I have a sudden and overwhelming sense of urgency dear reader. A desperate and impassioned urgency to get the new novel published as soon as I can. Why? Well, gather round my pretties and I’ll explain.

To date I have four published novels, all of which I’m extremely pleased with and rightly so. They all have their own style and nuances but are all equally funny. To ask me to choose my favourite between them would be like asking a doting mother to choose between her four children. I love them all. The problem I have is that there are only four of them. I need more.

Every Monday I produce a podcast also entitled Blessham Hall (you may perhaps have heard it) and so far there are 43 episodes including today’s. During my podcasts I have several different sections such as My Four-Penneth Worth and Joke of the Week, all of which are great fun to write and record. The bulk of each podcast, however, is given over to the weekly subject all of which revolve around my writing. That means that over 43 podcasts I must have devoted at least 10 on average to each one, with a few other subjects thrown in here and there.

Recently, over the last four weeks, I have been running a series called Nackajory (I know, I know, an obvious and tenuous play on words) where I have read excerpts from my four books. Nackajory has been well received by my listeners but now I have to think of something else for next week.

Over the course of the last year I’ve delved into the characters, origins and backgrounds of all my books and tried so hard to keep it fresh and new each time. The trouble is that there is only so much you can say about each one and I’m at the stage where I need a new one to talk about. And therein lies my sense of urgency. I’ve got to get the damn thing finished. God, I wish I’d started self publishing years ago.

So, health permitting, I want to try and get it written, edited, proofed and published by the end of May ideally and then I’ll have plenty to wax lyrical upon. The truth is, I hate the feeling of urgency. I prefer to take things as they come. But now I’ve set myself on this path I have to keep going. So look out for book number 5, called – no, sorry, I’m not giving that away yet, coming to you soon (hopefully).

You can listen to my latest podcast here: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-jeb8z-11cf990

In a week where the UK has been soundly lashed not once, not twice but thrice by a series of violent and devastating storms, we here at Blessham Hall have come through it in stoical fashion. As the twigs and branches flew past our windows and the rain made leaving the Hall a damn near impossibility due to flooding of Noah-esque proportions we made the best of it and hunkered down in our humble abode and saw it out. Not only that but we also transformed the Hall into a place of both beauty and practicality.

How?

We decorated the living room for one thing and turned one of the west wing bedrooms into an office that’s how.

And I have to say it is a rare joy to be able to work in the new office. Not only have be bought new office furniture (well, when I say new I mean antique!!!) but we also benefited from a free (yes, gratis) office chair from the good people at Second Time Around in the goodly nearby town of Settle. Ok, ok, they where going to scrap it and had it in the back of their van when they delivered the new (second hand but mint) couch to us. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I seized upon said office chair and am merrily swivelling on it as I write this very blog post.

Having a proper office to work from has many benefits, not least of which is the absence of distractions. When I worked from the dining table I was constantly up and down throwing monkey nuts to the squirrels or being tempted by yet another cup of rooibos and maybe a quick snack or heeding the call of the couch for a quick ten minutes; which would then turn into half an hour. Being office based has removed all that and made me focus more on what I’m doing. Yes, the chair is in the latter stages of it’s life but it’s comfortable for now and being in front of a north facing window means that I’m not blinded by the Sun and closing curtains which I always feel is a depressing thing to do on blue-sky days.

And, of course, now that all the work has been done on the Hall and that we have a designated work area I can plough headlong into that next novel that has been itching away at me. Sorry, it’s taken so long but with our enforced exile in January and all the restructuring work I just haven’t had time. But now… now that my portly arse is balanced nicely on an office chair and I have trees to stare at in front of fluffy clouds and swooping birds the inspiration should flow like a well-poured pint of Guinness (there’s a clue for you) and I’m planning completion of it by some time in June. Then it’s all about promotional activity again but I’m getting increasingly less concerned about that these days, especially now I have an office to work from.

Loving the office? You bet!

I’m getting better, that’s what I keep telling myself. As an independent author, who at the moment can’t afford the luxury of editors and cover designers, I have to do a lot of what I do myself. And I’m pleased to say that I’m definitely improving on the editing and proof-reading front. My latest novel, the hilarious laughter fest Mutch Wants Moor, has only got four typos in it. Something that will take a mere hour or so to put right and re-release. And to be fair they’re not that bad either and a more lazy individual than I might not even bother. But I know they’re there and it will bug me so I’m going to correct them anyway.

Wind the clock back to 2019 and my first book Ah Boy! It was a very different experience then. I was as green behind the gills as they come when it came to all that proofing and editing malarky. I found all that far more intimidating than actually writing the book in the first place. As a result, mistakes were made and I’m not ashamed to admit it. A great many mistakes as it happens. I’m talking typos, grammar, punctuation the works. If there was a crime against publishing then I committed them all. You name it and I did it. But as I say in my defence I was as naïve as could be. As naïve as Evian backwards in fact (groan).

How Ah Boy! sold so well and garnered such favourable reviews is beyond me. However, it did do quite well and over time those mistakes kind of got under my skin like a tick. They didn’t keep me awake at night or anything like that but knowing they were there and what to do about them was a constant source of irritation to me. And this month, I finally decided that it was high time to do something about it.

Mutch Wants Moor is my fourth full length novel and along with the other two (The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham and The Pheasants Revolt) I have grown as a writer and as an editor/proof-reader. I’ve learned new tricks and tips with each passing book and I felt that I was now in a good place to turn Ah Boy! from being some scruffy yet funny little oik of a book into the highly polished comic pearl of laughter and hilarity it always should have been.

