Bear Faced Bloggery

 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...