Bear Faced Bloggery

Here in the UK, September is suicide prevention month, while internationally it is restricted to a single day - September 10th. In either case, it represents a worthy ideal to hold on to and an important goal to aim for, and my Facebook feed is full of appropriate aphorisms and pithy one-liners all of which are posted with the very best of intentions. One of the most ubiquitous of these this year is this one: The sentiment is true of course, but doesn't tell the whole story. For it is not simply wanting the pain to stop that drives a person over the brink, but the belief that it never will. It is that complete loss of hope that grinds a person down, sending them spiralling downwards into the depths of a despair from which there can only be one release. The loss of hope extinguishes any light that there might have been at the end of the tunnel, plunging them into a darkness that I pray you and I will never have to experience. It is the loss of hope that is, quite literally, the kil...

  I don't have any exciting writing news to impart, I'm afraid... things seem to have gone a little quiet on that front, though I am still putting fingers to keyboard, even if somewhat intermittently. Those of you who follow this blog will be only too aware that my ability to write is directly bound up with the ebb and flow of my grief following the death of my wife, the first year of which I documented in my memoir 'Precious Dreams and Living Nightmares' (still available on Amazon or direct from me if you'd like to read it... link here ). I have just passed through the third anniversary of her death, and was prompted to listen again to a piece I had  recorded on my phone a year ago, immediately after the second anniversary. Those who have read the aforementioned memoir will know that it takes the form of recordings I made during that first year (effectively a journal) annotated with my reflections on those recordings from the position of hindsight. I had initially ...

Now the blackened ends of fireworks and empty champagne bottles* languish in the bin, along with the sad remnants of the year just gone, I find myself gazing from my window across frosted blades of grass and considering what 2025, like Monty Python's Romans, ever did for us. On the plus side, an update of my website ( kbwillson.com) revealed that writing-wise it wasn't a bad year at all. As well as getting my grief memoir out there, I had five stories published in various anthologies and magazines, as well as being commissioned to write the story of 'The Woodland Ball' for NT Kingston Lacy's Christmas offering. So all things considered this has been my most prolific year yet for getting my writing before the reading public. I also attended Fairport's Cropredy Convention and World Fantasycon - both of which were excellent - and did the usual smattering of work to keep the wolf from the door. A few trips away with van and dog helped maintain both my equilibrium ...