I read a most interesting article recently regarding the sudden increase in the sales of physical CDs as opposed to Downloaded tunes. It seems that CDs are making a more than spirited comeback and it’s something I’m pleased to hear about.

You see, I’m not one of those who took their CD collection to the nearest charity shop as soon as downloads came to the fore. I still have hundreds of the things. Likewise, when the CD was first introduced, I sensibly held on to all of my vinyl LPs and just look at the resurgence they have made.

And I like the old compact discs.

Oh, I know that vinyl sounds warmer and more personal yadda, yadda, yadda and that downloads are far simpler etc, etc, etc but for perfect sound and tone, you can’t beat a well-produced CD. And no, I’m not one of those crusty old farts who bleats on about the scratches and pops and crackles of vinyl. I do like vinyl but sometimes it gets on your bloody nerves and you end up longing for the sharper and cleaner sounds of the CD.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make, and going all around the houses in doing so, is that the article I read talked about how record shops now have a 50/50 market between vinyl and CDs and that there are indeed rare CDs that go for a ridiculous amount of money. Also, there is the growing trend of people wanting something physical rather than just uttering the words, “Alexa, play Phil Collins!”

Not that I ask Alexa to play Phil Collins unless it’s his 70s era Genesis albums where Peter Gabriel handles the vocal duties and Collins occupies the drum stool. Then I’m in my musical comfort zone. Sorry, but I don’t do pop music and I don’t believe he should have either.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that the article got me thinking about the correlation between physical book sales and Kindle or tablet downloads. And so I did a little research on the matter.

Well, the good news, I suppose, is that physical sales still outnumber downloads and that downloads are actually decreasing in sales. Globally that is.

Then I looked at my own sales figures, which was a bit depressing I have to say, and the tale of the tape is that it’s pretty even Stevens between the two as far as my own book sales are concerned.

Interesting.

But if physical sales are still performing so well then why are so many wonderful independent bookshops failing and going under?

The answer of course is the internet and I just don’t get it.

I do use a Kindle which I find useful for reading in bed without the light on and therefore keeping my wonderful wife awake at night but at other times of the day you can’t beat the feel of paper between your fingers and the rustle of the pages as you turn them. Books also smell nicer than Kindles, whatever their age, and there’s something oddly fulfilling about walking out of a bookshop with several purchases made.

Second-hand bookshops in particular are a personal delight of mine and the dustier the edition I buy the better. Second-hand books look good on the shelf and give off a simply delicious odour even when unopened.

And I have to say that many of the smaller independent bookshops are doing the right things in order to survive. Most of them provide café style refreshments and a comfortable place to peruse the books you’re thinking of buying. Indeed, many of them have book signing and reading sessions and support local independent authors like yours truly. In fact, if you’re ever in the gorgeous little market town of Kirkby Lonsdale then do pop in to The Book Lounge and get yourself a copy of Ah Boy! or Mutch Wants Moor.

The sad truth of the matter though is that independent bookshops are suffering from the internet blight in the exact same way that is seeing major chain stores going under. Why walk to the bookshop when you can just go onto Amazon, Abe Books or Barnes & Noble (to name just three) to order a book and let the postman bring it to you in a day or two? Particularly in Winter.

Likewise, why even go to that length of waiting for the mailman when you can buy a Kindle or tablet for a mere sixty quid or so and download the book directly to it and be reading the thing in less than a minute?

Kindle versions also tend to be a damn sight cheaper than the physical paper or hard back. And of course we’re all watching the pennies these days, aren’t we? With a download though, all you’re paying for is digitised information and like downloaded music what do you do when your device crashes or gets stolen?

If someone broke into my house and stole my Kindle (not that they’ed want to touch the heavily finger-stained thing) I’d be a lot less gutted than if they took all my physical book collection. The same applies to my Alexa device compared to my CDs.

But damn it all, bookshops are just about the best thing in the whole world and for me, growing up, it’s where the literary journey began. I still recall going in to the small independent bookshop on Leicester Street in Melton Mowbray with my mum to buy the latest Willard Price or Joyce Stranger book and the wonderful sense of anticipation in doing so. I remember feeling as proud as Punch leaving the shop with that little paper bag in my sticky hands (probably from an iced bun in the Wimpy Bar) and not even waiting until I got home to start reading it, beginning the first chapter on the back seat of the car until motion sickness took its toll.

That little shop has gone but the memories never will.

There is no independent bookshop in that town now. There’s a W.H Smiths and the ubiquitous The Works, but no proper olde worlde bookshop that a market town like that needs.

Thankfully I live in North Yorkshire these days and in an area where there is no shortage of good bookshops. How long that will remain so remains to be seen but I’m hoping it will be a long time.

And here’s the thing about self-publishing…

Whenever I publish a new book on KDP I have to upload the Kindle version first and then the paperback one afterwards. Yes, I do a little jig when I get the confirmation email telling me that my Kindle version is now live, but I get an even bigger buzz when the box full of author copies of the paperback arrives. It’s only then that I feel like it’s real; when I’m holding that new book of mine in my hands.

