[Geez, I just had a lengthy post here, but then I stuffed up the computer, and lost the whole thing. Bugger.]

If you’ve been coming here long enough to be asking, "Is the blog dead? Can I eat it?" then you’d know that I really have no real idea what I’m going to do with this site. I’m inclined to keep it, but I don’t know what to put on it. The blogging urge has largely passed, for the most part, although it’s also true that I do still blog, of a sort, on my Facebook page, where I post very brief items about what I’m doing at a given moment. Not Twitter-type brief, but brief nonetheless. One from yesterday, for example, indicated that I was currently watching an episode of Inspector Rex . Not the stuff of gripping reports, I know, but it’s what I was doing.

Thing is, I know there are people who read this site and who are not also Facebook members. This is very likely to their enormous credit. Facebook is a huge time-suck. I spend a huge amount of time on it each day, but then, that’s pretty much my social life these days. I spend most of each day on my own (other than the snoozing dog or the snoozing bird), and since I’m not much for going out and being all extroverted, socialising with people via brief comments on Facebook pages suits me fine. Which is great for all of that, but it doesn’t help those of you who come to see what I’m up to here.

So. First, my apologies. I will try to do a better job of posting here as well as on Facebook.

Second, there is a bit of news, which if you only looked for me here you might not already know: Publisher Brian and I have sold TIME MACHINES REPAIRED WHILE-U-WAIT to local publishing house Fremantle Press . This October they will release a shiny new edition of the book (with some minor changes) here in Australia and in New Zealand. It’s pretty exciting, and I’m looking forward to doing library readings/signings, etc.

Third, the other big news lately is that I’ve started a new book, a sequel to TIME MACHINES, tentatively titled TIME NEVER SLEEPS. Today I finished the first full week on the job, with 7500 words, and the conclusion of the first chapter. It’s a year after the events of the first book, and things in the world of time machines have and are changing fast. Spider’s got a new boss, for one thing, but worse than that: he’s been infected with some ghastly disease and as of the conclusion of the first chapter, is languishing in a hospital isolation unit, worried out of his gourd. And things are about to get much worse. [evil laugh]

Otherwise things are okay, mostly. I say "mostly" because it appears that my headaches are back, in a big way. Wednesday night I had one so bad it made me throw up everything I’d had to eat that day. Pretty grim stuff. Last night I had another one, not quite as bad, but plenty bad enough for my taste. Why are they turning up now? Is it related to me starting a new book? I don’t know. Hope not. In other medical news, or non-news: I still know nothing about whatever the hell it was that happened to me last December, and which put me in hospital with a suspected heart attack. It wasn’t my heart, but we have no clue what the hell it was.

Michelle is blasting through at least 1000 blood specimens each shift nowadays, and is putting in some very late nights. She’s pretty tired, and has a lot going on, but is bearing up okay. The global financial crisis isn’t affecting us yet. Our mortgage interest rate is down to record lows, which helps, too. All in all, things are pretty decent. I worry about my parents, I worry about Michelle, and I worry about myself, too. Doesn’t seem to help much, all this worrying, but it’s what I do.