{"id":20,"date":"2018-12-11T18:47:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2023-10-09T14:58:18","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T14:58:18","slug":"2018-the-year-of-distractions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/2018\/12\/11\/2018-the-year-of-distractions\/","title":{"rendered":"2018: The Year of Distractions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div dir=\"ltr\">\nHello all and welcome to what was supposed to be an annual blog <u>post<\/u>, rounding up the year but, as it turns out, I&#8217;ve not posted anything since this time last year.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nOops, I&#8217;ve been distracted. So, what have I been doing?<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nFirst and foremost, I&#8217;ve had the joy of two stories being published.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nJust out today on their website is <a href=\"https:\/\/firesidefiction.com\/cleaning-up\">Cleaning Up<\/a>, from Fireside. It is a tale of those who protect our world and get no thanks for it. <\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nBack in the summer I also had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B07GXB6QWZ\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B07GXB6QWZ&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=mightygrom-20&amp;linkId=90f1a6f40e325d2f07a1483e27ae1985\">The Advantages of Unofficial Consultation<\/a> published in the Magical CSI anthology by Otter Libris. This features, oddly enough, a couple of characters from Cleaning Up and their further adventures in getting ignored for the important job they do.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nI&#8217;m deeply happy to see both of these stories out in the wild. It&#8217;s a coincidence they feature some common characters, although it does tickle me. <br \/>\nI hope you like them too.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nOther writing news has been less good. I&#8217;ve had many distractions this year that have stopped me getting stuck into a job lot of novel edits I have and the short stories I have written have not quite soared yet and I&#8217;ve struggled to get some consistent time on them.<br \/>\nMy resolution, as much as you can make one, for next year is to mandate writing time and stop making excuses.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nOf course, some of this year&#8217;s excuses were brilliant. I got married in the summer, for instance, so I&#8217;m not going to lament that lost writing time too much.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nActually, getting married nearly derailed the publication of Cleaning Up. The lovely people at Fireside sent me edits on my wedding day and I had to do them while jetlagged in a Toronto hotel at three in the morning. Hopefully not so as you&#8217;d notice.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\">\nAll in, a bit of quiet year, writing wise, coasting on the work I put in last year. Hopefully I&#8217;ll put more effort in during the upcoming solar rotation.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello all and welcome to what was supposed to be an annual blog post, rounding up the year but, as it turns out, I&#8217;ve not posted anything since this time last year. Oops, I&#8217;ve been distracted. So, what have I been doing? First and foremost, I&#8217;ve had the joy of two stories being published. Just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-published","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munchkinstein.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}