I'm tired, my feet are sore and I have a lot to do before some friends come over to visit later this evening. However, because of some annual leave that I took I have a full 13 days off.

This makes me happy.

I shall be trying to get some relaxation on, do some writing, start prepping the sequel to 'Blood, Sweat and Tea', maybe attack my garden with napalm, tidy my house and catch up on some books that I need to read.

So really I'll be busier than I am when I'm at work...

Thankfully I have a few blogpost ideas jotted down, so there will still be regular updates here and, because I will have time to actually compose them rather than scribbling* them down, they may even be more readable than normal.

There are also a few event type things I'm going to be going to - including getting paid to talk about blogging. How easy money is that?

The only sad thing is that my travel mug at work (used for that essential 6:30am cup of tea) has disappeared - I don't know who'd want it as it is kept in a manky state for exactly this reason. Now the action figure version of myself will have to come with a different accessory. Something like a 'realistic pool of vomit' or a 'Life size "Vehicle incident" form - yes, he's reversed the ambulance into something again!'.

I have a Team Leader looking for it, such is my celebrity pull.

*Ahem*.

*What is the typing equivalent of 'scribbling?

I’m feeling really disconnected – I shouldn’t do, I have a metric ton of computers in my flat, even a few old laptops…

But without my Macbook which I’d set up ‘just right’, along with all my emaail settings and the like I feel like I’m missing an arm.  I think that it’s because my desktop needs me to sacrifice a small animal before it’ll start up…

What I would like to know though is why it takes ‘7–10 days’ to fix a problem which I could fix in forty minutes if I had the parts.

This is why blogging has been slight of late, and why I’ve been pretty much unable to answer any emails.

But…

There is superb news, both from my publisher.  Firstly my publisher Clare Christian won ‘Best Young Publisher’ and secondly I’ve sold the rights to my book to various people – which is fun.

Clare writes about the award here (where you can see my gap-toothed smile); and about the rights stuff here.