Yikes!

Not waiting anymore. Isabella Lucia arrived just before midnight on February 4th, at a touch under 6lb. She's utterly gorgeous. I'm in awe of my wife, who dealt with the birth so well and has managed since on a teacup of sleep a night, because Izzy won't rest unless she's being held by Mummy.

Daddy's a bit tired too, but I feel a tad reticent about saying so. A punch on the nose often offends y'know.

Since the birth, Caz and I have realised a number of things. One is that we should have practised putting the stroller/car seat combo together more often. We've learned that Daddy sleeping on the edge of the bed does not work, because it ends up with Daddy shouting "Yikes!" just before he hits the floor. And we've also learned that a single child can have more wriggly bits than you'd expect to find in a box of worms. Getting a sleep suit on that little Houdini is hard.

But she's healthy, and all her bits are where they should be. She's strong too. A fetch round the nose from an irate Izzy has quite an impact.

Of course, the rest of my life has fallen away a bit. I'm off work for a fortnight, and have written a total of 450 words in four days - and those on the night Caz and Izzy were kept in hospital and I was too wired to sleep. I'm just glad I played the Vice Captain's Cup in the pool league the day before Izzy came. Well, the day she came, in fact - I won the title, and the final ran until 12.30am on the day she was born. Quite a day, eh?

So that's all for this blog. I'd like to think of witty or clever things to say, but I'm too tired, and anyway all the things I feel are trite. Like knowing my daughter is the beautifullest little girl in the world.

Trite. But a bit true.

A Little Time

 Still waiting for Izzy.

 Caz had to stay overnight in hospital a week ago, because the pesky child is giving her high blood pressure. When the nurses tried to monitor Izzy's heartbeat she kept wriggling away, so the record had gaps in it. Later they did a scan and she kicked the scanner thingy right off Caz's stomach. That girl does not like to be prodded.

 Methinks an infant who can kick that hard is probably OK.

 I'm still working when I can. I mean, I work at Barnardo's all the time, not just when I feel like it, but I'm writing when I can too. I submitted The Death of Ghosts to Angry Robot a couple of days ago, with quite high hopes to be honest. I've rewritten volume one several times, because it's never seemed to me that it was quite smooth enough as a story... not quite impactful enough... I don't know. It hasn't felt right, that's all. The work has paid off, because now the opening 20 chapters feel very good indeed, among the best stuff I've ever done. There are three very strong characters in there, with clear voices of their own, and the pace is very high. There's a lot to tell in Ghosts, I don't want to spend 50,000 words wiffling about while I set the scene.

 And I have other stories to tell, too. I've mentioned some of them. Chained Dragon, about the struggle against a shadowy band of sorcerers who have wiped out whole cultures before. The Pyramids of Saqoma, which tells of an effort by a river civilisation to find out who founded their land, and built the very first pyramid out in the desert. There's The End of All Roads, set in a trading city out on the steppe where cultures meet; and The Playground of Fawns, which tells of rebellion and hope in a culture ruled by god-Emperors. Just those stories could run to nine volumes, and that's not the whole list. I need more hands to type with and above all I need more time, if I'm to get these tales written down.

 [Please buy my novels, Angry Robot, so I can quit work and write for you instead]

 In a couple of weeks I'll be a daddy and time will be even shorter. I can't wait. I think of how my life has changed since I met Caz, how much better it is, how full of love and laughter like I've never known. It's terrific. All I had to give up was a little time.

 I wouldn't change that.

Waiting for Izzy

 Well, here we go, then. Into the last 4 weeks of my wife's pregnancy, which means that from here, we're on alert.

 Everything else has sort of faded into the background. Whenever my phone rings I snatch at it, in case it's Caz ringing to say her waters have broken. If the baby kicks and she lets out an oof I leap off the sofa (and that baby can kick. I'm starting to think she might be a centaur). In my nervousness I talk to the baby a lot. Also, any mother unwise enough to bring her infant/baby into my shop had better be prepared to spend a long time listening to me blather on about how great my daughter is going to be.

 I doubt they enjoy this.

 But I can't stop doing it. Waiting for Izzy has become my life. People say she'll take over once she's born, and I think, what's different? She's taken over already. The bloody child already owns more clothes than I do. On my day off we found the car seat doesn't fit, so we went and bought another one, which meant ages wiffling about in Mothercare, and then more ages finding a stroller that will fit the new car seat. So much for a relaxing rest day. And the devil of it is.... I want my days off to all be like that. I'm trapped. No prison is as secure as the one you build yourself.

