5 days until doom!

 Well, April has certainly come at us fast and furious. I cannot believe that we are over half way through the month already and, more importantly or worryingly, I am only FIVE days away from my attempt to walk the equivalent of the London Marathon.

As mentioned before, I am doing it for a fantastic cause, Acorns Children's Hospice. I am hoping to raise as much as I can for them, so please click on the link here and sponsor me with as little or as much as you can.

And so, if I survive, I will update next week with my time and progress, and I promise no photo's of blistered tootsies!

Football

Leicester seem to be bounding from one disaster to another and I am now seriously worried about my club getting relegated. We made the belated decision after the defeat to Crystal Palace to finally sack the manager, Brendon Rogers. Whilst he did win us our first ever FA Cup, that is now paling into insignificance as details about background dealings are coming to light. It appears he was behind the removal of our long term physio team, which has resulted in a massive increase in injuries, along with scouts departing as they felt unheard and players being side-lined due to personal issues with the manager.

Two further defeats followed before we appointed an interim manager in Dean Smith who, while he hasn't got a sparkling resume, has experience and is considered a very good man-manager. He also brings with him Craig Shakespeare, who was assistant manager during our Great Escape of 2015 and the fantastic achievement of winning the Premier League the following season. Finally, John Terry has also joined as a coach. He is one of the legends of the Premier League, and hopefully will be able to plug what has been a very leaky defence this season.

Writing

A Soul Reclaimed is coming along nicely. Chapter nine is complete and chapter ten well underway. Whilst I set myself a target of 8334 words per month, that does include other things so my initial thought that I would have the book finished and off with my editor before our Writer's Retreat in June looks a little distant. At least I know that I will have a project to work on during the four full days that we are in Church Stretton. Not to mention the fact that my last novel, The Woodsman, was completed during the previous retreat!

As I mentioned last time, I had entered the NYC Short Story competition. The results came through last week and, although I did receive some very positive feedback from the judges, my entry did not make the top five in my group and so, another competition goes by without success.

General

There is not a lot to say really about life in general. My day job is as busy as ever. The chess league finished with me claiming fourth spot out of eight. A disappointment overall with some of the games that I didn't win, but still a decent performance. The knockout cup held on presentation night saw me make the final for the third consecutive season (out of three!!). However, a stupid error cost me my queen early doors and playing against the favourite on the day saw me go down fighting. My first trophy-less season! Roll on Season Four!

Enjoy the sun, if we get any, and I will hopefully be posting again in the next fortnight if my legs have not fallen off!

Marching onwards and a marathon in April

 Well March is very nearly through and as such, it is time for another update. 

As always, we will hit the four main points and add in a general section as well.

But first, the big news and probably the most stupid thing that I will do!

After my successful charity walk in 2022, where I did a virtual 1083 mile walk from Lands End to John O'Groats, raising money for Acorns Children's Hospice, I decided that I wanted to continue with my fundraising efforts in 2023.

However, another thousand mile walk was not on this year's agenda! So looking at what else I could do, I am pleased to announce that on April 23rd, I will complete the London Marathon.

Well, kind of! Being old, unhealthy and overweight, there is no way that a) I would get accepted from the hundreds of thousands of applicants for the real thing and b) me ... run 26 miles???? You having a laugh!

So I have decided that one of the many routes that I used last year around the outskirts of the village is about three and a half miles long. The marathon is 26 miles, 365 yards (26.219 miles) so my reckoning is that seven full circuits is 24.5 miles leaving me an additional 2 miles ish to complete it.

Walking of course!

I think it will take me around eight to ten hours to complete and if I alter the circuit in the afternoon to walk past my local pub, I am hopeful that I will get people cheering me home!

As mentioned, I am putting my body through this pain in aid of a wonderful cause, and you can go to my just giving page by clicking on the link below. Any donation is welcome and please tick the gift aid if eligible.

Michael's Marathon Page

Health.

All was looking good with what I hoped would be my final physio appointment in the first week of March until Helen, the physio, came down with Covid! A two week postponement was agreed, which gave me more time to exercise myself into a position where my hand would probably be as good as it is going to get.

Unfortunately, after feeling under the weather on Saturday 11th, I woke up on the Sunday with a stonking headache, streaming nose, coughing and a temperature that was worse that the proverbial underwear of a female prostitute! One test later and the thick line showed that somehow, I too had now contracted Covid. Fortunately I can work from home in my day job, so it did not impact me too badly and once I got on to the paracetamol, my temperate got under control and my third time of having the C-Virus was not as bad as the previous two.

Anyhoo! Rebooked physio for the 5th of April and hopefully this will sign me off and I can stop talking about my hand!

