Where have you been?

Evening gang,

Remember me? It's been 2 months since I last posted anything to this blog. Time flies when you're busy as a bloke who is busy.

First off, I notice that this blog has now attracted well over 14,000 views, visits, call it what you will. For that I'm grateful as I am prone to ramble and, lately, vanish.

Since my last post the new football season has begun and Liverpool are finding life difficult without Suarez. Meanwhile Man Utd seem to be winning while being awful. Still, early days yet. In Brendan we trust. For now.

So, what have I been up to all this time? Well, plenty, but equally I've been consciously trying less hard, putting less pressure on myself to deliver. I've ticked most of the boxes I needed to for the year so I've eased off. My job's sorted i.e. permanent. A lot less cash, but nothing I can't work with. Plus there are currently quite a few jobs out there like mine and they all pay well. I've just applied for one actually so we'll see. But I'm easy either way.

The wife is also in the job market as part of her ongoing reinvention. I'm not ashamed to say I tend to treat her as a long term investment. Had a few crap months but you stick with it and then... well, let's just say I'm starting to reap the rewards and that she's progressing nicely.

We've bought another couple of houses as part of our fledgling buy to let business and next year should see that start to deliver real profits which should be exciting. Been bloody hard work though which I'll remind people when I'm an idle millionaire and they think I fell into my cash.

We've also been on our first break since we bought our dog - 18 months ago. Only to York, but it was excellent. I went big on the hotel, as you'd expect from me, and we spent enough in 48 hours to cover a long weekend abroad. But it was superb. Hopefully, now we know we can safely leave the dog, we can get back to our old ways of trekking about all over the place.

So, where does that leave the writing then? Well, on the back burner a bit. FEAR is still ongoing and should still be out this year. But I'm not going to rush it and have tweaked it several times. But, I have entered it in the northern crime competition just to show I'm making the effort. Also, I've just finished a free giveaway for The Trust. It was downloaded 3900 times over the weekend which is no bad thing. I also made half decent royalties last month too.

Quick story. The thing that prompted the giveaway was a review I received for The 24 Hour Jazz Café while in York. It was a scathing 1 star review which basically said the book was nothing but an excuse for violent sex and murder. Now, if they'd said that about The Trust I could kind of get it. But the Jazz Café is primarily about two mates running a jazz club who accidentally get drawn into a murky world. There is one scene in the whole book where a prostitute is violently abused and left for dead. The scene is telegraphed very obviously and, because it's a book, you are free to skip past any bits you don't like. Either way, that 1 star review had a hefty impact on the overall rating of the book which, until then, had only received 4 and 5 star feedback. I hope the clown who dismissed the jazz café grabbed a free copy of The Trust. It gets nasty from page 4 and goes downhill from there.

Rant over.

In other news, my fantasy author chum Frion Farrell has her new book out at the end of this week. Her debut was a winner so keep your eyes peeled if fantasy is your bag.

Finally, we had the house decorated while we were in York. Ace to come home and find it done. We had a surveyor booked to come the same afternoon which didn't hurt. Long story short, they valued the house 40 grand over what we paid for it 5 years ago. Means nothing in terms of selling it, but means lots in terms of taking equity from it to buy houses. A very good day indeed and a wicked investment.

Right, that's it for now. I'll try to make more effort but there's lots going on. All my books still available, if you're classy buy the paperback.