I re-read it with such scrutiny and took time and effort over each and every sentence. Initially I began counting the typos and errors but by the time I was half way through it and had already reached fifty I stopped counting and just applied myself to the task in hand in the certain knowledge that all would be well in the end. I also used my skill with Adobe Photoshop to re-jig the cover and I’m pleased with the outcome of that as well.

On Friday I resubmitted Ah Boy! (yes the exclamation mark is necessary) to KDP for publication with a feeling of achievement and a sense of relief that that horrible little tick of awareness that had been happily burrowing away under my skin has, at last, been dug out and squished. Writers, in whatever capacity, will always make typos. It can’t be helped; hey, you may even find one on this blog post, but I hope not. I’m just glad that in the case of Ah Boy! it has been a positive experience going through them and one that I have grown from again.

It is my profound hope that this inspires at least one person to ditch the rat race and follow their dreams. If it does, then 44 years of shit will have been worth it.

I’ve been trying to pinpoint my main reason for wanting to be prolific in my writing. I mean, I’ve written and self-published four full length novels since October 2019 and I’m currently in the planning stages of my fifth with a further six in the proverbial pipeline. Could it perhaps be my age? I am almost 56 years old although age is no barrier when it comes to being an author. Could it be my health which at best could be described as poor. As I type this my arms feel like they are being wrenched out of their sockets by a deranged, crack-addled, psychotic baboon. Could it be that I’m just no good at anything else and so it’s the only option left to me. Possibly…

But I think I’ve got it. It’s… Frustration. No, I’m not obsessed with the 70’s board game, I’m talking about real deep-rooted, inner frustration.

You see, my life up to the age of 44 was, well, for want of a better word – shit! And I’m angry about that you see. The thing is, I’m not a strong person, or rather wasn’t. Mentally I mean. In my younger days I would have easily wrestled any challenger to the ground such was my physical strength but what I possessed in great quantities muscularly I lacked when it came to spinal fortitude. Ok, ok, I’ll keep a long story short. I wish I’d told more people to ‘FUCK OFF!!!’ There, I’ve said it. I’m talking ex-bosses, ex-teachers, ex-in-laws, ex-wives, ex-lovers, ex-friends, ex-colleagues and a whole raft of ex-pisstakers. I would love a time machine so that I can go back and royally fuck them all off. One-at-a-fucking-time.

I’m frustrated that I allowed my natural intelligence (I’m not an academic but I do possess a good brain) to be side-tracked and taken to places where it didn’t want to go. Because of my lack of mental strength I wasted years battering my, once fit, body in manual work-horse jobs or dulled my wits in repetitive mind-numbing roles that any five-year-old worth it’s salt could have easily done.

I’m frustrated that I grew up being told to get a steady job, no matter how tedious, rather than follow my dreams. I’m frustrated that I allowed that imaginative, wonder-filled, exploratory kid that I was to grow up believing that working for the man every night and day was the only way. I’m frustrated that I let pip-squeak, self-important, jumped up little turds in a different hat to mine tell me how to do my job and tell me that I wasn’t good enough. Christ almighty! I shouldn’t have just told them to fuck off, I should have broken their noses with my huge fists and put them on the floor where they belonged; but then, violence never was nor never will be my thing. I wasted my youth, virility and beauty making other people wealthy whilst I just meekly went home, washed the sweat off and had an early night so that I could get up on time to go and do it all again. C***s!

Well, now, here’s my new thing – ‘DON‘T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!!’

Especially if you’re offended at being told to fuck off by a published author. That is my new mantra. That is my new resolution. Not just for this year but for the rest of my life. I’m angry and I’m frustrated and you really don’t want to piss me off any more. Don’t tell me how to do things, don’t tell me what to wear, don’t tell me what to eat or drink, don’t tell me how to best live my life. It’s my life, not yours. Go and balls up your own and leave mine be. Oh, and for your own sakes, don’t dare tell me what to write.

Aaaah! That’s better. I needed to get that little rant off my chest. Apologies for the language but I ain’t changing it so grow some and get over it. I mentioned earlier that my life was shit until I was 44 years old. And it was. So what changed? Well, I met the wonderful lady who would go on to become my third wife; the lovely Ange. I finally found someone who let me be me without judging me or trying to tell me what to do. Someone who encourages me to follow my dreams and harry them to fulfilment. The years since I met her have been the happiest and most creative of my entire life.

So why the frustration? Well, simply because it is frustrating. I wasted too long thanks to wasters. I wish I’d forged ahead with my little dream of being a published author instead of bowing to peer pressure and other peoples desire for my conformity. And that is why I am desperate to be so prolific. That is why I want to publish two books a year for the remainder of my days. Let’s say I make it to 75 (God willing), that will be over 40 books. Not a bad legacy for anyone.

All writers have a driving force; be it greed or hunger or anything else in between. Mine is frustration at wasted time and time wasted on people who, looking back, really didn’t matter one iota in the grand scheme of things.

And, as a final word, for anyone who may be reading this who knew me way back when and might be thinking, ‘He’s talking about me,’ I’d just like to say – Yes I am and fuck off!