Physical copies of anything, whether it be music, film or literature is always preferable in my humble opinion. And to prove it, here’s a short list of some of the best independent bookshops that I know personally that are local-ish to me.

The Book Lounge, Kirkby Lonsdale

Limestone Books, Settle

Sleepy Elephant, Sedbergh

Hatchard and Daughters, Howarth

Keoghs Books, Skipton (no website)

Clitheroe Books, Clitheroe

Scarthin Books, Cromford (this is one is actually in Derbyshire but I have included it in the list as it is the best bookshop in the whole wide world)

So in summation, physical paper books are the absolute best and the article I read also mention that VHS video tapes are also making a comeback and there was a time when even charity shops refused to take them, so do yourself a favour and hang on to those records, tapes, CDs and more importantly – books. You just never know.

It’s been a rough old year here at Blessham Hall; bad health, bad vibes and far too much loss. In fact, I can’t recall a year quite like it. As Her Majesty would have called it, it has been our annus horribilis and no, before you ask, I’m not going to make any gags about a horrible anus. If you want that kind of cheap comedy you must look elsewhere.

So far this year we’ve lost 2 close friends, our next-door neighbour and a beloved brother in law to cancer and also our dear little cat, Sooty, who passed away a couple of weeks ago from a heart attack.

That’s a lot of grief.

I’ve also bid farewell to two podcasts that I worked very hard on, although I now see that it was the right thing to do.

Worst of all, I nearly lost the love of my life as Ange also had a heart attack at the end of January. Thankfully she recovered and is doing very well.

I could go on and on but I prefer to focus on the positives in life, of which there have also been many. Not least with the life streamlining I’ve been doing lately which I have detailed in this here blog.

Things are going extremely well in that particular area of my life. I’ve found more time for writing and blogging, I’m sleeping a lot better and I’m losing weight. I feel that for once I have a good work/life balance and it shows in my output. I’ve made greater strides with the current WIP (Work In Progress) in the last month than I had in the previous six!

Of course, there is also a lot of self-care going on. I know when I ned to rest and I know when I need to write. I know when I need to exercise and I know when I need to be still. All good.

It’s funny to think that even though I’m writing more I seem to have more time to myself as well. And rather than just fritter away my free time I’ve upped my reading quota considerably and I’ve taken up a new hobby…

I’m learning to play the ukulele.

It’s such fun, it really is. I’ve always been interested in stringed instruments but found the guitar too difficult due to my short, stubby fingers. I know my way roughly around a bass but that’s all. However, even after just one two-hour lesson with U3A and some practice at home I’m already coming on in leaps and bounds. I can play the Banana Boat Song so far. Ok, ok, so it might not be Stairway To Heaven but it’s a start. Jimmy Page started by learning nursery rhymes.

One great benefit I’m getting from the uke is that my fingers are getting some good exercise too. I do get monstrous pain in my fingers at times but I’m finding that by making chord changes and moving them on the fretboard its having a profound effect on them. Well, my left hand at least.

It’s quite a jolly little instrument is the ukulele. Makes a very pretty sound and even if you’re just strumming away practicing you can still make up nice tunes as you go along. It’s a musical instrument that’s good for the mind. Plus, it hardly weighs anything at all, unlike the bass guitar I had which felt like a lead weight around my neck. How those rock stars leap around the stage with one is unfathomable.

So when I do get proficient at it where will it take me? There’s always the possibility of me doing a George Formby tribute act. But as I recall, George wasn’t a hulking, bearded, long-haired ogre of a man with a voice like slow-moving treacle. Still, I would like to learn When I’m Cleaning Windows, just for fun.

Another wonderful thing about the uke is that practice doesn’t mean sitting for hours on end if you don’t want to. I find that many short ten-minute bursts throughout the day are more beneficial. I write for an hour or so and then I have a strum on the uke for a few minutes. Then a cuppa before getting back to the writing. Or if I’m watching the TV, whenever there’s a break, I pick up the uke and have a go. It’s great!

So, after what has been a shite year so far, there have still been a lot of blue-sky moments. I’m enjoying the ukulele, my wife’s health hasn’t been great but it’s meant that we’ve spent a great deal of precious time together, I feel more light-hearted having dumped a lot of the dross I was carrying around in my head and let’s not forget that I published my 6^th novel, Vole, in February.

Who knows, maybe one day I’ll do audio books where I sing the contents accompanied by the uke. Then again, perhaps no, I’ll stick with things the way they are for now because life is actually quite good at the moment.

And, as Mr Formby himself once said, “In my profession I’ll work hard, but I’ll never stop, I’ll climb this blinking ladder till I get right to the top!”

When I was a kid we called it an Indian Summer. Nowadays it goes by the alarmist epithet – a heatwave! You see, I vividly remember the Summer drought of 76. Now, that’s what I call a heatwave! You were a pariah back then if you even mentioned the word hosepipe let alone used one. If you were caught using one you were lucky if you didn’t have an angry mob bearing torches and pitchforks on your doorstep.

