Category: Posts

One Simple Trick To Reduce Internet Use

Sometimes I think I’m not really cut out for modern life. Particularly instant access to the internet. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to write with pen and paper rather than directly onto a screen.

I have tried loads of things to reduce the amount of time I spend online. I have used all the popular apps with limited success. There is only one thing that really works for me:

SETTING A TIMER

Here’s how I do it: Every morning I plan out my day by taking a page in my notebook and splitting it in four. Then at the bottom of each quarter I put a task called no surf and a number of minutes next to it. Today that was 64, 65, 66 and 67. I already have a timer set on my phone for the end of each quarter, which over the course of a work day are two hours each. At the beginning of each quarter I start a timer (for 64, 65, 66 or 67 minutes). The agreement I have made with myself is that until that timer goes off, I won’t use the internet.

It’s a low tech solution but the crazy thing is that it actually works.

Not Giving Up

The genius thing that we did was, we didn’t give up.

– Jay-Z

I have been thinking about this quote a lot recently. I think it is worth considering. I’m trying to make it as an author and, to be totally honest, I haven’t had a lot of success. I have been publishing on and off for the last seven years and I’m still nowhere near being able to support my family with it.

Honestly, I have considered giving up. I have even decided to give up, but somehow I keep coming back to it.

It seems that writing is something that I can’t give up. I don’t want to give it up.

There are things I can do differently and I’m working on those. I don’t know if they will have any impact, but I will try them anyway. If they work then good, if they don’t then I will just carry on.

The trick, I think, is not to do it because of some theoretical external reward. I might never be able to make a full time living as an author. It would be great, but it’s not the reason I’m writing these stories. I’m writing them because I enjoy the process and as long as I continue to enjoy it I will keep going.

Catching up on new releases

Long time no speak. Things have been pretty busy behind the scenes here but I am getting everything back under control. I have spent some of that time getting my releases for the rest of the year organised (as well as some new writing which I am very excited about, but more on that another time). Some of them are available now the rest will be out November and December.

The Vampire Next Door

It was supposed to be a fresh start but it would be their end

Adam and Debbie moved to a new house because they wanted a fresh start. They thought they would be happy there but they could not have predicted what would become of them. Until they arrived, they didn’t even think vampires were real.

Available NOW from:

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Other

The Forgotten

He came to the city for a better life. His parents came to find out what happened to him.

Harlan Potts has the answers but do they want to hear them? Harlan knows that what he has to tell them may break their hearts but they have paid him to do a job and he is a man of his word. No matter what the cost, he intends to tell them the truth.

Available NOW from:

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Other

Double Feature

Imagine you could hear people’s thoughts. Donna Stone doesn’t have to imagine. For most of her life she has done her best to ignore what other people are thinking until one day she can’t. She is the only one who knows what they are planning and if she doesn’t stop them no one will.

A man stands on a hill. He has a secret that no one will ever believe. He is torn between telling a reporter everything and risking the trouble that may follow and wanting to know what her reaction will be. Whatever he decides it may already be too late to do anything about it.

Available NOW from:

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Other

Tales from the Shadows Volume 1

Strange things lurk in the shadows and not all of them remain there

Tales from the Shadows is a collection of thirteen thrilling short stories totalling more than 100,000 words.

Available NOW from:

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Other

Tales from the Shadows Volume 2

Come walk in the shadows with me and see what horrors I will show you

Tales from the Shadows Volume 2 is a collection of fourteen thrilling short stories totalling more than 100,000 words.

Available on NOVEMBER 2nd. Pre-order now from:

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Other

Four Stories Tall

Four stories to haunt your nightmares

Four Stories Tall is a collection of four thrilling novellas totalling more than 100,000 words.

Available on DECEMBER 7th. Pre-order now from:

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Other

P.S. You might also notice that my website looks a bit different now. I am still playing around with designs so if you have any thoughts on the direction let me know.

Time Away

As of now I am on annual leave for a week (ten days if you count the weekends and bank holidays). I have decided that I am also going to stop using a computer during this time so there won’t be any blog posts from me until 14th April.

I think it’s important, from time to time, to step away from our usual routines and examine other aspects of life. In addition to that, I don’t want to give myself the opportunity to read the news or waste time doing other things online.

My plans are to write (in my notebooks), do some gardening and spend time with my family. We will probably watch a few films among other things. I will also go running a few times and help out my elderly neighbours by collecting prescriptions and going shopping.

We had been planning to go to Scotland for the week, but obviously that’s no longer an option. Even so, there are plenty of things to do that don’t involve staring at a computer screen.

All We Have is Now

Leave March in March. The last month has felt like a decade, February and January weren’t great either. But this is a new quarter. So let’s not dwell on what came before.

The situation we find ourselves in is beyond our control. We can’t change it. We can only make the best of the minutes, hours and days ahead of us. Try to find something to hold onto that brings you joy. Remember that neither good nor bad things last forever. All we have is now.

This changes everything

One day we will have this virus under control. Maybe that’s six months from now or maybe it will take longer. And when that happens we will be in a recession. Businesses are already folding and more will follow. The stock market appears to be in free fall. People will lose their jobs, their businesses, their houses. These things are already happening and they will probably get worse.

The gouvernment will try to put things back together. They will try to go back to the way things were last year. The economy will be prioritised above pretty much everything else. Back in Business will be the slogan. We will be asked to make more sacrifices to try and rebuild the world as it used to be. But should we?

