I don’t usually let me (John Linwood Grant, in case you’d already forgotten) onto these pages. It gets boring, and I prefer talking about lurchers or other jolly creative people. But I’m at a difficult age, and the alternative is painting the kitchen ceiling, so I thought I’d have a mutter over where I was at the moment (in the wrong room, probably).

If you don’t really know me, I am:

• a professional writer (i.e. I’m poor)
• a devout lurcher enthusiast
• an editor
• older than is helpful some days

I am also six foot tall, an unreconstructed beard-owner, and believe in kindness and respect for others. But that’s probably not so relevant to this post. So forget that bit.

It’s clear that I’ll have to be better organised this year. For one thing, Django needs additional exercise, before he gets more of a little round tum. We might even have to find some agility classes to get him stretching those kangaroo legs.

But the whole creative bit is a spiderweb of whatever happens to be going on. At the moment I’m working on a ridiculous number of strands:

1. Editing Occult Detective Quarterly, a regular magazine of strange things, with the talented writer/editor Sam Gafford
2. Editing Their Coats All Red, an anthology of Imperial weirdness in Victorian times, with history buff and writer Matt Willis
3. Putting together ODQ Presents, a new anthology of longer fiction
4. Trying to sell my proposal for Venetian Weird, another dark fiction anthology concept

And…

1. Drafting invited stories for a number of weird fiction anthologies
2. Drafting another Last Edwardian novella featuring Captain Redvers Blake
3. Writing Young Adult fiction
4. Expanding my hoodoo tales with Mamma Lucy
5. Toying with a ‘Sandra’s First Pony’ collection
6. Responding to far too many Open Calls for story submissions because the idea sounds interesting (bad dog)

And…

1. Maintaining regular greydogtales posts, but I want to increase the lurcher/longdog content a touch more without reducing the rest
2. Reviewing over a dozen cool-looking books, sent or requested by me
3. Drafting interviews with seven or eight authors whose work I like
4. Writing original features on bizarre period or supernatural topics
5. Failing to keep my own author website up to date
6. Posting every week about J Linseed Grant and St Botolph-in-the-Wolds on Facebook

I may well be doing other things, but I’ve forgotten what they are. I know I have half a dozen more stories sold and definitely in the pipeline. There’s roughly the same number sold but in Limbo due to various timing, announcement of publisher gremlins. The more likely suspects to appear this year include:

• Hoodoo Man – A Last Edwardian tale set in twenties Harlem, with Mamma Lucy
• Another Mamma Lucy story from the twenties (TBA)
• Heart Shall Speak No More – A Last Edwardian standalone set in Suffolk
• On Abydos, Dreaming – my Technosophy science fiction universe
• An Age of Reason – a second Technosophy tale from an earlier period

The problem with getting published all over the place in very different venues is that I suspect I’m too thinly spread. (not something any one ever says about my ‘robust’ physique).

Hence the need for a novella/novel in the near future. Sometimes you need something more solid to get people’s attention. And even money.

It’s all very stimulating – I can’t argue with that bit. But order must come from this chaos, at some time during the forthcoming year.

So send all donations to “The Save John Linwood Grant Fund”, care of The Vicarage, St Botolph-in-the-Wolds. And if you send raw chicken carcasses, our usual currency, please do refrigerate them.