Not me, obviously, but my blog. Five years I’ve been doing this now and what a lot of changes I and it have gone through in that time.

2010 almost feels like a world away. I was living in another part of the country, married, and had been in employment for 3-4 months after 5 years of university and something like 10 months unemployment. For various reasons, fiction writing fell by the wayside. When I started pr0crastin8or (the original name for this blog) I didn’t have much of an idea what to do with it beyond making it a commitment for write more – for myself and for people who cared to read about my efforts.

Much of those early efforts were awful. I know, because I went back through a couple of months ago and deleted a lot of it. I also started and then stopped, writing Daily Post. I found it counter-productive to what I wanted to achieve but it spurred me on anyway to write the sort of content I did want. I went to see Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein and wrote about the play and the story of Mary Shelley’s superb book and that I feel is where the blog really took off. I fell in love with writing essay length blog posts and really analysing important issues of writing and science fiction – please check out my Highlights page to see a selection.

Now, five years later, I’m back in my home town. My marriage didn’t survive but my love of writing and determination remained. I’ve self-published three works to date, two of which were accepted as so-so by readers and the third (Dead Heat) received some great reviews and ratings. For those wanting to know when Dead Lock is coming, I’m afraid I have not started but keep reading through 2016 for potential updates on that score.

I’m also self-employed, having in 2013 left the job I started in 2010 to become a freelance writer. 2 1/2 years on I do not regret making the change despite concerns in the beginning whether I could make a living from doing this. I have built up a great client base and feel rewarded and challenged in equal measure every single day and feel I am heading in the right direction.

On the fiction front, I expect to use November to drive forward with my current WIP Salmonweird (click here and here for samples). It’s a supernatural crime comedy set in a fictional Cornish village and stands at 27,000 or thereabouts. I’ve not worked on it much in the last few weeks as this month has been very busy – it seems Oct0ber-November is my busiest period looking at work patterns from the last two years and this year, so far, is proving no different.

How will I celebrate my fifth birthday? Probably with a cup of coffee and a good book :)