We’ve got the Lurgy. Is that the correct spelling? Or is it Lergy or even Lirgy? Either way we’ve got it. The lurgy has arrived at Blessham Hall. The good news is that we’ve tested and it isn’t the dreaded Covid (sighs of relief all round). But it has hit us hard nonetheless. Ange is shovelling paracetamol like they’re peanuts and my stomach feels like it’s been kicked repeatedly by an irate wildebeest.

So that’s the bad news, but what about the good? Well, for one thing I have made a much earlier start on my next novel than I had originally planned. It’s the follow up to The Pheasants Revolt and it’s called… Nah! Sorry, no title given out yet. You’ll have to wait and see. Anyway, the first draft of the first chapter is done and I hadn’t actually scheduled it until February next year after I’ve done the re-release of Ah Boy! Hoping for an early Spring publication for the new one. Just need to get on and write the damn thing.

Anyhoo, I thought I’d have a quick round up of the past twelve months here at Blessham Hall and perhaps fill in any blanks you may have. And what a productive year it has been interspersed with a lot of illness, pain and heartache.

On the productivity front, I’ve released two full length novels this year – The Pheasants Revolt and Mutch Wants Moor – and launched my very first podcast way back in May which is now up to 32 episodes. You can find it on podbean.com, it’s called Blessham Hall as well.

Both books were tremendous fun to write and I can’t for the life of me decide which is the better of the two. I suppose that would be like trying to choose who is your favourite child. I love all my books, there’s been a lot of hard work gone into them all and I haven’t received a bad word about them from readers. Yet!

The podcast is also great fun to do and I think I’ve settled into a format with it that works for me. So far it’s had overt 300 downloads; ok so not exactly viral but from little acorns and all that. Many listeners have commented on how relaxing my voice is. I know that in the past I’ve been one of those people who always says they don’t like the sound of their own voice but since doing the podcast I’ve kind of gotten used to it and I’m beginning to see what those commenters mean.

Other creative outlets for me have been designing my own website, alan-stevenson.co.uk, on Go Daddy, which I’m happy with, and also my new blog on WordPress that you are currently reading right now. I’ve been very active on social media, set up an Amazon author page and read Joanna Penn’s marvellous book on marketing twice. I’m full of ideas but alas there is a down side – Fibromyalgia.

Yes, the F word. It’s really reared its ugly, festering head this year and hampered me a lot. I honestly believe that if it wasn’t for that blasted condition I could quite easily have published 3 (yes 3) books this year or at least been close to it. But thanks to good old fibro I’ve spent a lot of valuable time sprawled on the couch or in bed cloaked in brain fog and wracked with physical pain in my muscles. Not a great use of my time you’ll agree I’m sure.

It’s not only been the fibro this year though. I’ve had other health complications. A bad stomach disorder early in the year, a dose of pneumonia in April and a badly torn muscle in my back following an incident with a collapsing garden chair which took months to put right. My back I mean, not the chair. The chair went in the skip.

On the plus side, health wise, I have my wonderful CPAP machine which is curing my sleep apnoea and best of all I’ve lost two stone in weight. I’ve been doing that NOOM diet that you see advertised on the telly and its working, actually working. It uses a lot of psychology which is something that fascinates me anyway so it’s all good. Thanks to both the CPAP and NOOM I’m breathing, sleeping and eating a whole lot better. And my bowels are now performing beautifully too. But, perhaps, that’s too much information or best left for another time.

There have been two colossal downers in our lives this year. The least of them came in the beginning of December when Storm Arwen hit and then followed up with freezing temperatures. We were away from the Hall at the time and so weren’t aware that the freeze had popped our boiler and soaked our carpets. It was a trying time to say the least but thanks to some wonderful friends and family and a most superb carpet cleaning expert we survived and now we’re warm and dry once more.

However, the biggest bombshell of the year came on November 5^th when our little black cat Pixie passed away. Anyone who says “It’s only a cat” can leave now. She was more than a cat. She was family and everybody who knew her loved her quirky character. Her passing hit us both very hard and we still haven’t fully got over it. I even dedicated Mutch Wants Moor to her memory; that’s how much she meant.

Then of course Christmas came along and we were all allowed to celebrate properly this year whereas it was only government officials who were allowed to do so last year. But I digress. Ange and I had a lovely day with just the two of us and I’m happy to say that despite a somewhat challenging year our bond remains stronger than ever.

So what’s ahead on 2022? Well, to find out, why not check out my podcast this coming Monday, 3^rd January, where I’ll be talking about that.

I hope you all had a good 2021, or as good as it could have possibly got given our current circumstances. I’m going to try and update the blog on a weekly basis next year. That’s my resolution for 22. It remains to be seen if I’ll do it.

All the best. See you next year.

Aah, Christmas. How does the Perry Como song go now? It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Well, it certainly used to be; but these days I’m not so sure. I just don’t think it is. And here’s why.

I fear that the true meaning of Christmas is gone dear reader. Long gone I’m afraid. Disappeared in a red, hazy Coca Cola coloured mist. Holidays are coming, holidays are coming. My arse they are! In fact, that’s precisely where you can shove your holidays are coming, Coke.

You see, the clue is in the name. Christ-mas. Not Winter Fest or whatever other PC name you now want to give it. It’s Christmas. Take Christ out of Christmas and what have you got? A mess. And that’s precisely what we’ve done. We’ve just got a reason to splash the cash, and a right old commercial mess we’ve made of it all.

