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Things have changed a bit around here

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Greetings (Judges) Well, I thought it was about time I dusted off the cobwebs and cranked the handle for the furnace that warm the angry pixies and powers my website. I have been busy recently, with numerous projects that have all consumed a large portion of my life, and along with two growing kids things have been all but silent here. What's new? I have been working on an RPF project for the last few months, building the Lawgiver from Judge Dredd (2012 with Karl Urban). An awesome designer, Chris Patch , created a 3D printable Lawgiver that faithfully matches the screen used weapons, with some input from the original prop maker Michael van Kesteren . This run (for me at least) is coming to a close now, so here's a few pics of my finished props. I have built three of these for people who are cosplaying as Dredd or just want to run around their house, talking to a Lawgiver and making pew pew noises. Actually, the prop does both of those things! Yep, you can speak to the Lawgive
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Wait? What? An update?! (From Patreon)

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Hey Everyone Yes, this is an update ... within a week or so of my last one! Will wonders never cease? Seriously though, this is an attempt to be more interactive with you. This week If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably seen that I've been posting updates about word counts recently:  I'm found some drive to work on The Oracle and the Fedora , which I started a few years back after lunch with some friends. Random titles were thrown around, and I bagsied that one for myself. An idea immediately sprang from it, and I'd started writing it on Wattpad, with the intention of it being "read as I went". This worked for a while until I got really stuck into The Lichfield Ice Cream King (now with final beta readers!), but then I decided that it would fit nicely into a world that I was developing inside another novel. That one has proved to be a struggle, but the Fedora story has grabbed my attention now, and won't let go. So The Oracle and the Fedora is now
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New Year Catchup, Patreon and Writing!

Hey Wordplayers! I truly hope you all had a great holiday and New Years, whatever you were doing. I took the time to spend Christmas (as I do every year) with the family, and decompress from the year a little. I'm lucky that our company closes from just before Christmas Eve and doesn't come back until the New Year, so it was a nice long break from work. I did complete NaNoWriMo 2019, coming in at just over 50k words, and looking at the statistics from previous years I seem to have a consistent pattern of writing. Getting off to a flying start and getting ahead of the targets, then keeping ahead until about the 3rd week and then falling behind a little, with a final push at the end. I think writing solidly for 3 weeks just wipes me out, not taking weekends off etc. Regardless, I did it again! That's three years in a row now that I've completed a fifty-thousand-word first draft manuscript! The sci-fi novel I started for this NaNo has potential, but I need to sit dow
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My review of the new QuietOn Sleep earplugs

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A few years ago I purchased a pair of QuietOn noise-cancelling earplugs from an Indigogo campaign. They work really well and I still use them today. The main problem with them is that they are too large to sleep with. This was the main reason for buying them, to cut down on snoring noises from our dog and "other family members". I soon realised that I could sleep with just one earbud in, the ear that is not pressed into the pillow, but this only has an effect that is good for blocking outside noises (meaning the local cockerels and dogs). The reduced effectiveness is too much to handle the low-frequency sounds associated with snoring. Enter QuietOn Sleep, the new, improved earbuds (that were a little overdue) that promised to be designed for sleeping. The company had taken all the comments and criticism from the first product and produced a unit that was even smaller and had better acoustic properties. This seemed like it would be ideal, and I looked forward to the day th
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The Lichfield Ice Cream King

Finally in Beta! The second draft has been completed on my next novel, The Lichfield Ice Cream King and is available to Beta read now. This is the completion of the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2017 and comes in at just over 74,000 words. If anyone is interested in reading this for me, please get in touch. You can Beta read this over at Betareader.io (link below), which gives you the ability to make comments and suggestions, right there in the manuscript! https://read.betareader.io/discover/5c36192b2557ce001d69d3a2 I'm currently having this professionally read, so will incorporate their feedback and any feedback from other readers. Happy reading Paul
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NaNoWriMo 2018 - Part 2

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Hmmm ... I knew I'd change my mind. If you read my previous post about NaNoWriMo for this year (2018) then you'll know that I'd already changed my mind once about what to write. Yeah, I didn't like that idea either! I have thought about this a little more and have fleshed out an idea that I AM going to write! Here's the synopsis: When Bryson Stoddart relives the final few weeks of a serial killer’s life he realises that the work of the killer was not complete. Bryson tracks down the body of the killer and becomes embroiled in a race to stop the final part of the killer’s plan coming true.  An all-out manhunt across the United States is underway for the killer, but Bryson soon becomes the prime suspect for all the wrong reasons. When Bryson has to make the ultimate sacrifice to prevent the killer’s legacy, his life will never be the same again. I even created a temporary book cover for the NaNo pages. It's far from ideal, but I don't want to spend a
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NaNoWriMo 2018

Well, having just found the post I wrote in February about NaNoWriMo 2017, I thought it was time to put my thoughts down in writing for 2018. I've been thinking about this for months now, setting aside November for writing, as I did last year, and deciding on which story to put my 50,000 words into. And that's where the process sat ... for quite some time! September is nearly over and that leaves just a month to get my ass into gear and work out what to do. I had tweeted a few weeks ago (September 13th) that: "Finally figured out what I'm going to write for #NaNoWriMo this year! Have been wanting to write a space story for a while so have come up with a "plan". I say "plan" loosely, but it's more than I normally start with. #amwritingscifi" Yeah, well that fizzled out fairly quickly. I did start a plan and outlined some of my characters, the ship, the premise of the story, some major plot points, but then it just didn't feel r
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