Football

I give up! Well, I despair at times about what is going wrong with my beloved Foxes. After the defeat to Manchester United, more defeats followed by Arsenal, Blackburn at home in the FA Cup (very annoying!), Southampton (bottom of the league) and Chelsea (and of course, our former player Ben Chilwell scored against us!).

Last Saturday stopped the rot with a point away at Brentford, who are 8th but the high hopes that I had of a top ten finish now look very distant. We are 13 points off 10th with only 11 games to go. More worryingly we are now 1 point off the drop zone!

However, the relegation fight, (I certainly did not think that I would be talking about us being involved in that at the start of the season!), is now between 9 teams with 12th placed Crystal Palace, fresh from sacking their manager, on 27 points and bottom placed Southampton on 23 points.

Trying to be positive, we are seeing some of our better players recovering from long term injuries, and with a run of six games in April which involves matches against four teams in the battle, we do have the chance to turn it all around.

Writing

With the Covid enforced quarantine, I had a good week last week, writing through chapter eight and into chapter nine of 'A Soul Reclaimed'. 3000 words in four days certainly helps. However, despite plotting the chapters out, as I am writing I find that I am changing the sequence of events that I had originally planned for a better flow. All being well, it will make sense once it has been through the editing process!

It was a bit of a manic weekend, being allowed back out, (see the general section) so writing slowed up again, but with just over a week until the next meeting, I do need to crack on.

Having a bit of a tidy up of my folders, with the thought of the NYC Midnight competition still fresh in my mind, I found an entry to a previous 100 word version. This led me to having a bit of a scroll through of my previous entries and I will do a future post featuring these previously unpublished stories.

I am going to be running a couple of promotions for audiobooks in the coming weeks on twitter so make sure you are following me @forthelostsoul

Reading.

Less said the better! As my school report cards used to say ... "Must Try Harder!"

General

As mentioned, it was a bit of a manic weekend. After being let back out from quarantine, (I am the type of person who obeys the rules and also does not want to spread it!), Friday went a bit wrong as a female friend (see Libby Forrest in 'The Woodsman!'), and myself were left alone on our table in our local pub. Several pints for me and double gins for her, and the jaeger bombs came out before we attacked the 2-1 cocktail menu.

Saturday morning was horrendous but with the knowledge of another friend's birthday outing, I dragged myself to the kitchen for breakfast via the shower and back to the pub I went. A trip into Solihull, with eleven of us drunkenly throwing darts in the general direction of the board, was followed by watching Ireland gain the Grand Slam at rugby by beating England before we all headed back to our village.

Sunday morning brought on another feeling of unease but, in the UK, it was Mother's Day, so again, the morning sobering up routine was put into action, and a nice meal followed with my parents.

I managed to stay in the next few nights, catching up on The Mandalorian and Ted Lasso, while starting to watch a 2019 show called Defending Jacob, with the excellent Chris Evans and the ever impressive young actor, Jaeden Martell. I'm two episodes in and loving it.

Chess League is drawing to a conclusion but I, like Leicester, have under achieved, and am currently in fourth place out of eight. My chances of winning the league are next to zero ... mathematically still possible especially as I have to play the top two in my final games, but they each have an easy game left, so if I can sneak third place this season, that is looking like my best finish.

Well, that is enough drivel from me for the month. Stay safe everyone and keep on reading.

Short and Sweet

 Well ... 2023 is now well underway but after the catch up in the last post, unfortunately I have been struggling to think of things to say in this one! As usual, lets try to stick with the four categories from previous and see where that takes us!

Health

The hand is improving, although I have suffered sort of a setback this week. I am back up to around 50% strength which the physio is really happy at my progress. I have also been to see the consultant for the biopsy results, and he has confirmed that it was definitely Dupytrens disease. So good news and bad news. Good news is that it isn't anything life threatening and that he did cut everything out of me that was there. Bad news is that it is a genetic disease, and it can come back at any time, and in either hand. However, now that I am aware of it, he has shown and told me what to watch out for and to get back in touch immediately if it reappears. That way, it is easier for him to operate.

The set back that happened last Wednesday is that the scar tissue suddenly became very painful. Where they operated is where a lot of the nerves are in the hand. As it was a zig zag cut open and peel back, they cut the nerves. The pain is them now knitting back together and latching back onto the muscles and tendons. All good news really, but blinking heck, it hurts!

Football

The slow restart continued for the Foxes, but in the January transfer window, we managed to add three new players into the team. Harry Soutter, an Australian defender who is 6' 6"!! Should help us win more balls in the air! Victor Kristiansen, a young Danish left back who has bags of experience already and or very first Brazilian player, a right winger called Tete. His situation is a bit weird as he is under contract to the Ukrainain team, Shaktar Donetesk, but we have him on loan under the end of the season due to the war with |Russia.

The new faces gave us a fresh impetus and we won back to back games against Aston Villa and Spurs, scoring four in each before a loss away to Man Utd (not surprising really). But we are still handily placed for a top ten finish with a lot of games still to play.