No, I’m not getting all religious on you. Not at all. That’s not my style. I’m getting real. Painfully real. We have taken a wonderful little one day celebration of the most special event that ever happened on planet Earth (whether you believe it or not, I do) and turned it into a garish, obscene festival of consumption and consumerism that begins somewhere in the middle of September, before Summer is officially over, when the first few things begin to creep into the shops and ends abruptly on Boxing Day morning with a monstrous, collective, national hangover, great swarming miasmas of anally vented gas, depleted credit cards and bank accounts and most of the toys already broken. And then it’s off to the sales we jolly well go to buy yet even more stuff that you don’t actually need!!!

And before anyone gets on to me and says that the Christians merely hijacked Saturnalia from the pagans let me just point out the uncomfortable fact that Saturnalia runs from December 17^th to December 23^rd. Christmas, I’m pretty sure you’ll find if you check your calendar, is on 25^th December. Two days after the end of Saturnalia. To say that the Church stole or hijacked it is like saying I hijacked your birthday because mine is on the 20^th July and yours is on the 18^th. You see? Utter balderdash of the highest calibre. Actually, mine is on 20^th July if you’d like to get me something nice. Anyway, enjoy your Christ-mas holiday everyone. But I digress.

And, if I can return to the baby Jesus for just one moment. We all love to watch the nativity play, don’t we? And take shaky mobile phone videos of the kiddies performing in their home-made outfits with tea towels wrapped around their little heads to make them look like biblical shepherds whilst comically forgetting their lines and the words to Away in a Manger; but that’s about as far as most people are prepared to go with it. After that, forget Jesus, school’s out kids, it’s all about Santa Claus now. The carol should go ‘Oh Come Let Us Ignore Him’ for that is what we do.

Ah yes. Dear old Santa. Hey kids, it’s just not cool to believe in God’s only begotten son and his virgin birth but it’s perfectly ok to believe in magical flying reindeer driven by some whiskery, old, bedroom-hopping buffoon until you’re old enough to realise you’ve been hoodwinked for years and it was actually your struggling, stressed out, at-their-wits-end, cash-strapped parents who bought it all. But of course, convention and compliance are at play you see. Convention and compliance say we have to do it. We have to allow eleven months of scrimping and scraping and saving and getting into debt to provide a magical experience for the little ones be attributed to a myth (again, thanks to Coke) just so that we can get all misty eyed ourselves when we see their happy smiling faces on Christmas morning. Be honest now, are you doing all that for the children or for yourselves so that you can feel all warm and toasty inside? Yeah, thought so.

“But Christmas is just for the kids”, all the gurning, gammon faced, polluted sacks of ale will tell you as they prop up the bar at Wetherspoons swilling cheap beer whilst their own children are sat at home doing all the wrapping with their mothers. Well tell that to the lonely pensioner in her council flat who is making a financial choice between keeping warm or eating nourishing food, or the poor, hungry, shivering person sleeping on the street who will have no human contact or the abused and frightened teenager who has no-one to turn to and nowhere to run. Tell them that Christmas is just for the kids. They’d all love some Christmas cheer but it’s going to be pretty thin on the ground for a lot of people.

And why do we spend 363 days of the year telling our children to not talk to strangers and avoid weird looking men and then, on Christmas Eve, we gladly tell them that some bearded old duffer in a natty, red, two piece suit with matching fur lined boots and hat is going to fly all the way from Lapland to somehow squeeze his fat, hairy arse down the chimney (without getting soot on himself), tiptoe into their bedrooms and leave them a sack full of toys. Ah! But only if they’ve been good little boys and girls. That’s right, child control through the fear of losing out on presents. Great parenting everybody.

Yes, of course I believed in Santa and had a stocking when I was a kid but we weren’t overly swamped with a veritable surfeit of presents every 25th December as some kids are today and Christmas was a much simpler affair back then. I can recall how once my brother’s little Santa bag fell off the end of his bed one Christmas morning (I think our dad had been on the sherry) and when he opened his eyes and saw it wasn’t there and mine was he burst into tears because he thought that Santa hadn’t been to him. We laugh about it now we’re adults but I’ll never forget how distressed he was at the time until my parents came rushing in and found the bag lying on the floor. All because of Santa. But at least we had presents. Try explaining how magical Santa is to some poor child whose parents (or parent) can’t afford anything while the kid next door gets a shiny new bicycle, an X-Box and an iPhone. The financial pressure on some parents at this time of year is just too tremendous for them to bear and yet we willingly tell the children it’s all down to old Saint Nick and his merry band of elves. Oh the sheer magic of it all.

And why did I say 363 days instead of 364? Easy. Because we now happily expose our kids to total strangers on Halloween as well. Thanks America. Only this time it’s the kids themselves that have the natty little outfits on. But that’s for another day.

Back to Christmas. It’s all just become so plastic and false and fake. And we get to endure all those ridiculous, schmaltzy Christmas songs time and time again. Every year like some hideous, glistening, blind boil on the hardest to reach part of the backside of music that just can’t be lanced for love nor money we put up with all those God-awful ear-worm songs for no other good reason than “It’s Christmas innit?” From October through to December you can’t go anywhere without hearing Slade, Wizzard, Shaky, Chris Rea, Wham, Aled Jones (before his balls dropped), dear old Bing Crosby and all the rest of the tired same old same old shash. And the less said about that bile lifting one by the Darkness the better. Call themselves a rock band? Ought to be ashamed of themselves. Year in, year out. The same old tripe. Those songs were never written to bring you joy. They were carefully constructed to help you part with your cash. Do we really need Now, That’s What I Call Christmas to be repackaged and re-released every single year? Give me a nice carol any day. There’s honesty and sincerity in them at least.

