Okay so we're off on Sunday for a week in France at our house.

Please try and be good boys and girls while I'm gone.

No flame wars and no pissing Erin off or I'll be sorely vexed.

I don't just look it, I can get mightily mean when I have to. I just can't run too fast in these heels.

PS

Where did my buttons go?

I had some, but now I have hardly any. If you see any floating about looking lost, please send them back - I didn't have that many to begin with.

Hi folks.

Well as you know - or maybe you don't, since my car accident last year, things have been a little odd up top for me; you know, forgetfulness, lack of concentration etc, etc.

Odd things have been happening, but usually they have simple explanations and usually, it's down to my head playing tricks on me.

Not this time.

Some of the time I can be prone to acts of sheer brilliance. Most of the time I prove myself to be adequate and the rest of the time I fuck up.

I have royally cocked up this time and I hope you will forgive me for having done so.

Now there are heaps of you you out there that love serials. Ang's Bike serial is getting to be more like The Archers than simply a long story and I'm sure there are others too.

Yup, today's the day I take another step further into old-gitness.

I'm fifty-one for fuck's sake, I never imagined reaching twenty-one and after a really odd year, I look back in wonder as whilst some of this year has totally overshadowed the rest - the car accident and all - I've now got a house in France, published my first book and wonder what fifty-one's going to be like.

Is what it says on the "My Account" section.

Sounds almost like saying four minutes and sixty seconds, doesn't it?

So anyway, it means I have been here at this site for five years.

Bloody Hell!

I don't think I've been a member of anything for that long and I owe it all to you lot.

Erin has to sit at the top of my thanks though, for if she did not have the tenacity and strength to keep this place alive, I certainly wouldn't have been here for that long and neither would any of the rest of you.

As you may have noticed, I posted a new story this morning, but I can't help thinking it had been posted here before.

Convinced I'd published this some four years ago, I searched through the stories here, but couldn't find it, so if you missed it, here it is ...

Nick

I'm less than a week from having been a member of this fine site for five years - can you believe it?

I just wanted to say thanks to Erin and her fine band of pixies that do their doin's keeping the place together. Also, thanks to all the kind people I have met, who take the time and trouble to read my gobbledegook, perhaps even clicking the Kudos button, dropping me a comment or both.

Here's to another five :)

Nick

She posted this on FB a few hours ago

In the hospital again, after a minor fall. To my BCTS friends, please let everyone know. I don't know when I'll be back, as they plan to send me to a long term care facility, and I don't know if they will have wireless, or how long I'll be there.

I hope everyone will join me in wishing her well.

I just wanted to say thanks to all those who have dipped into their pockets and bought A Witch in Time from Amazon.

Whilst copies are not exactly flying off the virtual shelves, the response has been much better than I thought it would have been - like, it's selling - and I have you wonderful people here to thank for that.

Okay folks, I'll keep this short and sweet ...

As usual, I have good news and bad news. The bad news first to get it out of the way ...

The pain from my neuralgia has flared up again and the doc's doubled my dose. Carbamazepine can cause drowsiness, so if it has any side effects on me, then I'll have to give up my car - bummer. I really love driving, despite the accident.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to France we go.

Sadly, it's not permanent yet, but we're not ruling that out for March of next year - maybe sooner if we can. Still we ARE going to do it, never mind how long it takes.

This time, we have the last bits of the flat's decorating and stuff to do so that we can hand the keys over to the letting agent for letting on our behalf. That way, hopefully, it will look after the cost of running the house.

I'm keen to publish some of my stories for Kindle and following the instructions on the Amazon website, I dutifully downloaded Mobipocket to compile and produce a Kindle compliant file.

The issue however came when I discovered that instead of the four or five simple steps Amazon put in their instructions, which should't have taken more than a few minutes, I have spent the best part of the last day and a half trying to compile and build my story into Kindle format. Getting the story into the right format wasn't the problem ... well, not entirely anyway.

So what was the problem?

The latest bit of scrawl from Nick B will hit the screens hopefully in the next few hours (after the German Grand Prix and Pen's haircut probably) and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the fact that it's unedited, unproofed and largely wysiwyg.

We're off to France on Tuesday and didn't have time to send it to anyone - not that I was able to find someone to take up the mantle of my editor after Gabi's sad passing.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy it and please feel free to leave and comments (providing they're not completely horrible) and kudos if possible.

At long last - and it's well overdue - we now own our house in France.

Our last trip over was a bit of a nightmare actually. The first day there was a Sunday and like England back in the deep recesses of the seventies, nothing was open. Fortunately we'd taken food and stuff with us and were looking forward to staying in our French home.

Things however, didn't turn out to be quite that simple...

Sadly this isn't the title of a new Nick B story, though I'm not entirely sure it won't be.

No, this is a lesson well learnt in France on our recent visit, but since I've only just got back and have suffered toothache for the last three days, I'll have to put off telling you all about it until tomorrow or possibly Wednesday providing my dentist doesn't screw things up again...

