Keith's December Newsletter

Howdy Folks

What’s got two thumbs and forgot to do his newsletter in November? 👍This guy!👍Honestly I’ve no idea what happened? I guess moving house kind of took up all my brain power. I’m sure you’re all gutted.

Anyway, this one will have to be a bit of a two-fer, not that it’ll make much difference. Both months mostly involved a lot of work.

Simmer Down (Control Your Temper)

I’ve basically spent the last couple of months settling into the new job and the new apartment. It’s going okay so far, although I’d like it if my management company did more than absolutely nothing about all the snags I found when I moved in. I’m so sick of renting. I really need to find a place to buy.

Possibly the best thing about the new job is a Greggs Outlet on the way to work. Four sausage rolls for less then £2? Yes please.

News From The Steam Factory

I have two main bits of news writing-wise. First is that GLUNDA THE VEG WITCH came seventh in the Book Bloogers’ Novel of the Year Award 2024.

Seventh out of over two-hundred and eighty entries is pretty good, although it’s a weird number to get excited about. Top five maybe, but top seven? Hard to make that sound “amazing”, lol. Anyway, I’ll be sticking with “Finalist”, as the rosette in the top corner says. That sounds more impressive.

I won a ‘mini blog tour’, where my book will be featured on 10+ blogs over five days. Always wanted to do one of those. It’ll be interesting to see if it has any effect on sales. And I also won twelve custom bookmark designs which I’ll be able to use to promo the book. Always good to have something like that on hand.

The other thing I have to tell you about is I’ve started a new novel, called ODDS BODKIN AND THE NIGHT MAYOR OF LONDON.

This all happened when I was joking around on Bluesky. There was such enthusiasm for the idea I wrote the opening paragraph.

From there I started fleshing out the story, and before I knew it I had a full outline and a word count that currently sits at around 10k words.

This is one of the easiest things I’ve ever written, mostly because it’s a bunch of tropes thrown together that I’m just having fun with. I’m not trying to do anything except tell an engaging story people can have a laugh with. As such my writing process has been a little chaotic. This is a note I made one night after I’d gone to bed and turned the light out.

The top bit is rewrites, the middle bit refers to a video of some dialogue I made on the loo, the third bit refers to something I’d already written, and the last bit is a reminder of what to write next.

I’m also knocking stuff out as and when. This is the start of a chapter I wrote whilst cooking. I didn’t make any corrections and I could only remember bits of my historical research.

Pure chaos. But it’s interesting to see how that 👆 could eventually turn into something like this 👇.

There’s method in my madness, I promise.

Anyway, if I keep knocking out a thousand words at a time as I’ve been doing I’ll have this done in a few months. There’s no guarantee of that of course, just this week for example I’ve been laid up with some mystery illness I could have done without, but I reckon I’ll have a first draft done and dusted by the summer at latest.

When I’m Not Writing

I think I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll mention it again, I just bought the box set of Ted Lasso and I can’t wait to dive in!

(Yes I’ve seen it before, and yes I could have watched it online, but given the way streaming services keep deleting things physical media is the way forward. I’m going to watch this again and again, so why not have a copy at home for when the internet stops working.)

If you haven’t seen it I’m not going to try and pitch it to you, you’re going to have to trust me on this, but what I will do is tell you that THIS WEEKEND, the 5th & 6th of Jan, Apple are letting you watch as much as you like on Apple TV+ FOR FREE!

That’s right, Ted Lasso, Slow Horses, Severence, Foundation (which you know I loved), all for nothing. You are of course limited by time with how much you can watch, but a weekend is long enough to try the first few episodes of each, so you can work out if it’s worth a quick subscription or not?

And there you go. That’s it from me for 2024. Beehiiv sent me my yearly wrap up, so goodbye to the 89% of you that are American, the 6% of you that are British (I really thought that number would be higher), the 3% of you that are Canadian, and the 2% of you from somewhere else.

Thank you all for sticking with me through this a tumultuous year. Hopefully you can stick around for the year to come, and many, many more.

Best of luck for 2025 to you all. I really do hope you have a fantastic time! 👍

Toodle-pip for now.

Keith