Seasons Greetings to All

If you had asked me, on December 16th 2010 when I posted my first piece on triond, how I would feel about it one year later, I would not have known how to answer. In that quite amazing 12 month period I have published nearly 1400 posts here, got well over 200,000 views and accumulted 20,000+ fans and over 2,000 friends, so it has been quite an eventful ride.

I want especially to thank Kristie Claar, Erin Miler, Sheila Barnhill, Sheila Newton and mqjones for the unswerving loyalty and support they have shown to me over the past year, and jackie118 certainly deserves a mention too, alomng woth aroosagloomy and many many more beside. That you have all stuck with me goes to show that in writing terms, I must at least to some extent have what it takes?

I was also unaware, last December, that I should, only one year later, be able to boast of having not one but TWO books out in the wider world. Both collections of short stories I grant you, but the second – Etrnity and more – science fiction – has been a project I have harbored ambitions of completing for over fifty years, so I am especially proud of it, and plans for a third volume are already well advanced.

It strikes me that whilst I get many complimentary comments about my non-fiction posts – the most often commented point being where on earth I dig this stuff up from?  Surfing the web for odd stories – that’s how! -

the critiques I have had for my fiction are far more interesting and detailed. THREE – can you believe that? – people have rated my first book at five stars – Rachel Dove of the Kindle Review board heaping praise upon it, along with several other contented buyers, and I hope that reaction to my latest will be as positive, but it would seem that the fiction is my foret, so perhaps most of my effort should be concentrated there.

That is why I will, inevitably begin to post less on triond, as I get more into the fiction writing, but I will not, I promise, abandon this marvellous site which has been so good to me in so many ways.  To those of you who have bought my books I woud say that I hope you get a great deal from them, to those of you who have not yet made the purchases, why not? But to all I want to say that I hope you have the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of New Years. Let’s make 2012 a great writer’s year.