I swear that if I hear Mariah-arsing-Carey warbling on just one more time in that nerve-jangling, high-pitched squeal of hers about how she only wants ‘you’ for Christmas I shall scream blue bloody murder and put an axe through the radio. That’s not all you want for Christmas at all is it Mariah? No! You want a diamond necklace, a jewel encrusted Cartier watch and a Louis Vuitton dress. That’s the truth of the matter. Isn’t it? Isn’t it? It’s all want, want, want. Christmas has become all about I and want. What can I get? What do I want? I want this. I want that. I want every-bloody-thing that I think I should have! We even encourage our children to go to the local department store or garden centre grotto, sit on Santa’s knee (again a complete total stranger that you don’t know from Adam) and tell him what they want. How about what they actually need?

I’ll tell you what I want. I want all the excess and greed to damn well stop.

It goes beyond the songs though. Way beyond. The food consumption at this time of year is quite disgusting and also potentially dangerous to our bodies. Ask any doctor if you don’t believe me. People spend more on high cholesterol, calorie dense Christmas food than they do on fruit and veg for the rest of the year put together. Ask yourself. Do you really need all those vegan filo pastry party nibbles from M&S that Dawn French in 3D cartoon fairy form is convincing you to buy? Can you survive Christmas without them? Go on, have a go. I challenge you. Ah yes, dear old Dawn French, once a darling of the left, now selling seasonal party food for Marks and Sparks. Right on sister! This isn’t just a sales pitch. This is an M&S sales pitch.

And here’s a fun festive activity for you to try. Do a bit of Googling and see how much Christmas food is thrown away every year. I’m talking about both the stuff that has been bought by the obedient masses and the towering mountain of excess food that has been left on the supermarket shelves and then shovelled into the yawning mouths of industrial sized waste skips. Millions of people are dying of starvation in this world whilst the rest of us are nonchalantly lobbing boxes of uneaten Tesco’s Finest profiteroles and Asda’s Extra Special Christmas pudding into the sodding dustbin.

I mentioned earlier about how Christmas has become plastic. It literally has. Everything is now made of plastic. From baubles to bells and gifts to garlands. We used to go and cut holly and put it around the house when I was a kid. It was fun and you didn’t really mind the pointy, prickly leaves because it was a family activity. You can still get nice decorations, Wood and wicker work and glass and ceramic. I’ve seen some truly lovely ones recently in the homes of family and friends, but for the most part it’s all Chinese or Taiwanese made highly flammable plastic tat or tasteless plastic ornaments that dance whirringly about and play a jarring version of Jingle Bells accompanied by annoying, hypnotic, trance inducing flashing lights which spring into life at the flick of a battery powered switch. Either that or huge inflatable characters bobbing around in peoples front gardens just waiting to be destroyed by the first windy day that comes along. And why, oh why is everything plastic and covered in fake, poisonous, chemically manufactured snow?

And that’s another thing. Snow! There won’t bloody well be any!!! All those picture perfect cards and magical Christmas films and hideous, vulgar TV adverts that show beautiful, pure white snow everywhere are a swizz. Look out the window on Christmas day. It’ll either be glaringly bright sunshine (like we’ve had for the last few years) or pissing it down with rain and a fairly even chance of thick, pea soup fog. Thanks to all that plastic production that we’ve all bought into we now have global warming and the chance of a white Christmas, however hard you’re dreaming of one, ain’t gonna happen. And if by some miracle it does actually happen it’s going to come in a terrifying, life-threatening blizzard and bring the country to a juddering, helpless standstill, as it always does, if we have any more than a centimetre of the stuff. Remember the Boxing Day floods of 2015? That’s the reality folks; but a scene of a fireman or a soldier pulling distraught parents and their sobbing children along a flooded street in an inflatable dinghy don’t look so good on cards and adverts does it?

And when that longed for snow does finally arrive in mid-January we’ll all moan about it because we can’t get the car out to go and panic buy even more food that won’t get eaten. They don’t show that on the adverts do they?

Oh yes the TV Christmas adverts. Sickening to the very pit of the stomach. I mean every single one of them. I loathe them. They make me want to puke. Trying to convince us that it’ll be “the best Christmas ever” if we spend all our money on their products. From Morrisons to McDonalds and Dunelm to Deliveroo, they’re all at it. The John Lewis one in particular makes me seethe and clench my teeth so hard to the point where I fear they may shatter under the pressure. What have they presented us with this year to entice us into their unhealthily over heated and highly priced stores? They’ve given us that most well-known, beloved and traditional of all Christmas characters – an albino alien. A bloody alien! Not baby Jesus. Not fat old, ruddy-cheeked Santa Claus. Not a grinning carrot-nosed, top-hatted snow man. Not even a love-struck penguin in a scarf (and that one was ridiculous as well) but a weird creepy looking alien. That’s what it’s come to boys and girls, the traditional Christmas alien, and we’re all buying into that crap.

And that one of an overweight, sweaty, black-bearded Scrooge shaking his great big arse about on a thousand quids worth of exercise bike makes me want to throw the remote control through the screen. Awful beyond words. Marketing people can be such shysters at this time of year. I ask you, the gift of a Peloton. Really?

