A Tale Of Two Turkeys

After a whole month of going cold turkey I find myself two days short of a day that will probably contain warm turkey. Then there’ll be cold turkey again. At least for a couple of days.

“Maybe we should have pizza on Boxing Day this year love.”

“Pizza?”

“Yeah, I want to try that new place Contrivios on that big circular junction. Apparently it’s better to go for their thicker crust offering as it’s perfectly cooked.”

“Where?”

“The Snowlay Roundabout. Deep pan. Crisp and even.”

Look, I never promised that having a break from blogging would mean an end to dreadful puns…

I’ve been a good boy (mostly) since we last spoke. I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t allowed to come back and give an update until I had made some actual progress on the writing front and, after all the lovely and supportive comments I received when I decided to bugger off and write for a while, I figured it was a promise I should keep.

The good news is, although the words haven’t been flowing quite as freely as I would like, I’ve stuck at it and managed to get a few things completed. I’ve got a brand new story up on Literally Stories today entitled And A Crow In A Pear Tree. It’s basically an excuse for worse Christmas puns than the pizza one you are still recovering from but it does feature everyone’s* favourite hobbit-hating-hero, Stormcrow. By the magical hyperlinking powers of the internet clicking on any of the words in the story title will take you along to LS. How simple is that? Hope you enjoy it (and thanks to those of you who’ve already read it!)

(*everyone meaning me and Diane Dickson)

I’ve also had a second piece (Car Crash Television) accepted by those same lovely LS folk which will be appearing some time in January. And, as if that wasn’t enough I’ve got a third piece (No Time Like The Past) which will be in Issue 2 of Scaffolding Magazine in March. There are two more as-yet-not-submitted-anywhere stories kicking around in my locker and a steady flow of ideas so I think my plan might just be working. At this rate I’ll be back regularly suckling at the WordPress dopamine teat free of all that trying to be a proper writer guilt nonsense.

What has been fascinating to me while I’ve been absent is the steady stream of new followers that have appeared. I’m starting to feel like Elvis. Nothing to do with my blog-death being a great career move, more about me sitting typing this in a white jump suit contemplating a deep-fried peanut butter sandwich. I’ve pretty much doubled in size this year (we’re back on followers now, I’m not really eating deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches and turning into a hunka-chunka-burnin’-love) which I find truly amazing. It seems like only yesterday I plumbed new depths by basically begging my way to 100 followers and now I’ve got 200 plus. At this rate I should be an internet sensation just in time for the internet to be phased out.

But seriously folks, thank you very, very much for the time you’ve taken to read, comment and generally provide encouragement – it really does mean a lot to me.

This won’t be my last post of 2016 but it will be the last one that’ll interest anyone who isn’t a runner or has a passing interest in hills. I’ll save that exciting gem for this time next week, but if sweat-soaked middle aged Welshmen are your thing you are in for a slick and salty ride. That sounds even worse written down than I imagined it could.

For those of you who celebrate it I wish you a very Merry Christmas – and to everyone I hope 2017 will be a year filled with stories and wonderment.