It’s not just the economy that is being changed by this. People are being changed as well. In the west we no longer live in a protective bubble, sure that nothing can truly harm us. The safety net is gone. People who have never needed social aid are having to ask for it. People aren’t sure when this is going to end. We are losing our “innocence” and that is going to be the biggest change.

Going back to the way things were is impossible. The society of 2019 isn’t sitting there waiting for us to get through this, it is gone forever. We can’t go back to it, even if it was something worth going back to. We have changed and that means we aren’t going to settle for things being the way they used to be.

I don’t know what that’s going to mean. I don’t know what the world of 2021 is going to look like but I know it won’t be the same as the world of 2019. It can’t be. How can we possibly go back to cutting NHS funding when we’ve all seen how much we rely on it and the people who work in it? How can we go back to questioning a living-wage for people who work in supermarkets and as couriers when we’ve seen that we need them to keep us alive?

Things are already changing, the only question is what we want them to change into.

Weekends

I have been working from home every day for the last few weeks but this is the first week my kids have also been off school. As we aren’t allowed to leave the house we have a unique problem of how to define a difference between the weekdays and the weekend. I am not sure why it seems important to do this but it does.

There will be differences: I won’t be sitting in my office from 9 until 5 so they will see more of me. We are also unlikely to attempt the sort of formal home-schooling my wife has been doing for the last week. But other than that?

We will watch some films together. I might finally get out for a run. I will do some gardening. But we won’t be able to go out anywhere and it’s only now that it really hits me how much we are losing there.

I have always been more than happy to stay at home to work. Sitting in front of a computer is the same wherever I happen to be doing it. It’s also very rare that we go out in the evenings. On weekends we used to go out; to the cinema, for meals, to the park, for long walks. Now we can’t do any of that.

It’s going to be a strange experience. Oscar is already asking about going out and despite how much fun he’s had in the garden, Jude is also starting to get bored. And really, this is only week one of complete lock-down, we have a long way still to go.

Don’t Go Crazy

This might be my last post specifically relating to the Cornovirus outbreak because it’s time I started following my own advice.

Since my Digital Declutter post in May last year I haven’t blogged. I have been trying very hard to cut my internet use and media consumption back. I have been successful for weeks at a time and I have felt a lot better about everything. I was still doing this when the virus started leaving China and making its way to Europe so I was slow to pick up on what was happening. Even as Italy prepared to lock its doors I was under the mistaken impression that it wasn’t really going to impact me.

When it finally did hit me I fell back on my old patterns of using the internet too much, listening to news radio and, basically, trying to inhale as much information about the situation as I could. Unsurprisingly, the weeks that I have been doing so have been very stressful. And the question I find myself asking now is; was I really worse off when I didn’t understand the full implications of what was happening?

Perhaps, but I’m not sure it’s as straightforward as that. Maybe it would be better to ask whether I am better off checking the news every fifteen minutes than I would be checking it once or twice a day? I’m pretty sure the answer is no.

Most of the news I’ve read and watched about it isn’t actionable information. Which means that the only outlet I have for it is panic which doesn’t do me or the other people around me any good. And it is quickly driving me back into the old unfortunate habits that I’d hoped were behind me.

My solution then is to check the news twice a day; once mid-morning and once when I have finished work for the day. That should give me everything I need to know about what’s happening and it should reduce my levels of stress. What it means for this blog is that I am going to try to write about other things, things that I was thinking about before this all started and will still be thinking about long after it is all over.

Stay safe out there.

Try to make the most of it

This isn’t a good situation. It seems like half the world is locked away and none of us knows what the long term impact of that is going to be. Personally, I’m not even thinking about that as most of my concerns are more immediate; what happens if someone in my family catches the virus?

But on the bright side I get to spend more time with my family every day. I get to eat lunch with my wife and children every day. I feel more a part of the family than I do when I spend two hours a day sat in my car by myself. And whatever the next few weeks may bring, I want to enjoy that and make the most of it.

It’s Not The Apocalypse

I have read a lot of post-apocalyptic books and watched a lot of movies. I’m sure you have as well. That’s probably one of the reasons why I’m finding the news so distressing at the moment; because it all looks so familiar. But if that was the only issue then I think we would be okay and we would see a lot more people behaving like reasonable adults. Unfortunately, we also have a lot of experience of modern news reporting to go on.

We all saw what the media did during the Brexit campaign and during the most recent election. Until recently we could see it happening in the Democratic Primary in America. We know that the media isn’t presenting us with an unbiased factual report of what is going on. They are using the same attention grabbing techniques that they have always used, the scare tactics and rhetoric. Unfortunately this seems to be creating two courses of action:

  1. People refusing to believe what they are being told and carrying on life as normal.
  2. People believing that the world is going to end and panic buying toilet paper and hand sanitiser.

Neither is a good response, but I can’t blame anyone for either. This is what the media does now and no one trusts it. Either we assume they are over-inflating the crisis, or that they are deflating it. There’s no real way of knowing which one of these it is or if, in this rarest of moments, they have all decided to start being professional journalists and are reporting things accurately.

There’s no short term answer to this and I’m not here to tell anyone what to do. My advice would be to listen to the doctors and nurses who are working on the front line and have first-hand experience of what is going on. And, while it’s probably a good idea to play it safe, can I suggest that if we run out of toilet paper in the shops we have probably already run out of something much more important.