Tomorrow we're off to France for just over a week to take possession of our new house.

Well, that's what we hope is going to happen. We'll have to see when we get there.

The house is ours - well all bar the shouting, but the shouting isn't over. At least it wasn't yesterday. The certificate d'urbanism, which basically means we don't get taxed for owning a commercial property wasn't changed as it was supposed to have been, so we're not 100% sure about what we're walking into.

No this isn't something about Craig David, but that's how long we have to wait before the house finally becomes ours, lock, stock and two smokin' barrels.

Actually, it's only six now.

Omigosh!

My Kudos is at 666 - The Number Of The Beast

Perhaps I'd better Run To The Hills or Hallowed Be Thy Name, I'll end up The Prisoner of The Children Of The Damned at 22 Acacia Avenue...

Sorry, just couldn't resist paying homage to Iron Maiden.

Yeah I had a car accident and yeah I lost my job, but we have just found out that aside from paying for it, we now as good as own our French property.

I'm totally stoked and so is Pen.

It's scary shit, but so exciting I can't find the words - whaddya mean, that's a first?

So now I just need to get this insurance thing sorted to call this somewhat stressful part of our lives over.

Nearly two weeks ago, I told you that Penny and I would be going to go on a lightning trip to France to look at a couple of houses.

The history is that we've been wanting to buy a house in France for years - literally and after the global financial collapse, the change in value of the Euro, life seemed to say that we weren't going to do it. This was after having been to Normandy and Poitou Charente to look at houses and being disappointed at what was really available.

Well, talk about a change of fortunes.

Not only have I got my job - which I will be starting tomorrow (phew!), but we also have eight houses to look at when we go to France next month over the Easter break.

But it doesn't end there, oh no.

I got the bloody job - Start Monday.

I can't believe it.

It's going to put a severe dent in the amount of time I can spend writing - like possibly leaving nil for the first few months and I'm sorry, but I don't care. It's the first job I've had in nearly three years.

In light of the fact that I was pretty much offered the job on Friday, Pen and I have been looking at houses and are possibly going to be buying ourselves a house in France over the Easter break as well. Of course, that was all banking on the job coming off and now it has, it's all systems go.

My humble apologies to my several fans, but Second Sight's Chapter Four will be delayed due to having to attend a job interview tomorrow.

Please bear with me as I'm almost done and will try and get it out as soon as possible.

Yours regretfully,

Nick B

I don't just look it, I'm totally in need of a job right now...

Second Sight Chapter three.

So THAT'S where my muse went
I don't just look it, I'm like totally getting on down with my bad self writing Second Sight

I'm probably well behind here and have missed something important, like the announcement that Kudos being interrupted for a while, which would explain where mine's gone. I've checked all the blogs back to before the New Year and haven't found anything. Have I not gone back far enough?

I just looked one day and there it wasn't.

Now compared to someone like Ang, whose Kudos looked like a phone number, mine just looked like loose change, but now I don't even have a zero.

Is it trying to tell me that I need to write something new?

I'd just like to wish everyone a merry time over this festive season.

Pen's working this morning, but from lunch time she's on holiday. We've got all our family obligations out of the way and I think it's going to be a time of rest and relaxation. We've got some pretty good movies to sit back and relax with, so it's going to be out with the crisps, nibbles, beers and Bacardi cokes... heaven!

I hope you all find your own little piece of heaven - even if it's only over the few days of Christmas and the New Year.

Bigs hugs to you all!

Nick B

I think that now makes me an old git. if not an old git, then a grumpy old bastard :)

I never thought I'd get this far and if I hadn't stopped riding bikes and driving cars like a complete maniac, I probably wouldn't have.

That means that by rights, I should now live forever...

God help you all.

Nick

Well this is a fine thing.

I can't find my muse anywhere. I must have left it here as this is the last place I saw it, I'm sure. They say it's always in the last place you look and I've looked around plenty, but just can't seem to find it.

So far I have Sunday Girl (tg), A Halloween To Remember (tg), The Return of the Raven (vampire non tg) and Yesterday Once More (tg) that have all ground to a halt, the second after over twenty thousand words.

They all seemed to be going so well and then... Phut!!

I'm completely sunk.

HELP!!!

On Joanne Barbarella's suggestion, I created a joke section on my new website, which because I can't use a database (it's the ISP, not my inadequacies), ten different subjects one on each page.

I'm quite chuffed with them and although there's nothing brand new there, there are some good ones.

However, they don't represent all of what I have, so having now got the bare bones down, I will be adding to them as often as I can and will be including a video section too!

The countdown started yesterday and on the 20th of this month, I start running my own company.

It's nothing grand or even interesting, but I will be remodelling my website, using Google and Amazon to help in generating income.

So it's all hands to the pumps right now, trying to get my hubs translated to HTML to be ready to go live sometime next week.

I'm happy to say that if all goes well, I will also have the piece on transsexuals ready and live too and once again, I couldn't have been more pleased with the help you all gave me for that one.