Creepy 70

What happened? I know, right.

I should have reached this point a couple of weeks back, but I got knocked off kilter.

Quite a bit's been happening. I wandered into a job interview with a publishing start-up, which was really interesting, but required writing a detailed marketing report. Everything was going really well, we were starting to talk terms, when it became apparent that a move to Berlin was non-negotiable.

I had to do a bit of soul searching, but, at the end of the day, I'm not ready to leave Africa. My life, my home, my friends - it's all good here at the moment. 

Then I hit a general author flump, wondering about my direction - as in, do I have any? 

Spent a week straight working my way through two seasons of Suits and then The Wire. Days of back-to-back distraction, complimented with beer and cigarettes. Sometimes that can be good for you. Every now and then your mind needs to switch off, watch something cathartic.

In amongst all of that, I lost the thread. Writers amongst my readers will know, it's bloody difficult to pick up the pen again after you've dropped it.

I have a friend arriving from the UK on Saturday morning. He's here for three weeks, and I've been madly booking gorilla permits and catching up with friends to work out fun things we might be able to go and do.

I know that I won't be able to write whilst he's here. Hermit writer, that's me. I need an entire empty house to be able to drop into other worlds. So, as of today, I'm on vacation until early June. Going to go do some of that living that people keep telling me about. Get out of the house. Go see stuff. Gather new material.

I just wanted to knock off a round number before closing the lid on my laptop. 70,000 words. That's 55,000 words since March. Pretty good going for me, so the 10k a week routine has paid off. But now I need a break. I'm stressing because I still don't feel like I've broken the back of this one. I can't see how to move it along in a timely fashion. A little time hanging by Lake Kivu and out in bars should do the trick.

So, signing off on the writing front for a bit.

Sláinte.