I disappeared, some of you may not have noticed, but I did. ‘Why?’ I hear you say…well, many reasons. The first being I rather stupidly went out and got drunk and pissed off with things. Then I had ‘a moment’ where I thought that I would just deactivate my Facebook account and see what happened. It then turned in to a ‘lets see if I can get on with life without going on Facebook for an entire week’. Which actually turned out to be pretty productive. I managed to get a lot of writing done, even in the evening, which had previously been reserved for ‘relaxing’. (read: sitting in front of the computer staring at Facebook and chatting to friends). I won’t lie, it was pretty difficult. Trying to manage band stuff without the use of Facebook pages proved fairly difficult too. That was one of the main reasons I eventually reactivated it. Interestingly, while it was deactivated, someone actually searched for my bloke by putting my name in Google. Which was very much the desired effect. The only problem with that was that there was unfortunately nothing to read. So they searched again.
I tried to write this blog then, but then one of the other reasons for my quietness came up…I moved home. As some of you will know, this is possibly one of the most time consuming and tiring things that an adult human can do. In fact I’m currently physically and mentally exhausted and I still have a lot of stuff left to move from the old place, as well as various address changes, etcetera, to sort out. While this has been going on, I have been preparing for taking up more lecturing responsibilities at work, which starts as of Monday. As part of this, I’ve given up my Supervisor role, as I simply won’t have time when teaching to fulfil those two roles. Both this transition periods have been the main reason I’ve barely managed to get any writing done the last week. This is also the first blog I’ve written in…two weeks?
Up to that point writing had been going pretty well. During my moment writing pretty much helped me escape, in fact it’s often about escapism for me. Plus the fact that I love telling stories. I’m still pretty ‘pissed off’ with things, but I love my new home and the writing thing is going well (when I have time for it). I managed to fully outline and plot my first full short story. Most of the prose is written, I just need to fill in some gaps and edit. Then I will be looking for some test readers (rather than posting it on here!) If you’re interested then please get in contact.
I also managed to get hold of a Gold ticket (which was either an extra release or put back on sale) for the Black Library weekender. As part of that, I will get to have dinner with the authors attending, which will be great for getting advice, although I am going to be incredibly nervous! I will also get to have a chat with one of their editors as well as show them one of my stories for them to give me feedback and advice on. All in all a pretty amazing opportunity which I could not resist and could not waste. I don’t know what will come of it, but it will be useful in some way, shape or form.
Tonight, I also met the great British Science Fiction author Peter F. Hamilton. He was incredibly interesting and told us a great deal about how he got started. Peter didn’t start writing till he was 26 and didn’t get published till he was 29. So I still have a few years on him yet, which as you can imagine is greatly encouraging. I also had the opportunity to ask him for any advice he had for aspiring writers, which once again was a great opportunity.
Well I hope you are all well, especially those of you searching for me.
I may not have time to write another blog for a few days, but I will try my best and once again, thanks for reading!
M.J. Hollows/Michael J. Hollows - Author/Lecturer 