An ultra-quick blog post this week because I’m rushed off my little tootsies.

Right then, three week ago I promised you a progress report at some point and here it is. In a nutshell, I haven’t made as much progress with the next novel as I would have liked to have done but I have made good progress none-the-less.

There are now 5 chapters in the bag (first drafts) and I am so chuffed with the way the story is panning out. Joe is coming out with some absolute pearlers of his limited vocabulary and Lady Stark-Raven is as mad as a suitcase full of semolina. I think she might actually be losing the plot. It’s ok, I’ll reign her in a bit.

There are several new characters in this book including not one, but two, antagonists and a rather fetching young woman who has quite an effect on our hero. I wouldn’t go as far as love interest because Joe only has eyes for Meg Morrison but this new lady has certainly caught his eye.

The antagonists are perhaps the most unusual thing about the new characters. I really do wish I could go into deeper detail about them but that would be unwise of me at this juncture. What I can promise you is that it is my full intention to get this book into your hands at some point in the Autumn.

I don’t want to set myself any more time goals or targets; I just want to get the bloody thing written.

There have been a few calls and pulls on our time recently but that’s just this wonderful life getting in the way. We all have our responsibilities. However, on a health front I do have some rather good news. My weight and my BMI are both down and my blood pressure is absolutely bang on. I had my annual medical with the nurse yesterday you see and I was so pleased with myself when I left.

Another amazing thing, which must be due to the weight loss, is that the nurse managed to get blood out of my left arm at the first stab. I usually come out of these sessions looking like a second hand dartboard with puncture wounds all over my limbs. In fact, pretty much on every occasion for the last five years or more, they’ve had to extract the blood from the back of my hand, which, as you can no doubt guess, ain’t none too pleasant. But no, yesterday, straight into the left arm and three vials of my most vital of fluids were filled to the brim in no time at all.

And there was one other thing that came out of my medical that I have no explanation for. I was measured for height and it seems that I am one whole inch taller than I was at this time last year. And the nurse checked and rechecked a few times but there was no denying it, I’m now officially, on record, as being six foot tall. For years I have struggled with the shame of being five foot eleven inches. Now I can hold my head up high and call myself a strapping six-footer. Well, maybe not strapping. Overlapping perhaps. But a six-footer all the same.

Right then, that’s all the news from Blessham Hall. Back to that 8^th novel.

Speak soon xx