What Would You Do If You Had Only Five Years To Live?

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What would you do if your doctor told you that you only had 5 years to live? How would you change your life? What would you do differently? Where would you visit? What would you tell the people you love? What hatchets would you bury? What relationships would you try to mend.  Make a list of these things. Go do it now. Come back when you’ve written it down. Take a look at your list.  You know what you have there? A list of the things that are truly important to you, of your hopes and dreams and aspirations, of Read more…

Fail To Plan, Plan To Fail or Something Like That

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It’s that time of the year again. Christmas has come. I’ve played with (or read) my presents and it’s time to get back to some serious work. The space between Christmas and the New Year is usually when I review my goals from the previous year and set my goals for the coming one. This year, because I am lazy and going to have to do this anyway, I am killing two birds with one stone and writing a blog post about it. As long term readers will know I believe in planning and measuring things, in setting milestones and Read more…

The Best Laid Plans

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I had planned on writing about Tyrion and Teclis today but my new-born son had other plans that trumped my own. He decided last night he really did not want to sleep and if he could not sleep, none of the rest of us would either. I can’t remember the last time I went a night without sleep and I’ve done it twice this week already. Worth it though! Anyway, I am going to spend the rest of today, hopefully, catching up on the rest I missed. My apologies for that. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all. Back next week, Read more…

The Inquiry Agent Released

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I always wanted to write a tough-guy, first person detective story in the style of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammet but it’s a very American form and I never felt confident that I could carry off the setting. Somehow Scotland never seemed quite to fit my vision as a setting for this sort of story. Other people, such as Ian Rankine, have managed it but I never could make it work for me; too close to home for the way I write, I suppose. It was one of those ideas I put on the back-burner while I went my merry Read more…

Good News

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My son William Karel King was  born yesterday at 5:44 am. I am not planning on doing much work today as a consequence. I will be doing the happy dance and visiting the lad and his lovely mother Radka in the maternity hospital. In the meantime, if you feel the urge to read something new and King-ian, I shall just mention that my short horror story Carp is free until 12 p.m. Pacific Time Tuesday on Amazon, Amazon UK and all the other Amazons as far as I know. This story is set in Prague and combines Lovecraftian horror, Xmas, Read more…