 I've been working extra hours for Barnardo's, because I was on my own over Christmas and New Year and fell behind. Got to do the job well because we need the money for Izzy. I hardly ever go out now because the money needs to be spent on Izzy. We don't have alcohol at home, and soon won't have pop either, because we're making a healthy environment for Izzy. Caz uses steam cleaners and bleach scrubs to make the house safe for Izzy. It's ridiculous, you'd think she was the Queen of Sheba.

 All of this comes as a culture shock. I'm used to living on my own, choosing my own hours, making my own decisions. Now? If I get permission to sleep I'm doing well. And this is just the start, this is nothing, compared to what I know is coming down the road... and can't wait for, so I can take the last scrap of my independence and throw it cheerily away. Told you. A prison I built myself.

 Caz and I went to see The Force Awakens the other day. We're not Star Wars fans, but we thought we'd give it a try, and it's the best movie in the franchise by a distance. I mention it because I don't have a clue when we'll next be able to mosey out for the evening. Maybe in the summer. The summer of 2030, that is.

 Got to go now. Caz has gone awful quiet and I'm worried...

Review of the Year

 2015 is nearly over, and here's what you've all been waiting for. Yes, it's my now traditional review of the year.

 Trouble is, I haven't watched, read or been involved with as much this year. My life's been so full that there hasn't been time. The largest part of that is that I got married, of course, one wonderful day back in August. But I also changed my job twice, ending up as a shop manager in Yeovil, which meant moving house, and all while my wife was pregnant. She still is, by the way; our daughter is due in February. Guess what the headline will be in next year's review?

 But despite all these terrible hardships, I have managed to sneak off now and then for a bit of enjoyment, so here goes. Spoilers may lie ahead, so watch out.

 Best film is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2. I said last year that the first Mockingjay film was the best of the series, though taken from the worst book, and the final movie continued that. It's very cleverly done, keeping true to the novel but changing enough to make things interesting. It also makes it clearer that Coin really was a bad woman, ready to start all the old terrors again - meet the new boss, same as the old boss. A movie well worth seeing.

 I liked The Martian too. It's very hard to write a story in which the main character is alone nearly all the time, because dialogue is so important. Without it you have to be clever, and the writers here pull that off. I know, I'm a sucker for good writing. I can't imagine why.

 Speaking of which, the writers of Doctor Who need to either pull their fingers out or quit. Since Capaldi took over all the wit, all the subtlety has gone out of the show. It's set pieces now, dramatic incidents and gribbly monsters, but little of the sense of fun and character it used to have. No wonder viewing figures are falling.

 In books, I read Iain M Banks' The Player of Games. This is, simply, brilliant. It's set in the far-future Culture, where everyone lives comfortable lives - but not in the Empire of Azad, which is brutally ruled by a power elite chosen on the basis of how successful they are in playing the game of Azad, after which the empire is named. The game is said to be so like life that success in one means sure success in the other. The Culture is trying to build diplomatic bridges to the empire, so it recruits a talented game player named Gurgeh and sends him to Azad to play. As the story develops Gurgeh begins to realise there are larger games being played than the one on the boards. His journey through all this is horrifying as much as anything, but the book is seamless, as close to a perfect piece of SF as I can remember reading.

 I tried to read A Song of Ice and Fire again, too. It's my third effort to get into the books that became Game of Thrones and I can't manage it, I just can't. I know the series is more realistic than most Fantasy, I understand that it deals with moral ambiguity and the role of women in society. But it's just so dull. George R R Martin writes as though his hand is moving through treacle. The TV series might be just as good as I'm told it is - I wouldn't know - but it was taken from bad books. And really, one novel since 2005? I don't know what Martin is playing at. A writer's job is to write. One novel in the last ten years is absurd.

 So, there it is. I can almost hear the shrieks of dismay already. Hopefully 2016 will include more high quality like Banks or Mockingjay, and less dreary sludge like Doctor Who or George R R Martin. And hopefully I'll be able to look away from my daughter for long enough to notice.

 Have a great Christmas, everyone, and in the New Year may the Force be ever in your favour. Or something.

Bloody Hard on a Man

 I've now entered The Bonesmile into the open submission portal at Angry Robot. I'm usually pretty critical of my own work, veering between an occasional "This is great!" and the more frequent feeling that "This is a bit rubbish." But Bonesmile, I think, is a good book. It has two strong central characters, very different from each other, and a gaggle of other interesting people and groups too. It also has a good plot, with plenty of twists throughout. In short, a nice little adventure story, rolling along at a cracking pace.

 I'm finding more time to write now. Since Caz moved down to Yeovil with me I've been able to stop driving back to Barnstaple two or three times a week. It's a 90 minute trip and that adds a lot to the day, once there and once back. Of course it's not all easy. Sometimes Caz calls out for me to come feel the baby kick and I always go, I love that.

 She also just rang my mobile phone by sitting on hers. I'm not making this up. It's bloody hard on a man who's trying to work.