By this point, if you’re still reading and I honestly wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t, you’re probably thinking I’ve got some kind of massive downer on Christmas and I’m trying to spoil everyone’s fun. Well, you couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried my friend. I blummin’ well love Christmas. I really do. I love it to bits. I love anticipation of the run up week and the those precious few days after. I love to wrap a few presents. I love to wish total strangers a happy one. I love a nice carol service. I love to put a few trimmings, a small tree, some lights and a bit of tinsel up around the place. I love to spend quality time with the people I cherish such as my gorgeous family and dear, good friends, and open a few modest gifts and share some fun. I love to raise a glass or three and have a nice dinner together. I even have a set of those beard baubles that you can buy now. Just for a laugh. My granddaughter likes to decorate my face. And no, they’re not plastic before you ask. And why can’t it be that way? Why can’t it all be simple? Why is this fake and hideous spend-fest, for the sole purpose of making rich men even richer, thrust upon us for months beforehand? I picked up a box of mince pies in Aldi during early October just to look at the expiry date. They expired in mid November. I’ll just park that one there for you to think about.

Christmas cards are a nice idea. They are! They’re an inexpensive way of letting people know you’re thinking about them and that you care. We don’t do really do Christmas cards ourselves except for family and one or two close friends. We make a charitable donation instead, Sally Army if you really must know. I’m not telling you that to sound virtuous and self-righteous, but to make a small point. An awful lot of people do charitable donations instead these days, thank God, and that’s a truly great thing. Everyone should do it. I’m not opposed to the sending of Christmas cards by any means, I love to receive them, it’s just that we prefer to do it that way. But, hey, why not do both? You’ll be wishing Merry Christmas to the people you do know and to people you don’t. How cool is that? I best go and get a box.

Yes. I do love Christmas. I love what it does actually stand for, or rather what it used to stand for – it used to stand for peace, love, good will, forgiveness, tolerance and hope. Now it stands for greed, gluttony, financial ruin and what the hand-rubbing, soulless advertising executives can push onto us. And call me a hypocrite, by all means do. I shan’t be offended. For I confess that I truly am one. I’m pedalling my new book as an ideal gift. And it is a nice little gift, for the reader in your life. I’d love a nice book as a present but not at the expense of it sitting atop a groaning pile of other costly things that I neither want nor need.

But Christmas used to be special and I want it to be again. Maybe I’m just romanticising about the good old days. I don’t know.

You could argue that people need all this wild excess at the end of a long hard year to let off steam and that it’s meant to make us all feel happy and Christmassy. That’s fine, of course we all need something to look forward to. Of course we do. But that happiness and that Christmassy feeling is only fleeting. It’s back to grim reality in the cold, damp, murky new year and counting down the days and wishing our lives away until we can do it all over again. And that’s because we’ve made it something that cannot live up to our expectations. Instead, we need to keep it simple and special and not overblown so that feeling does last into the new year.

Seriously, I do wish every single person on this planet, whatever colour or creed they may be, a happy, calm and peaceful Christmas. But, sadly, it isn’t going to be that way for an awful lot of people. Even whilst you’re reading to this there are warplanes in the air all over this world. Not a magical flying sleigh stuffed with toys from the North Pole but very real warplanes stuffed with cluster bombs from armament factories. And the only similarity between the two of them is that children will be on the receiving end. Sorry to be so blunt but the truth often is. Think about that whilst you’re listening to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree or Santa Baby won’t you. And, perhaps, just maybe, give thanks that you live in a country where that isn’t happening.

Ok, rant over. I’ll stop there. I’m sorry if I’ve put a dampener on things, really I am, that was never my intention. I just want Christmas to mean something deeper again other than just spend, spend, spend and eat, eat, eat, and for us all to dispense with the commercialism, hype and falseness. For everyone’s sake. I want peace on Earth and goodwill to all men, women and children everywhere. Not just at this time of year but all throughout the year, every year. I wish everyone on this Earth could adhere to that.

There you go. I’ve had my say and you’re probably thinking, what on Earth is wrong with the man? Just a big old Christmas load on my chest that I needed to get off. Thanks for reading. If you’d now like to hurl abuse or vent spleen at me please feel free to do that in the comments section. I look forward to receiving a thorough festive ear-bashing from you and I’ll happily take every word with good cheer because I want to be more tolerant and peaceful myself.

Thank you.

You know those times when you go into a supermarket and you get to the end of a certain aisle and there’s some sickly grinning, desperate-eyed woman in a white, straw, trilby hat and green apron standing behind a makeshift counter offering you an unfeasibly small piece of cheddar on a cocktail stick in the vain hope that you will then proceed to the dairy aisle and buy a whole block of the stuff? Well, today I am she, or rather he in this case. I’m offering you a whole lump of cheddar though as opposed to the paltry, and quite frankly insulting, amount the well-meaning lady in Asda is giving out.

I am going to “attempt to tempt” you today to go forth to the Alan Stevenson aisle on Amazon.co.uk and buy my new novel; Mutch Wants Moor. Unlike the aforementioned cheddar, my little noggin of word cheese will be enough to both satisfy and tingle your literary taste buds at the same time. Hopefully your reader salivary glands will be watering by the end of this blog post. And my lump of cheese will be just as lip-smacking as the said supermarket offering but will put a much bigger smile on your lovely face. You see, I’ve piqued your interest already haven’t I? Just by telling you you’re lovely. Well you are in my eyes.

