging my brain. The problem with ‘engaging my brain’ is that it starts thinking, and thought has regularly taken me to places I didn’t want to be over the last couple of years. Seriously, you come out of grief into a stage where you are managing, but never realise just how screwed up you are until either you or some situation puts you under pressure.


But other reality has impinged. I had to go back to my keyboard to go through the editing of War Factory (the second book in the Transformation trilogy). My publisher also asked for a few extras which actually required a bit of creativity from me. I dreaded these but was duty-bound to do them. And when I did them I found the task wasn’t so bad. I could do it. The engine had shut down for a while but when I turned the key it started right up again.


Another thing that has impinged is the steady support of fans — their love of what I had done before and their hope that I’ll do more. I started to feel guilty inside my cloudy little world. Fucking hell. I’m lucky to have been able to take off the time I have to wallow in my own misery. Plenty of people have gone through what I’ve been through and have to head back to work a week or so later because they have a mortgage to pay.
Due to all the above, and some other things that have happened this year, mainly to do with my mind beginning to chew on itself again in way I seriously could not allow, I decided I must reclaim at least one of the things I’d lost. I made the decision that once I’d packed off War Factory to Macmillan it was time for me to just sit down and write. Maybe this is also because I’m reaching the purported average time to get over the death of a loved one, of two years. I don’t know.


My intention was to just let rip; to just write and write and see what started to come together. I didn’t expect much of myself. I started with the idea of writing for one hour every day and steadily increasing. It didn’t work out that way. On the first day I wrote 600 words, but on the next I wrote 1,400 words. This second day was a Monday. On the Tuesday I did 2,000 words then every day thereafter until Friday. I then realised I had just done what was a full working week for me while writing the Transformation trilogy, of 10,000 words a week — I aim to write 2,000 words a day for 5 days a week. The next week I did 10,000 again, with just a catch up 1,000 on the ensuing Saturday.
At one point I did have a moment of panic. Where was I going with this, what was it all about? This lasted about an hour. I told myself to shut up and just keep going. Next, like boulders looming out of the fog, I started to see the shape of something, I started to see where I was going. The landscape now lying before me grows wider and wider as the fog clears. It is strewn with wrecked spaceships and Jain technology, picked through by Old Captains, war drones and Golem. Overhead I think I see a dragon sphere, but it is not clear because of the glare of an accretion disc, the space battles and maybe an exploding world or two.

Next week, another 10,000 words. I’ll maybe get a head start on them today…         

War Factory US Edition

Here's the full original artwork for the cover of War Factory published in the USA by Night Shade Books...

Looking good!

Sauce Two.

Right, while planning out the various things I was going to do today, I picked my latest crop of chillies. I then weighed the total and realised I had enough for one batch of chilli sauce (check the recipe 2 posts back).

As a result my planned hour of Greek reading, my aim to write out something, and my intention to head down to Makrigialos all went out the window. Because it was time to make sauce. 

    

This is one lot made, though I suspect I’ll be boiling it all again and adding cornflour because it’s not quite thick enough.

Meanwhile, for those who come here for news about writing, I dispatched War Factory back to Macmillan. I’m told there’s yet another load of editing then to be done… *sigh*

Chilies chillies chillies…