 Still... things are easier. Hence more time to write, and I'm burrowing back into the stories again, Angry Robot's open door period is a great boon, something to focus on as I pick up the threads. There's also HarperCollins' open Wednesdays, which works the same way, and which I'll give a try tomorrow. I'm going to submit The Death of Ghosts as well, to one or the other, and probably Blessed Land too. No sense passing up an opportunity.

 All this means I can't publish those books on Amazon or Smashwords, not while they're under consideration elsewhere. So I'm thinking about maybe putting out a short story, something that links to an earlier novel. Possibly to Troy, or to The Risen King; there are plenty of things left to see in the lives of Alar and his little band. But I'm not sure how they'd fit into a short format. A novel, yes, though I think Risen King has such a complete story arc it might be a shame to tinker with it. This needs thought. I'm good at thought.

 But not now. I have a baby's kicks to feel, don'cha know.

One of Those Faces

 Caz is here in Yeovil now. We moved yesterday, which meant hiring a van and driving to Barnstaple, loading it, driving back here and then unloading. And I already have tendonitis in one shoulder. I didn't whimper much (honest).

 Anyway, the good news is that Caz likes the flat. We've made a start on sorting out the boxes, but can't do a whole lot because we're too short on furniture until Sunday, when a whole load is due to be delivered. The next week or so will be busy, even out of work. But at least the endless travelling to Barnstaple and back is over. Caz and I are together at our home, and things will be easier now.

 We're less than three months from the birth of our daughter. Izzy kicks so hard now that we can see it, and she's started to react to certain things. She loves it when her Mummy's in the bath, she loves Billy Joel, and she goes stone bonkers when she hears her Daddy's voice. This sorta distracts me from writing... well, it distracts me from everything, to be honest. Every time she wriggles and kicks in excitement I have to go over and croon to her, I can't help myself. I take ages to write a paragraph, and when I read it back I keep expecting to find that every ninth word is baby.

 Perhaps I should switch to writing soppy romances. Only not really.

 I'm trying to focus through all of this, I really am. But other stuff keeps butting in too. I've found a new pool team to play for here in Yeovil, and have already been asked to be Vice-Captain, which means I help run the team, liaise with the pub and league, and so on. It's not much work, in fairness, but I've only been in this town for 5 minutes, never played a competitive match, and am already helping run a team. I must have one of those faces. They do say, if you want something done, give it to someone who's already busy.

 The pool season starts in February, which also includes the Captain's Cup, which as VC I will be in. And it's when Izzy is due to take her bow. Then I'm going to be busy.

 So I'd best get the submissions to Angry Robot done as soon as possible. Come the end of winter I'm not going to have time for anything. Life takes us to some unexpected places. Me, a father, and a fairly well-liked man too, it seems. Who'd have thought it?

No Sense At All

 I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year, which feels a bit strange. I've only done it for the past two Novembers, but already it's become a habit, and it's weird to see people chatting about it on Fb and in the forums and not be part of that. I'd like to do it again. NaNo instils good writing habits, such as just getting on with the story and not bothering about rewrites or passages which clunk a bit. You can fix those things on the edit. Just make time to write and then do so, cheerfully leaving everything else to one side.

 But I moved house last Thursday and my new flat is a mess. My wife will be joining me here in two weeks so there's a lot to do and not a huge amount of time. So, not doing NaNo. Ho hum.

 Our new home is in Yeovil, where my job is. I've been with Barnardo's for two months now and am still learning new things all the time, tricks and knacks for getting the work done faster or better. In a charity shop you always have to run very fast just to stay still, like Alice in Through the Looking Glass. We don't have volunteers yet either - the shop is still new - so all of that falls on myself and my one staff member, Teresa. It's hard work, and in this new town I hardly know anyone, which puts a dampener on evenings out.

 Tough world...

 So guess what? I stay in and write. And a good thing too, because Angry Robot publishers have an open submissions period in December and January, during which any writer can submit any novel in the genres of "SF, F, and WTF?" as  Angry Robot puts it. I'm planning to put in The Bonesmile, also Black Lord of Eagles, and perhaps The Death of Ghosts as well. The first is ready to go, the second needs work, and the third... I'm not sure. Need to ponder it awhile.

 But not too long, because 2015 has been good to me. I have a wife and a child on the way, two things about which I had lost hope. In fact everything I've done this year seems to have worked. So this old cynic finds himself, rather to his surprise, feeling a tad superstitious. I'd like to get my submissions in during December, while it's still 2015, because next year might not be so kind. Utter tosh of course, complete nonsense with not a shred of reason or sense behind it... but I'm still going to do it that way.

 Suppose I'm a bit of a hypocrite, really.