I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything new on here since November. Bad James. Naughty James. Slapped wrist.

What’s been happening is… well, not a lot, in fact. Just the usual daily grind of writing — did I say “grind”? I meant wonderful, happy, joyous, breathless process of writing. I’m about halfway through my next opus, maybe a little further than that, and it’s developing into a dark and dense and labyrinthine (but none of these in a bad way) meditation on racial difference and class distinction, among other things. Fingers crossed it’ll be done by the summer, autumn at the latest.

Meanwhile, Untied Kingdom is due out in less than a month’s time, and so far, confidence is high. I’ve received my first two author’s copies, one hardback, one trade paperback, and they’re looking swee-eet. I’ve also completed a couple of magazine interviews via email, one with Mark Greener for Matrix, the other with Sharon Gosling for Dreamwatch. Both journalists asked good and pertinent questions, and the result is two sets of wonderful perspicacious pearls of wisdom from yours truly which should be appearing within the next month or so.

Two other publications due out this year: The House of Lazarus, which is my second Barrington Stoke book for reluctant readers and a rewriting of the short story of the same name which appeared in Imagined Slights; and Gig, my dual-novella effort, which is getting the signed, limited-edition, slipcased, so-gorgeous-you-just-want-to-hug-it-and-treat-it-to-a-Chinese-meal treatment from PS Publishing. The former is scheduled for August, the latter for the end of this year.

Somewhere before either of those lies Junior’s scheduled appearance. According to the twenty-week scan, “it” is most definitely “he”, and Lou and I have been mulling over names and have come up with… Oh, but we’re not telling anyone until after the baby arrives. Just in case he doesn’t turn out to fit the name we’ve chosen. It happens, you know. My cat Nermal was called Isabel to start with (my five-year-old niece’s suggestion) but after a few weeks proved herself to be more annoying cartoon kitten than pretty, girly type. A rechristening wasn’t just desirable, it was necessary. And same principle may apply here. Better to be safe than sorry, eh?