Writing

A Soul Reclaimed continues to make slow progress. Chapter 7 is down on paper, well, on a computer screen anyway, and chapter 8 is underway. We are due to have a writers group meeting on the 3rd of March, and my plan is to definitely get chapter 8 finished and get a good way through chapter 9.

I have set myself a target of 100,000 words for 2023, which works out at 8333 per month so I do need to crack on with it.

I also was gifted entry to the NYC Midnight short story competition by S.J. Gibbs for Christmas. This is a company that I have entered several competitions in the past, without making it out of the first round group stage. However, I have never been in the short story competition before, This one tasked us to write a story of no more than 2500 words in eight days, based on a genre, subject and character. If you read my books, you will know my genres! So, imagine my delight (NOT!) when the draw came though and I was given a ROMANCE story to write, featuring the subject of ENCHANTMENT and a character of A LOBSTERMAN! I am in a group of 28 and only the top 5 get through so I have tried to be a bit different. I am not allowed to share the story until the results are through so I am afraid you will need to wait until April to read "William's Trial."

Reading

Once again, this is very hit and miss. I am trying to read during my lunch at work, but it all depends on how busy my day is. With the amount of time that they have given me off to go to my hospital appointments, I am trying to "make it up" by working part of my lunches. But I am cracking on with Fairy Tale by Stephen King. I am up to page 168 out of 550 ish so around a third of the way through. There is a lot of character and world building going on, and the story really hasn't got going yet. I assume that there will be some type of Fae within the story ... just waiting for them to appear

Well, I'm pleased that I got this done, just in time for my birthday on the 24th ... might be a drunken weekend coming up!

A Review of 2022

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and are looking forwards to a slightly less crap 2023!

As promised, I am going to keep up with at least one blog post between writers group meetings and I thought that this one would be a great chance to have a look back at 2022 and set out my hopes for 2023.

First things first, HEALTH 

As you know, I had hand surgery in November and I am pleased to say that the healing process is coming along quite nicely. I am back to about 25% strength in terms of lifting and gripping, but the stretching is still leaving a lot to be desired. 

I also now have a lovely 6cm scar to show off as a "battle wound" but I think it is definitely looking a lot better than the pictures on my last post!

The good news is that I am now back driving (so I can get back into the office on my day job) and more importantly, I am two handed typing again. Those three weeks of one handed (and literally one finger) typing did my head in.

Other than that, I did manage to pick up the lurgy on Boxing Day, and still haven't fully shaken it off. Runny nose, coughing, bit of a temperature but again, I am heading in the right direction. I think that now I have managed to polish off all of the Christmas alcohol should mean that my body gets a chance to rest!

FOOTBALL

The World Cup has come and gone, and while I didn't have too much expectation for England leading into the competition, once we got going, I thought we looked impressive. Unfortunately we let ourselves down against France (with a little help from a dodgy referee) and it is another 2 years of hurt for the Men's team to endure before Germany 2024 and the Euro's.

As for Leicester City, a poorish season last season became a nightmare start to this one. One point in the first seven games and we looked in serious trouble. However, a run of five wins, one draw and two defeats lifted us up out of the bottom three.

We've lost a couple in the league since the return from the WC but handily placed to mount a top 10 challenge in the second half of the season, quarter final of the league cup and into the fourth round of the FA Cup.

WRITING

2022 was a fairly successful year for me in terms of output of writing. It was definitely helped by the writers retreat which Jackie, Shelley and myself went on in June, when I managed over quarter of my year's word count in three days!

I managed to finish The Woodsman, my first venture into the world of serial killers and police, along with a short story collection called Supernatural Shivers. Both of these books are on my publications page if you want to check them out on Amazon. 

We also released our latest group book, Words Don't Frive, which is an anthology of our homework assignments. If you nip along to the JAMS website, you will see it on there.

I have also plotted out my new work in progress and am already up to 15000 words and chapter six out of a planned eighteen so that is really coming along. Entitled "A Soul Reclaimed", it is the sequel to my debut novel, "For The Lost Soul", and is set some thirteen years after the events of the first book.

All in all, I managed to write 79953 words in 2022, an improvement of 26043 words from the year before.

READING

I was once an avid reader, devouring at least a book a week during my lunch breaks and weekends before I started writing, but this has fallen off a cliff recently. 2022 saw me restart reading, but mainly the books written by Shelley and Jackie as a beta reader, or as a reader once it had been launched.

My only New Year resolution for 2023 is to read more. As such, for Christmas, I was gifted Fairy Tale by Stephen King, along with King of Ashes and Queen of Storms by my favourite author, Raymond E. Feist. Hopefully I will get my reading bug back.

Anyway, enough blathering on for now ... I have a book to finish writing!