So, without further ado, let me hand you a virtual cocktail stick and first of all invite you to delicately stab it into the back cover blurb from Mutch Wants Moor. The blurb is rather like cheese as it’s quite difficult to create and requires time and patience for it to fully mature. Anyway, here is the blurb. Have a taste.

Mutch Wants Moor is the hilarious new novel from the humorous pen of Alan Stevenson. Pierre Mutch wants more. More money that is. And one way of getting it is to rent out mooring space on his property by the Great Northern Canal. However, when Archie and Aggie Stone don’t turn out to be the ideal, traditional boaters that he had in mind he swiftly decides they must go and be replaced by more desirable and more affluent residents. Thus a highly comical sequence of devious plans are put into action by Pierre and one of his other tenants, the rakish old womaniser Basil Forbuoys, to rid Downing Wood Mill of the pesky newcomers. However, each new plan meets with increasingly disastrous laugh-out-loud results. Will Pierre eventually succeed in his dastardly plot? Read on…

So what do you think so far? Rich and creamy? Or bland and uninteresting. Well, if it’s the latter I will bid you good day and trouble you no further, it’s your loss. However, if it’s the former then I will gladly invite you to plunge your cocktail stick into an even bigger piece and now present you with a passage from the book itself.

This is from chapter 53, where Aggie is angry with Pierre for cutting down a perfectly healthy tree and goes to vent her spleen on him. Personally I think this is more Stilton than cheddar but have a nibble and see what you think. Boy, am I in a generous mood today or what. Ok, here we go…

It was Pierre himself who eventually opened the door believing it to be Basil or Rita to say that some minor damage had been caused to their flats in the storm. If he’d known it was the Stones he would have stayed in bed and sent Mary down to deal with it. He nearly squealed when he opened the door and came face to face with an angry looking Aggie backed by the immense frame of her husband.

‘Aggie, Archie, how nice to see you both.’ He said with a sickly smile.

‘Don’t give me that you po-faced streak of piss. You cut that tree down just for firewood, didn’t you? Didn’t you?

‘No, I-’ Began Pierre.

‘Every single tree on that mooring came down last night because the sycamore has gone. What do you have to say for yourself?’

Pierre hadn’t been to the toilet yet and he began to feel his bowels loosening. He’d never seen Aggie look or sound like that before. She was furious. And, to make matters worse, the enormous, looming hulk of her husband was right behind her. He had visions of Archie’s great hairy hands forming into football sized fists and crashing with terrific force into his thin face.

‘It was diseased.’ Was all he could whine.

‘Shite!’

‘But it was.’

‘Complete and utter shite!’

‘I swear to you.’

‘Shitehawk.’

‘Well that’s what the tree surgeon said.’

‘Another shitehawk!’

‘And Basil.’

‘What’s the collective noun for a group of shitehawks?’

‘They convinced me.’

‘Shite for brains.’

‘It cost me a hundred quid.’

‘A shitehawk and his money are soon parted.’

‘I’m not to blame I promise you.’

‘I’ve never heard such shite in my life.’

‘Please, Aggie, it’s not shit.’

‘I didn’t say it was, I said it was shite. Shite, with an E.’

‘But-’

‘Shite, with a capital S.’

‘If you’ll just listen.’

‘I don’t want to hear any more of your shite. I’m ringing the council. Shitehawk!’

‘Not the council, no, wait, I can explain.’

‘What? That load of old shite about disease?’

‘I’m sorry Pierre.’ Said Archie putting his large hand on his wife’s shoulder to calm her down a bit. ‘But it’s not looking good though is it.’

‘Look, all I know is that Vince, the tree surgeon, said it had anthracnose and it had to come down.’ Whined Pierre

‘How did he know?’ Aggie said angrily. ‘You must have called him in in the first place. Tree surgeons don’t just wander around the town looking for trees to fell. There are laws you know.’

‘I was worried it might be too close to the canal.’ Pierre lied. He was desperate now.

‘Yet more shite. First thing tomorrow, I’m ringing the council. Good day Pierre, or should I say Rapace de Merde?’

‘Eh? What does that mean?’

‘Surely you ought to know. Your mother would have. It’s French for shitehawk.’

Ok, just like the cheddar lady at the shop, I’m biased. But I think that’s comic writing at its very best and probably the best use of the word ‘shite’ that has ever appeared in literature, or at least the English language. I should just clarify that Pierre is half French on his mother’s side.

So what do you think now you’ve tried before you buy? Do you want the whole block (book) or will you leave it on the shelf along with all the other unloved items such as margarine and those funny looking balls of white cheese in a bag of whey. What’s it called now? Ah, that’s it, Mozzarella (sorry but it’s just awful).

If this has aroused your literary taste buds then hop on over to my Amazon aisle and pick yourself up a copy of Mutch Wants Moor. In fact, I’ll go one step further and give you a link at the bottom to get there with. Call it a virtual hand basket or see it as a bit like asking a member of staff where the Quark is. Or perhaps, in this case. The Quirk.

Bit of an obvious and in your face link I know but it will take you there. Whilst there you might like to browse the other Stevenson products on offer. One other thing. If you do read it and think it’s a “Cracker” (see what I did there) then do by all means please leave me a nice review.

Thank you for sampling my wares.

It’s here!!!

My latest novel is now published and available on Amazon either as a paperback or Kindle download. It began life tentatively on May 28^th this year and after battling fibromyalgia, muscle spasms, sedentary painkillers, brain fog and the usual wrestling with editing and formatting I feel elated that it’s finally arrived. And what a corker it is.