Everything we’ve had at this time of the year since then has been a typical British Summer, this year being no exception where for the whole of June the Sun shone like the seat of my old school trousers and for July and August it alternated between the odd sunny day here and there and Biblical proportions of rain at all other times.

Now, I like to sit outside and write, preferably to writing inside. I can’t explain it, whether it be the fresh air or the azure skies or the bird song or the trees or whatever. The fact remains that I produce more and better copy when I sit outside. Sadly, for the last two months the opportunities to do so have been few and far between.

Until now!

Last week was quite the most marvellous weeks’ worth of writing I’ve had in a good long time. I tell you I was both stupendous and prolific and made huge great strides with the current work in progress. I wrote witty prose, sparkling dialogue, thoughtful phrases and, above all, lots of it.

The reason being of course that I was sat out on the decking in glorious sunshine but under the shade of the gnarly old ash trees. And I was in my element, gentle reader. My element I tell you.

I’ve never been a sun worshipper, you know, one of those people who sit out in it for hours on end and go as brown as Bovril. That’s never been me. I burn like unwatched toast if I stay out in direct sunlight unprotected for just a few minutes and I’m never seen without a hat on sunny days. But despite that, I still see myself as a definite heliophile.

I need sunshine and blue skies to function properly as a writer and last week was proof positive of that. I seem to remember that Ernest Hemingway was exactly the same; although he usually had a glass of alcohol near to hand as well whereas I have to keep a clear head. Horses for courses and all that.

Sitting out in the open-air last week really helped me to unclog the narrow drain I’d written myself down in recent months. I’d got Joe into an almost impossible situation and I didn’t have a clue how to get him out of it. Then, last week, it all became so obviously apparent and within a day the plot had progressed and I now have a crystal-clear vision of how the book will end, how Joe wins against the odds (again), how the villain of the piece gets their comeuppance and even what the cover should be. All through spending five days typing away whilst sat on garden furniture on plastic decking at a static caravan on a holiday park in the Forest of Bowland.

And I’m sat outside as I write this very blog post. Yes, it’s a little cooler but then we are halfway through September, however, my fingers are still dancing over the laptop keys like Fred Astaire on my right hand and Ginger Rodgers on my left. My mind is focussed, I know what I want to say and how to say it and when I’ve finished writing and uploading it to the Blessham Hall website then I’m going to turn my guns back onto the current WIP and get stuck in again.

My body hurts of course, you all know that by now, but for the first time in what seems like forever my mind is as sharp as a tack. Heck, I almost ran amok with myself when watching Mastermind, Only Connect and University Challenge on Monday evening, getting question after question right. I’ve not been so lucid in ages and I put it down to good old-fashioned fresh air.

As I type this I am also consciously aware that the countryside, where I’m currently based, isn’t necessarily a haven of peace and quiet. I can hear sheep in the fields behind me, birds in the trees overhead, a tractor chugging away in the distance and from time to time a barking dog from somewhere on the park. None of which cause me consternation like the sounds of urbanity.

The tractor doesn’t have the same nerve-jangling effect on me that a passing ambulance siren has. The occasional woof from one of the vans isn’t jarring compared to the almost incessant yapping of the poor little Jack Russell that lives opposite us in the town and has to spend most of his day in the back garden trying to attract his owner’s attention to get back inside again. The soft sighing of the leaves in a gentle breeze is music to my ears compared to the cacophony of the bin lorry and the supermarket delivery vans back at the flat.

Don’t get me wrong, I like where I live. Compared to other places I’ve dwelt Settle is like Shangri-bloody-La! But as nice as Settle is it’s still not the open countryside; close but not quite. And I have limited opportunity to sit outside there without constant interruption. Believe me, I have tried.

So, in summation, I’m doing well on the writing front and it’s all down to a change of scenery pretty much. I hear the weather for the rest of this week isn’t going to be so good so I’d better sign off now and crack on with Mr Wilkie and friends and try to get 4000 words done if possible.

When the weather does turn tomorrow, and it will, I shall sit inside the caravan, by an open window and get as close to nature as I can as I write. The Sun will be back; it always is and when it does return it’ll find me with my ample backside in a garden chair with my laptop in front of me doing what I do best and damn well enjoying it.

Have you ever felt that you have too many irons in the fire? I mean, I think it’s good to have a few, but just lately I’ve realised that I have far too many and so I’ve done a spot of online pruning.

In short, I’ve done away with the podcast (which you knew already) and now I’ve called temps (as the French would say) on the website. Well, that’s a bit too succinct perhaps. Let me elaborate.

As it stood I had a website, a blog, a podcast on multiple platforms, a totally amateurish Youtube channel and two social media outlets. That’s quite a hefty web presence for one fibromyalgic man who sometimes finds it damn near impossible to even get out of bed some mornings. Far too much in fact. I’ve felt like I’ve been spinning plates for some time now and they’re beginning to fall.

