Enjoy the Superbowl if you’re interested. Enjoy reading yourself to sleep if you’re not. Thanks for sticking with me through these extemporaneous thoughts. If you have any advice or want to do all the stuff that isn’t writing for me as an act of charity, I’m all ears. Until then I really #AmWriting

And now I’m thinking seriously about that. Writing these stories isn’t a career move, it’s a creative expression. Writing is more important than being read, to me anyway. At the moment anyway. I suppose I’ll do what I have been and see how it works out. Writing, creating, resolving. That’s the work

Maybe my novella could have waited. I don’t know, I’ve given it no thought. The story demanded to be told and I’m telling it, as best I can. Is the fact that this is taking me away from the cursed role of being a publicity hound a problem? Yes and no. I mean, who cares? Unless I want readers.

Writers communicate our thoughts in long, slow and carefully considered works that demand close attention and a reader willing to invest the time to work through the implications of our thoughts. Okay, great. Now can you do some viral TikToks to get people interested? Well, no I can’t actually.

It got me thinking about how to professionalise my output and promote my work. How can I adhere to a content calendar if it means I have to ignore the work of writing. In 2026, there’s no getting away from it, generating publicity is a bigger part of the job of an author than writing.

No, the big delaying factor is that I’ve been writing. Several idea threads I’ve been playing with for a couple of years suddenly, unexpectedly formed a beautiful tapestry. A story that I had to write. The reason I haven’t been publicising my writing is that inspiration struck and I’ve been writing

There was the incident where I accidentally destroyed and had to replace a laptop after falling down the stairs and, topically for the moment, riding it like the luge. But that doesn’t really explain my lower-than-planned activity, even if the delay is why that first video remains unedited so far

I began the year writing and refining a couple of shorts to add to my stockpile ready to begin a submission blitz that would support my deliberate profile-raising actions. I recorded my first video then scripted a second and wrote and scheduled my first two newsletters, but it’s hardly a media blitz

Oh, I’m happy to. One is a first person narrative from the perspective of an off-duty police dog and the other is a cartoonist and one of his characters having a disagreement about narrative elements. Not exactly following the “write what you know” advice there.

Who could say?

Believe it or not, I have. Which then resulted in my reading the paperback in the narrator’s own voice. I think it was Kotaro Watanabe.

Comfort re-read.

I feel such dadness* that words cannot express

*an urge to pair shorts with a winter coat and tell awful jokes

That’s the beauty of the act. The why. You’re spot on.