Well, boys and girls, where has creepy old Uncle Greydog been for the past few weeks? Dancing merrily over the Dales with his faithful hounds, or perhaps writing that incredible novel about the Inuit shaman, the Patagonian brujo and how the spirits of the three dishonoured Korean warriors helped them in their quest for justice? No? Could it be that instead he has been languishing under the influence of the Plague Fairy? Might she have brought him a tedious, prolonged chest and sinus infection which was deeply uninteresting, even to him? Ah yes, that’s the one.

Such was the unutterable dullness of the Minor Plague which swept in with the Winter Solstice that it didn’t even provide any tales of medical mayhem or neat ‘slice of life’ articles. It merely rendered greydog unable to concentrate on writing new fiction, reading submissions or looking at anything much more complex than comic books annuals.

The longdogs were, naturally, highly sympathetic, and spent the entire time complaining about why we weren’t walking very far, or very often, or doing anything FUN. We did trying buying Django an educational toy where you have to do the right thing to get the lids open and access the treats underneath. So he bit through the lids, tore them to pieces and got at the treats that way. Which may be some form of intelligence, we suppose.

But the Plague Fairy has finally flitted away to bless others, and work beckons. We are delighted to be now an extra three weeks behind on interviews, book features and articles for greydogtales.com – because they say that pressure makes diamonds. What we suspect it actually makes in our case is poor-quality coal which people chuck away, but we claim no great geological insights.

The site will power up again as we trudge along, becoming once again that sparkling resource that has so many people around the world going “Grey what?” whenever and wherever we are mentioned.

As for the disreputable John Linwood Grant, his thrilling Sherlock Holmes story “The Tale of the Red Opium” came out just before the Solstice, in Belanger Books anthology “Sherlock Holmes; Adventures in the Realms of H G Wells” Volume One.

Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/47CLWcB

Next up should be an almost spiritual speculative story of loss and renewal for a Lethe Press anthology, his contribution being ‘On Abydos, Dreaming’, and a First World War tale of weird events deep below the trenches entitled ‘Where All is Night, and Starless’. This one, coming February in Chthonic from Martian Migraine Press, happens to incorporate a remarkable true (and horrific) event from the times, concerning those miners who struggled to shift the front-line, month after month, under appalling conditions.

More stories are out there, but exactly when they will show their grumpy heads above the parapets, only the publishers know.

Meanwhile it’s back to recovering ground here at the website, and digging into the workload for Occult Detective Quarterly #4, and ODQ Presents, edited by himself for Electric Pentacle Press.

So we hope to see you soon with something more interesting – do call in!