Ergo…

From here on, Blessham Hall (where you are right now) is my main outlet. A one-stop-shop as it were for all things Stevenson. I noticed recently that I didn’t need a separate website that was draining my time, energy and finances in equal measure. Foolishly, I hadn’t realised that I had it all here on a plate in the first place.

So you may notice that there have been a few tweaks to Blessham Hall. Oh, nothing Earth shattering but it now has the feel of a proper website rather than just a blog. The old alan-stevenson.co.uk website will remain live until the subscription runs out in November and then it shall be no more leaving just this here site for me to maintain.

Also, I’m taking down all those Stevenson Speaks videos from Youtube. Let’s face it, they’re about as professional as Harry Maguire and about as easy on the eye as well. I know I have a face for radio and nobody wants to see it. I was an ugly child in fact; my mother used to hang a sausage around my neck so that the dog would play with me. Happy times!

I’ll still have a social media presence on Facebook and Instagram as they are easy to manage and don’t take up a lot of my time. Likewise, the new blog that I mentioned last time will be going live soon and I’ll be looking at fortnightly posts on there so that too will be manageable.

I think my biggest problem is that I tried to run before I could walk where my online activity was concerned. Too much too soon. I mean, hardly any bugger even knows about me and yet there I was attempting to do podcasts, videos and interactive websites like some kind of Johnny Come-Lately.

Nay, nay and thrice nay, I need to just focus on what I do best (well, I think so at least) and that’s writing good content; be it in the shape of novels or blog posts. And in any case, calling myself an author, novelist, blogger, podcaster and Youtuber was becoming tiresome and more than a mouthful.

Yesterday I worked on Blessham Hall for several hours to get it how I wanted and I’m happy with the results. I also cancelled that Go Daddy subscription for the other website that was clearing over a hundred quid out of my bank account every year. What a dozy prat I’ve been.

But the thing now is that it all feels rather cathartic having purged myself of all that weight of stuff. Just stuff, that’s all it was. Stuff that clogged up my mind and time that could have been spent better elsewhere.

Talking of which, I wrote nearly 10,000 words last week on the next novel and it feels tremendous. Oh sure, my arms hurt like hell from the physical effort but my head feels something akin to achievement.

This has been a strange period of time for me. But now I’ve had bit of a clear out and I can see past all that clutter now and it’s like a breath of fresh air. 2023 hasn’t been the best year for Ange and myself. We’ve had terrible health problems and lost some good friends. On Friday our adopted cat, Sooty, passed away which has left us both a bit on the devastated side of things. Ange in particular has taken it very badly. So it really is a great relief to me to do all this streamlining as I’ve felt in limbo for quite a while now, bouncing between this, that and the other without any real sense of direction. Now, I actually feel I have one.

So do me a favour and point people in the direction of Blessham Hall won’t you. I always say that word of mouth is one of the most powerful ways of advertising anything.

Thanks for sticking with me through all the turbulence.

A x

I’ve made a decision that I think I needed to make a long time ago regarding my blogging activity. No, don’t worry, the Blessham Hall Blog isn’t going anywhere, but it is going to see a major change.

Regular readers will know that I often make references to my overall health which isn’t good due to the ever presence of fibromyalgia. That particular condition is bad enough itself but it’s compounded by Depressive Anxiety Disorder, Vertigo and Sleep Apnoea. In short, I’m a wretched, echoing void of a man most of the time.

But here’s the thing, I’ve woken up to the fact that you probably don’t need to hear all that on a regular basis. Heck, we’ve all got enough problems of our own without reading about someone else’s which isn’t going to enhance our existence in any way. I mean, if I had to sit and read about somebody else’s lumbago or how the screaming habdabs affects them from day to day then I’d probably go stark staring mad.

Unless…

Unless of course I wanted to read about lumbago or the screaming habdabs (yes, there is such a thing) in which case I would be utterly delighted to stumble across such a blog.

So here’s the deal. I’m not going to talk about my health problems any more on the Blessham Hall blog unless merely as an excuse for my own piss-poor performance. It does come in handy for that. What I’m going to do instead is start a brand-new blog strictly for fibromyalgia and it’s related conditions where people who do have FMS or ME or CFS, yadda-yadda-yadda, can get some encouragement, advice and maybe a bit of a laugh as well along the way.

It’ll be a place where I can unload my health issues without yanking the respective chains of my regular readers. I can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from you all. Like a warm breeze wafting across the rolling landscape of my subconscious. Gosh, that was a load of old bollocks, wasn’t it?

But! I also hear you say. Are you physically up to doing two blogs Stevenson, you overweight sack of offal with an hyperactive spleen? Can you write two blogs and still write novels at the same time?

In short, yes, I think I can. I’ll still aim to do Blessham Hall at least once a week and fit the new FMS blog in whenever I can, be it once a month or every two months or whatever. Hey! It’ll give me a greater sense of purpose of nothing else.

And I really have been working very hard on my time management lately. I schedule in novel writing time, blogging time, reading time, researching time and resting time. And so far it’s going ok, with the occasional and expected bump in the road every now and then.