Titled Mutch Wants Moor (yes, that’s Mutch with a T), it’s a highly comical tale of greed, snobbery, regret and scurrilous hi-jinks on the Great Northern Canal. It’s an Ingleby novel but not a sequel to The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham. Mutch Wants Moor contains all the usual elements you’d expect to find in one of my novels – sublime comedy set pieces, outlandish characters, toilet humour and tons of innuendo. All neatly packaged in one superb volume.

There is cesspits, cannabis, copulation, craftiness and an unusual use for a cucumber. Laughs galore are found on every page and I’m really happy with the way it’s turned out. In particular the cast of characters I feel are very well drawn and I’m confident readers will like them all, even the bad guys (who of course get their just comeuppance).

You’ll chuckle merrily as you get into this one and it’s perhaps best served with your favourite libation in one hand. Booze features heavily in this one.

It’s £2.99 for the Kindle and £8.99 for the paperback. A bargain price that makes an ideal Christmas present for the comedy lover in your life or even that boater who loves a good read.

Enjoy.

Today I embark on the third (and possibly final) draft of my new novel. Last week I completed the second one which saw me add 3000 more words and sand off a lot of the rough edges from it. I’m hoping that by the end of this week I’ll have completed this draft and that the book will have a lot more polish and pizazz; almost the finished article in fact.

This begs the question, how many drafts are necessary to finish a book. The answer of course is somewhat ambiguous. It took Joseph Heller seven years to complete Catch 22 and whilst I’m not even remotely suggesting that my new novel is anywhere near as good as that classic, we all have different ways and methods. Some authors can churn out a very good book from tentative start to completion in a couple of months, whilst others agonise over every slightest detail until they feel they’ve got it exactly right and leave huge gaps between publications.

What about me? Well, I’ve joined many writing groups on social media and from what I can gather a lot of them seem to bemoan the whole process from start to finish. They post meme after meme about coffee, stress and sleepless nights when the truth is they should actually be getting on with some writing. Look, writing is fun, or at least it should be. Terry Pratchett is oft quoted for saying that ‘Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.’ Yep, I agree with that.

So this is the way I see it. Writing a novel is a lot like a good meal. The planning stage is buying all the ingredients. Writing it is the actual cooking. Eating it is reading it back to yourself. Editing is clearing all the dishes away and proof reading is the washing up. It’s all part of the whole ‘meal’ experience. No one likes clearing the table and washing up but it has to be done so lets get on and do it. Oh, and whilst I think about it, reviews are the compliments to the chef.

How many drafts will I do this time? As it takes to be honest. One things for sure, at the moment I believe I’m at the stage where I’ve got my Marigolds well and truly on and I’m up to my elbows in Morning Fresh bubbles.

I think it’s imperative that authors like their characters. The good and the bad. The good for obvious reasons that they are essentially good and likeable people and the bad because they add spice to the story and deep down everybody loves it when the villain gets his comeuppance. Also, ask any actor worth their salt and they will tell you that it’s always more fun to play the villain. But I don’t want to talk about villains today. I want to talk about my first and most endearing hero – Joe Wilkie.

I’ve spoken in my podcast (also called Blessham Hall, please check it out on Podbean) about how Joe came about and what influenced me to build his character the way I did. I wanted him to be the most likeable, loveable person in the whole of literature without making him soppy or mawkish. Is mawkish an actual word? My spell checker seems to think so at any rate.

What I like most about Joe is his innocence and how he treats all people and circumstances, both good and bad, with the same sunny outlook on life. You may be critical of me for using a slow-learner as the main character for a book but never at any time have I tried to make it so that people laugh at Joe for his learning difficulties but rather laugh with him as he makes his way through life with them. And it seems that most of you do. He’s a joy to write and I enjoy having him around my head for a few months at a time. Basically, if Joe Wilkie were a real person, I’d love to go for a pint or three with the guy. Fartleberry’s Mild of course.

I’ve mentioned recently in both the blog and the podcast about re-launching my first novel – Ah Boy, which of course is where we first meet Joe. Well, that’s still going to happen but not in the way I initially planned. You see, being an independent author is all well and good but sometimes I feel that I need a little help on the promotional side of things. Let’s face it, we all need a hand when we’re starting out on something and I’ve only been an indie for two years. Believe me, writing a novel is easy compared to trying to promote and sell the thing. Yep, I’m going to call in the big guns.

Basically, I’ll still be an indie but I’m going to re-launch via Reedsy. It’s early days and I’ve been doing my research and am not about to rush into anything in a rash and hasty way but it seems to me to be the right path to tread. I still need my talented stepdaughter Becky to redo the cover art and I shall be calling on the Mac-magician that is Kenny Scotland to work his technical wizardry with it. The difference with the re-launch is that it’s going to be professionally edited, reviewed and re-launched with all the bells and whistles. When I first self-published the book I made a catalogue of errors and it was a terrifyingly steep learning curve. This time, I feel I’ll have someone holding my hand and guiding me.

Yes, it’s going to cost me, both in time and money, but I believe that Joe is worth it. Ah Boy is a cracking little book, as so many of you have told me, and I thank each and every one of you for your kind words and encouragement. Now, however, it’s time to take Joe to another level.

Watch this space.

PS – The next novel after the one I’m currently writing will be the third in the Joe Wilkie saga. Yay!