Thursday 4 December 2025: Newsletter is out

This post also appears on Patreon.

I didn’t get around to writing the micro-fiction short story on Tuesday for this month’s 12 stories in 12 months, but I didn’t beat myself up over it as it was only 300 words and I could always do it Wednesday morning. It was already outlined. I only had to write it.

And then Wednesday morning came around and first job of the day was actually dermatology for my second light therapy treatment session, which takes out the entire morning. D’uh! I’d just have to do it when I got back. I had all day, after all…

Puppy got us up once and decided he was hungry ‘now’, then he allowed us all to go back to bed for another hour. Gee, thanks. But it was play time now, with the spaniel. So they did that while we had cups of tea. 

We had our quiet hour, and I started to read the next book for review again. I’d abandoned it before because the first major scene, the crime scene, was far too many chapters too long (yes, one scene, after the crime was reported), and I must have got bored with it. But when I did my website/Patreon content planner for the next few months, this book review formed one day’s blog post. 

Part of that planning on Tuesday included tidying up my book review Trello cards again. I was torn between reading an older book I’ve had longer or a newer book that’s due out in January. As I’d already started this one once, I decided to get this one out of the way and then decide on the next one. I haven’t requested any books for ages, I’ve only had the ones that have been sent to me unbidden. I really need to do some catching up with this.

We puppy-proofed the hall (aka lifted everything not fastened down out of reach), kitchen and conservatory and moved their baskets into the hall. Then we locked them in the kitchen and drove off to my appointment.

Not 5 minutes up the road I remembered my goggles and hair scrunchie were on the kitchen table, and we had to go back and get them. Both dogs were exactly where we’d left them, looking through the glass door, and were very pleased to see me. We tried again and had a very successful trip in all.

I knew where I was supposed to go, what I was supposed to do, and how long I was supposed to be there, and we got back as soon as we could…to find the dogs *still* exactly where I’d left them. Puppy was lying down on the doormat, spaniel was standing guard behind him in between the kitchen and the conservatory. And they were so pleased to see us.

The poet had to go outside to play with them, as again I’d had my UV allowance for the day, and I made a start on a trifle for our pudding for the next 3 days. We had our midday breakfast. Then he went off to an afternoon appointment via the post office. 

I caught up on emails and social media before settling down at my desk to start today’s blog post. And then I remembered that pesky micro-fiction short story! I have to think very hard whether or not to carry on with this in the new year. It’s a good discipline, it does give me so many new short stories to work on throughout the year, and if I stick to the plan, it does actually get done. But I have to weigh up what, if any, value it adds to my business in the long run. 

I have the best part of 2 months to think about it between this week’s deadline and the first on at the end of January. My 3-week holiday will be fast filling up at this rate. I already have hospital, dental, hair and grooming appointments booked in, and we have to see if the optician can squeeze us in too. Plus, of course, all the usual madness that goes with Christmas every year.

I went back to the planning file and read it through a few times, but couldn’t get excited enough to actually write it just yet. Clearly, this idea needs more work, or time, or words. So I turned to the Fallen Angel series I’ve been writing and rattled off the next 350 words of that. I had to lose 50 of them, but it’s always better to cut than it is to pad, in my humble opinion. 

Very quickly I went over to Deadlines for Writers and added my contribution, and then I turned to the newsletter. Reading through the previous one, I was reminded I still hadn’t uploaded a pdf of Words Worth Reading: Issue TWO for newsletter subscribers. So that was the next thing I did. 

It hadn’t been done yet because the Scrivener master file for the bookazine had Issue 2 missing, for some reason. I could have taken time hunting down the last version I uploaded to Draft2Digital, but it was just as quick to go to D2D and download the one used for the actual publication. So I downloaded it, imported it into the Scrivener master file, copied and pasted it into individual chapters, and reformatted it in places. Then I saved the pdf, checked it was okay, and uploaded it.

And then it was time for my 3pm meal. (Did I mention these light therapy sessions eat away at the day?)

Once I’d eaten, I turned straight to the newsletter, which also included making smaller book cover jpgs for the illustrations. I also made a quick Season’s Greetings graphic too. I updated the newsletter with upcoming publications, on the blog, on Patreon, and new books, and I added in this month’s bonus short story. We weren’t legally allowed to say the story is ‘free’ when we were part of the EU because subscribers get it in exchange for their email address. I’m not sure what the UK law is on this, so I just call it a bonus short story to keep me out of trouble.

The newsletter went out, so check your in-boxes if you haven’t seen it yet. And if you’re not already a subscriber but would like to be, please follow the link. Newsletter subscribers get the bonus short story with every issue plus access to the entire newsletter archive as well as pdfs for every issue of Words Worth Reading.