I’ve got a name for the new blog but I’ll hold fire from telling you just for now until I’ve got it set up properly. I also need to come up with some kind of artwork for it but I’ll probably ask my granddaughter, Erin, to assist with that as she really is the most extraordinarily gifted young lady when it comes to drawing. And yes, we are very proud grandparents.

So there you go. Less of me moaning about my physical well-being and more of the stuff that matters on this here blog. All I would ask of you is that when I do post a link to my new blog that you would direct anyone you think it would help out towards it.

Well, I’m shocked and not a little surprised, I really am. England have actually reached the World Cup Final. Well done ladies. The nation salutes you; now, just go on and win the damn thing.

I’m also shocked and very surprised at the abject failure of my new podcast – The Curmudgeon. Not to put too fine a point on it but it’s tanked. Well and truly tanked. Maybe I’m just not cut out for podcasting or maybe I just suck at it, either way, there’ll be no more for the foreseeable future.

But never mind, as I mentioned last week, it’ll give me more time to spend on other projects that demand my attention.

It is a little disheartening though as I feel the podcast itself is rather good and has great comedy value. Plus, each one comes in at less than 15 minutes long. I really thought I’d cracked it this time, but no. So sod it! No more podcasting from yours truly. I know when I’m not wanted.

One good thing that has come out of the two podcast series that I’ve done so far though (Blessham Hall and The Curmudgeon) is that from playing the hundred or so recordings back to myself I’ve actually started to like the sound of my own voice.

I don’t mean that in some bragging, boastful way where I like to command every conversation that I enter into, but that I actually like how it sounds, literally.

You see, for a good many years I’ve been one of those people who cannot stand to hear themselves speak. It was so bad that I wouldn’t leave people voice messages or speak to answerphones in case I happened to hear it later.

My voice has, in the past, been described as booming. Not something to proud about unless your name is Brian Blessed and it was comments such as that that kept me from speaking too much. I’ve always known my voice is incredibly deep. In fact, I even remember the day that it broke.

I was about ten years old and sitting at a table in primary school when quite literally all of a sudden I stopped being a soprano and became a bass baritone whilst talking to my chums. I recall the shock on one of my friends faces as he stared goggle eyed at me and said, ‘Alan, what’s happened to your voice?’ Yes, it was that sudden. My Mum had sent a young Aled Jones soundalike to school and got a Barry White tribute act back at the end of the day.

Of course, bang went any hopes of joining the school choir. School choirs are notorious for not having anyone who sings like Paul Robeson in them. Sorry, did I say sing? My apologies, what I meant is croak, for that is as close to singing as my voice gets having had my tonsils removed aged six.

Over the ensuing years my voice has been mocked and appreciated in equal measure. To some it is a thundering foghorn of a thing that might wake the baby of I go over a certain amount of decibels. To others it has been described as relaxing, soothing and even “chocolatey”, whatever that means.

It has turned ladies both on and off and one person even said it was “scary.”

All water under the bridge though as here I am aged fifty-seven and barring castration, I can’t see my voice getting any higher. And I’m not planning on becoming a harem guarding eunuch any time soon. But let’s just say that until I started podcasting a couple of years ago I loathed and detested the sound of my own God given voice.

Until now! Now, instead, I’ve come to appreciate it myself for what it is. I can’t change it or do anything about it really so I just try to make the best of it.

Which brings me to my main point (finally, I hear you cry), which is this…

I went to Skipton on Saturday as there was a food festival near the canal basin and the family had asked us to go along. The weather wasn’t great (to put it mildly) and I wasn’t feeling too good at all physically (to put it even milder). Still, I did manage to force my trembling legs to shuffle around one or two of the stalls like a doddering old man and tried a few freebie comestibles here and there, which were all very delicious I can assure you, the curry in particular.

We then came to a stall for the Dogs Trust charity. Naturally I was surprised that such a thing should be in a food festival outside of Pyongyang and so Ange and I zoomed in for a closer look as we already give to that worthwhile cause.

We spoke at length to a nice lady who works at Dogs Trust and after a while we agreed to increase our monthly donation being such suckers for our canine friends. Ergo we now support both puppies who need a home and much older dogs who are reaching the end of their lives and require more care. But that’s beside the point.

The point is that the lady we spoke to commented on my voice. In fact she positively enthused about it to the point where she said that I really ought to get myself some voiceover work on television or audiobooks. And the thing is, she genuinely meant it. She wasn’t feeding my ego to try and get me to sign because we’d already done that by then. No, she honestly thought I could do voice work.

That gave my, currently low, self-esteem a bit of a much-needed boost, to be honest, and it also gave me a lot of food for thought. You can see where this is going can’t you.

So now I’m looking into it and doing some serious research. And why not? Others do it. Why can’t I?

Plus, it’s got to be easier than self-publishing comedy novels that no-one wants to read.

