Bear Faced Bloggery

  In my last blog I promised to give my impressions of World Fantasycon, which I am more than happy to do. I've not attended a major convention in many years, falling as they do at times when more often than not I am working, but thanks to an extremely generous gesture from a very dear friend I was able to turn down work and head off to Brighton over the Halloween weekend. And what a wonderful, invigorating time it turned out to be! Brighton was alive with marauding packs of young people in spooky/horror garb whooping and hollering as they moved from pub to club in the perennial search for a good time. I am happy to report that I felt neither unsafe nor intimidated as I navigated my way between them on my way back to my hotel late at night - for believe it or not, I too was once a young, intoxicated and staggering student. It is for many a rite of passage, after all. The convention was excellent, well organised, extremely informative on a wide range of subjects concerning Fantasy a...

 It is a damp and dreary day at the beginning of October, a day the Scots would refer to as 'dreich'  (pronounced 'dreek' ) which is one of my favourite words, as it so perfectly sums up this type of weather. I have returned from a wind-swept dog walk, arriving back home just as the rain began to spatter the pavement as a precursor to the promised storm, which lashes against the windows as I write. So here's the thing... I am writing again. I know there are those of you who will be saying "I don't understand... he's never stopped, has he?" Well yes, I did. For almost two years I was unable to write fiction following the loss of my wife. Grief will do that to you... or it did to me anyway. Though as I have mentioned before, my ongoing journey through that particular storm has led to the publication of my 'grief memoir' - Precious Dreams and Living Nightmares - written initially as therapy for me and detailing as best I could the maelstrom o...

 As I write this, the sun is streaming in through the window and there is a slightly chilly north-easterly wind ruffling the leaves of the shrubs in the garden. We have had quite an extended period of good weather for this time of year, and life is all the better for it... which is a very good thing indeed, for just as meteorologically speaking it has been a time of more sunshine than showers,  metaphorically speaking the opposite is true. Not that these last few months haven't had their high points... I had two stories published in March, one (The Melusine Pact) in ParSec magazine and another (Pulse) in Black Cat Weekly, and my grief memoir ( Precious Dreams and Living Nightmares - written under my real name, Kevin Burke) continues to garner a truly wonderful (and frankly humbling) response from readers. I also had an extremely positive road trip at the beginning of April, taking in lots of old friends and revelling in a week of unmitigated sunshine. But for those who have re...

  This is the week when the book documenting my first year of grief goes live, and it is a bittersweet experience. As those few hardy individuals who follow this occasional blog will know, It takes the form of transcriptions of my thoughts and feelings - originally set down on my phone's voice recorder - throughout those first awful twelve months, accompanied by a commentary of sorts, observations written with the hindsight afforded by revisiting the recordings as that first year drew to a close. What it has become is the memoir that I never dreamed I would have to write.  It was never meant for public consumption but rather formed part of my ongoing therapy, and as such is about as raw and honest an account as you could ever hope to find. It pulls no punches, and tears my soul each time I read it back. Yet I made the decision to publish for three reasons:  Firstly, many of the books on grief that I read throughout this period (and there were plenty) felt somewhat sanitis...

 ...and just like that, another year draws to its close.  I can scarcely believe that in just a couple of months I will have completed my second year as a widower... a year which, though slightly less emotionally fragile than the last, has nonetheless been jagged with grief. I feel my loss as acutely as ever, though life has expanded around it, subsuming it into the warp and weft of everyday existence. I am working more, I am writing again, I am filling my time with the minutiae of daily life to such an extent that, to the casual observer, I would seem to be little different from the person I was prior to the terrible events of Easter 2023.  But the casual observer would be wrong.  If they were only to look a little more closely they would see the continuing sadness behind my eyes, feel the pain of loss that hangs heavy on my heart, and perhaps begin to get some inkling of my daily struggle to keep going. Reading back my blog from this time last year, I can see that ...

  So, the little book on grief that I spoke about in my last blog post is all but finished (as far as these things ever can be...). It's been an incredibly tough 18 months since my devastating bereavement, during which time I have taken part in 2 bereavement courses, had two rounds of counselling/therapy, read countless books on the subject, have been supported throughout by a wonderful peer support worker, and am booked onto a grief 'retreat' this coming November... so no one can say I haven't grabbed hold of every bit of help and support that I've been offered. And yes, things have improved, but I am no nearer being able to function as I used to, am still floundering through what passes for my life, and still searching for answers that I will probably never find. I'm afraid that I'm having to come to terms with the fact that I am no longer the same person as I was pre-bereavement, and that life, to use a well-worn cliché, will never be the same. However, d...