I had a plan, but...

January 2025

Ah, the “The best-laid plans of mice…” (Douglas Adams – sorry Robbie Burns) and ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (John Lennon – sorry Alan Saunders) kicked in over the Christmas New Year and into January period and stalled my grandiose plans for 2025 writing. 

While the causes are mostly good ones – family and friends and sport and good times – beginning a semi-chemo cream therapy designed to kill off pre-cancer lesions on my face is turning me into a very poor version of Freddy Kruger for a couple of weeks. Public appearances are not high on my calendar right now and my face feels like I’ve copped a severe and patchy sunburn. Meh. The things we do in younger years that come back to haunt us later. Baby oil was not exactly a smart sun choice – neither was sewing wheat bags on forty degree summer days to earn some cash.

So. What’s happening?
 
Despite the distractions and stuff, I love how life throws new directions and challenges and even unusual things to learn. I’ve become relatively capable at Minecraft Dungeons under the tutelage of my ten-year-old grandson. A friend has me reading into quantum physics, ultimately around qbits and quantum computers 

because his interest lies in future investments and mine lies in SciFi writing and how AI will evolve. I’ve accepted a new writing mentee with Spectrum Writing. Writers SA have offered me the opportunity to lead once-a-month think tank sessions for writers to discuss concepts, progress and any other writing matters, and I’m excited by this. More details later.

I continued to develop the third book in a fantasy series which has grown to a healthy 50,000 words with a 120,000 word target to finish. Yesterday I fed a minor character I named Dutton to a dragon. Satisfying. I will make that writing project my key focus while I convalesce. In all honesty, watching the rise of right-wing politics with the billionaire oligarchs in the USA and the wanna-be oligarchs in Australia gives me awesome characters and motives to write into my stories. The two greatest sins in all religious and atheist worlds are greed and tribalism. Greed accounts for all the other sins combined because it is all about ‘what I want’ and hate is the root of all ‘us not them’ creeds and actions. If we can ever educate those two selfish ideologies out of humans we might just create a peaceful, harmonised and productive world, but so long as we encourage/allow individuals to acquire ludicrous amounts of money and applaud them for it, and demonise anyone who isn’t exactly like us, we are doomed to violence and endlessly repeating the history loop. Sermon over.
 
I completed a second edit of my friend Richard’s project based on stories from the South Australian Police Mounted Cadre Unit and it’s ready to be offered to publishers. Richard is organising approaches to prospective publishers. We also will go through the selection process for relevant pictures to add to each chapter. Richard’s book is a fascinating read and a worthy historical project.
 
I sketched the plot key points for a new teenage novel based on a girls’ volleyball team which I’ve been meaning to write for a very long time.
 
The other plans for 2025 listed in my previous blog remain in place, just shifted back in time while I wrestle with the skin matters. The mice are currently preoccupied.