So just think, the next time you’re at the cinema, waiting for your film to start and there’s a trailer for the next Terminator or Star Wars movie, it just might be my deep and dulcet tones that you hear narrating it.

Now there’s a thought!

And don’t worry those of you who do read my books, I’ll keep them coming.

Ok, yes, I know those two words in the title of this post don’t normally go together. In fact, they tend to go together like a mushy peas and marmalade sandwich, but, speaking for myself, it’s my current modus operandi.

The reason I’m so tired is that I’ve recently been put on a course of amitriptyline (I think I spelt that correctly) by the doctor to try and resolve the blinding headaches I’ve been having. And I have to say that it is having an effect. My head feels so much better than it did. The downside is that the drug is making me so mentally foggy and exhausted even though I take it at night time before I turn in. God knows what I’d be like if I took it in the morning. I’d probably be limping around with my bottom lip hanging down below my chin crying, “Brains, brains!!!”

So that’s the tiredness dealt with but what about the excited part?

Well, I’ve got myself all in a lather about a new character that I’ve created.

Of course, there’s no details that I can give away at this stage but what I can tell you is that I am so confident in this character that I’m going to offer it traditional publishers first. Yes, you heard that correctly. I’m going to approach all the publishing houses I can with it before I even think about self-publishing.

But why Stevenson? I hear you ask.

Well, firstly, self-publishing does have it’s benefits but it also means that you have to do all the marketing legwork yourself and, as I’ve stated recently, I’m shite at that. It would be so nice to have someone behind me for a change.

Secondly, I think I need the kick up the arse that having to produce a follow up would give me. I work better when there’s a deadline. It helps me to focus and be more self-disciplined. Although, I believe a great many of us can relate to that.

So what it basically boils down to is this:

• The hilarious tales of Joe Wilkie in the Blessham novels will continue to be self-published.
• The Ingleby books will take a bit of a back seat and be fewer and farther apart.
• The podcast is being ditched (nobody was listening anyway).
• I’m going to approach traditional publishers with my new character.

Whaddya think about that then?

I’ve now got to map out how that’s all going to take shape and how I can get my wrecked body and enfeebled mind to rise to the challenge. Stopping the podcast is one thing for sure, aside from the fact that no-one was listening; it takes too much time out of my week to write, record, upload and promote the damn thing. Time that could and should be spent elsewhere.

The blog is no bother as it usually costs me only about two hours a week to work on. Plus, I’ve been blogging on and off for years now and I bloody well enjoy it.

I also need to re-vamp the website at some point and make it a bit more eye-catching.

Time management was never my strong point but like I say, when there’s a deadline I do tend to raise my game and work well towards it. Where the amitriptyline fits into it all I don’t yet know but I have to find a way of living with it and hoping that I’ll become adjusted to it in a short amount of time. I’m also toying with the idea of these talk to type software that I’ve been hearing about. It would mean that I can sit in a comfy chair or even lie down (on a and day) and still work. The technological possibilities are truly endless in this age we live in.

Other than that I can just hope and pray that someone soon comes up with a cure for FMS and a way of beating chronic fatigue and brain fog. I cannot adequately describe the frustration that I feel with having my head chock full of all these cool ideas and a body that doesn’t want to play and won’t let me get them down in words.

And if someone else could come up with a quick and easy way for me to lose about eight stone in weight so that I can function a whole lot better and not get out of breath when answering the door, that would be good too.

So, in summation, I’m as giddy as a schoolboy on one hand and as tired as a ninety-five-year-old opium addict on the other. Can this end well? I certainly hope it will, but for now I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get that current work in progress finished.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. You know, I really should do that more often, give you a big thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my little blog. You see, to me, a lifelong avid reader, I find reading one of the most valuable thing that human beings can do.

And here’s where this weeks blog post comes in.

I’ve been harbouring a thought for some time now and it’s basically this. Why do people watch the same films over and over again but don’t read the same books repeatedly?

I mean, I’ve seen all the Carry On films multiple times; Camping and Up The Khyber at least a dozen or more each, and the amount of times Ange and I have seen The Naked Gun must be nearing twenty by now. As for Withnail & I, well, I’d say it was unquantifiable.

Compare that with the books that I have re-read.

There are a few I’ve re-read and re-read again – Three Men in a Boat, Catch 22, The Thirty-Nine Steps, Diary of a Nobody, The Woman in White, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Blott on the Landscape and one or two others. And as a child I re-read the Willard Price Adventure series manifold times with such youthful eagerness that the books started to fall apart from over use.

But all of those books fill me with such rapturous joy that I find it such a pleasure to tread such familiar ground over and over again and it never feels boring, dull or samey.

I also know one person who has re-read my first novel Ah Boy! because they found it so wonderful. Wow! What an accolade. That meant so much to me to hear that.

But by and large, people don’t re-read books and I haven’t understood it until now. I haven’t understood why people would spend up to and well beyond a tenner to buy something fabulous like a book only to read it once and then stick on a shelf to gather dust.

The answer, of course, is that books require a fair amount of effort on the part of the reader, whereas watching a film requires very little from the viewer. Unless it’s one of those arty European things that leave you wondering where the hell the last two hours of your life went and damn well wanting them back.

A novel, on average, will take between 6 to 12 hours to complete. It involves visualising the world you are immersing yourself into and picturing the characters that populate it. You have to remember details that happened hundreds of pages ago and it’s rare that you’ll finish a novel in one sitting. Especially those airport blockbusters that double as door stops or foundation stones.

A movie, on the other hand, will take up about two to three hours of your time and everything you need to know to follow it is displayed on screen. They require very little imagination to participate as all the imaginative stuff has been taken care of for you. All you have to do is sit back in comfort and watch it unfold. Just relax with your popcorn or your pick’n’mix and let it all happen.

I’m not decrying movies, I love to watch a good film as much as the next person; I’m just trying to form a contrast here.

Let’s take The Lord of the Rings as a prime example.

Now, I confess, I’ve never actually read the books and am unlikely to in my lifetime (although I have read The Hobbit) as I find all that fantasy stuff just a tad too confusing. I don’t deny Tolkien’s genius for what he created; blimey, I wish I could do something as epic as that if I had half as much talent as he had, but it’s just not a genre I enjoy.

That being said, I take any of my various hats off to anyone who has taken the time to read those books. I imagine it to be a mammoth, nay almost Herculean task of reading. The level of concentration required must be immense but also, I assume, highly enjoyable and ultimately rewarding for fans of Tolkien and indeed the fantasy genre itself.

Of course, The Lord of the Rings, as we all know, was made into a movie franchise earlier this century and I have seen the three films. Each one being about three hours long.

I still couldn’t explain exactly what was going on but I got the gist that Frodo and his chums had to destroy a ring to rid their world of evil and all those pus-filled orcs that were making life thoroughly unpleasant for everyone.

And, I enjoyed the films. They were a marvellous bit of escapism. Likewise, if there was nothing else on the telly (and very often there isn’t) I’ll watch them again. The sheer scale of the scenery and battle scenes are nothing short of breath-taking and demand the viewer pays attention. And of course, I’m not alone in that. Millions of people across the globe have seen those movies multiple times. Well why wouldn’t they? They’re astonishing purely from a cinematic point of view even if, like me, you don’t fully understand what’s going on on screen.

But conversely, I believe there are millions of copies of Tolkien’s Masterpiece sitting on bookshelves all over the world that have either been read once or not even at all. With the success of the film there was a huge global increase in sales of the books, but, how many people actually took the time to plough through them. Especially now they know how it ends from the movies.

Still, they look impressive on the shelf when people visit, don’t they?

As I said at the start, reading is one of the most valuable things that human beings can do. Can you imagine a world without reading? We’d probably still be hitting each other over the head with stone axes and hiding from sabre toothed tigers while grunting ‘Ugg!’ at various intervals.

But reading has advanced humankind further and faster than would otherwise have been possible. Reading helps us to learn, to develop as people, to enlarge our thinking and it provides us with some bloody good entertainment along the way.

So, in conclusion, I’d just like to try and encourage you to re-read your books. Take a few hours out of you day and sink gently between the soft, caressing pages and let the words wash over you like waves of blissful familiarity. Take that copy of Dickens off the shelf that’s been there since 1998, blow the dust of the jacket and devour the sumptuous literary feast contained within. Return once again to Mutch Wants Moor because you found it so hysterical the first time and you feel in need of a good laugh.

Ok, ok, so that last example was a poor attempt at subliminal messaging.

But please do hear what I’m saying folks. Books are just the best so show yours some love. Switch off the old goggle box, turn off Netflix, put down that Blu-Ray disc, give the local fleapit a miss and open a book instead. Your mind will thank you for it.

I’ve tried, God knows how I’ve tried. But enough is finally enough. I’ve been using LibreOffice for a couple of years now and I’m afraid it really is time for a parting of the ways. And don’t think for one moment that it’s a decision I’ve rushed into. No, it is one fraught with reluctance.

You see, I like the whole ethos of LibreOffice. I like the idea of sticking it to the man and all that. And, like everyone who uses it, I appreciate a word processing software that doesn’t cost me a bean to use. Yeah, we all like that part, don’t we?

The problem I have with is… well… not to put too fine a point on it…

It’s shite compared to MS Word.

And being a writer by trade I just can’t do with inferior software to keep doing what I’m doing. And yes, I know all about how evil Microsoft are and how they make the world a terrible place and Bill Gates is the baddest man on the planet yadda-yadda-yadda but at the end of the day I can’t keep trying to produce content on software that is slow, clunky, keeps “not responding” and oft times won’t even open.

I’ve produced about over 150 documents on LibreOffice, podcast scripts and blog posts mainly, and I even wrote my entire second novel, The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham, on it. And I did it for all the “right on” reasons that everyone else uses it for. But damn it, my writing deserves the best and the best ain’t LibreOffice.

Oh, you might say, but what do you expect when it’s free? You can’t have everything you know. There has to be a bit of give and take somewhere. And I agree, absolutely, and I’ve taken just about all I can.

You wouldn’t expect Joe Bonamassa to record his next album on an inferior guitar that someone gave him for free online would you? Maybe you would, but I wouldn’t. You want him to use a Gibson Les Paul or a Fender. So why should writers and other creatives use software that isn’t up to the job?

I need to write in what precious time I can between bouts of fibromyalgia flare ups, vertigo and pummelling headaches. Actually write. I don’t need to be sat staring at my screen with my teeth gritted so tightly they may shatter under the pressure at any moment whilst LibreOffice opens its bleary eyes, yawns, scratches it’s hairy arse and takes an eon to wake up. I don’t need to get halfway through a paragraph and then have to wait twenty minutes for it to unfreeze before I can continue. And I don’t need to constantly keep clicking on the desktop icon like a deranged anti-aircraft gunner as it refuses time and time again to even open.

Oooh, it’s so frustrating.

And, I don’t have any of those issues when I use Word. None of them. It works perfectly every time.

So, yeah, it’s all over between me and LibreOffice. I mean, I don’t want to diss it entirely, especially if finances are an issue and you need word processing software. It’s fairly adequate at what it does if you can get over all the other little foibles and problems. But, right now, I’m at a stage in my writing career where I need a bit more than adequate.

Do other self-employed people use inferior equipment in their work? No, they use the best they can.

So in the words of Lord Sugar; LibreOffice, with regret, you’re fired!

(This blog post was created in Microsoft Word)

Right, for a start there will be no mention of illness in this blog post. I don’t know about you but I’m getting heartily sick of talking about my various ailments and it’s time I shifted focus a bit.

So I’m going to talk about the progress of my next novel, whose name I won’t reveal yet.

Well, it’s about half way there; the first draft that is. It’s somewhere in the region of 40,000 words and I’m aiming for around 80,000 for the finished book. When it will be finished is rather hard to say. You see, I have been dragging my heels a bit with this one.

Not in the same way that Vole dragged it’s heels, no, that one was caused by it’s own bizarre and fruity nuances. I’m dragging this one out for other reasons. Which I have identified as thus:

1. Poor planning – yes, I’ve got to admit that there is a fair amount of pantsing going on with this one and I think I need a day or two, or even a week, to put the brakes on, get out the old exercise book and make the plan a damn sight more cohesive. I planned my first four novels to a T and I think the effort shows. But with the other two and this one I seem to have taken on a different approach. I got away with it on Hot Eire and Vole but I’ve hit a bit of an impasse on this one and it is slowing me down considerably.

2. My amazing wife and greatest supporter, Ange, had a heart attack at the end of January this year and has been off work for five months. That has given us the opportunity to spend a great deal more time together and therefore less time at the laptop for me. I’m not complaining, believe me, there’s nothing like a cardiac event to make you appreciate your loved ones more and we’ve appreciated the time that we’ve had. I think anyone who is in love will agree that it is time well spent. Thankfully, Ange is fully recovered and is returning to work this week on a part-time basis. Ergo, when she is working, I’ll be working and progress on the next novel will, hopefully, gather pace.

3. Ok, yes, my health has got in the way. Damn! I didn’t want to mention that.

4. Other irons in the fire – For example this here blog and the podcast eat into my time, but we live in an age where a good online presence is vital to the independent artiste and so I find myself having to spend a fair portion of my week working on those things.

But pushing the negatives aside what I can say is that despite all of that the novel so far promises to be a corker.

It’s a Joe Wilkie/Blessham novel and I know from the feedback that I receive just how much love there is out there for that quirky little character. And, as you’d expect, he gets himself into all sorts of scrapes and adventures in the book. There’s the usual outpouring of unbridled wrath from Lady Stark-Raven, a host of zany characters both old and new, tons of Wilkie wordplay and an antagonist like you haven’t seen before – he’s a far more subtle opponent for our Joe is this one.

And this novel is played purely for laughs, a bit like The Pheasants Revolt, although there was a touch of schmaltz in that one. This time there is no love interest for Joe and no emotional heartstrings played anywhere. It’s a straight ahead, riotous, ribald, countryside comedy with no punches pulled. Actually, there are a few punches thrown here and there but that’s by the by, you’ll have to read it to find out. And in any case, it wouldn’t be a Blessham book without at least one rollicking good punch-up, would it?

Now, regarding a publication date. Well, I don’t really want to commit to one at this stage. I’d rather focus on getting that first draft done and dusted and then take it from there. The last thing I’d want to do is make any rash promises and then break them. So all I will say on the matter is that I sincerely hope it will be out before Christmas. If it isn’t then I will say some very harsh words to myself, the likes of which you will not see between the pages of scripture.

So bear with me all you Wilkie fans. It’ll be worth the wait of that I’m sure and when it does finally appear don’t forget that a well worded review on either Amazon or Goodreads is all I ask in return for about seven and a half hours worth of well-written entertainment that has taken me an eon to produce.