Last Friday was publication day for Burke in Ireland which is the third new book I have published in lockdown. (They weren’t all written in lockdown, though Something Wicked mostly was. Plus I had a short story that was published in a collection last summer. There should have been parties. (The publisher was going to throw a proper launch party for the short stories.) Something Wicked should have been on sale at tango clubs (there’s quite a lot of tango in it). I should have been getting drunk and having fun with friends. And, instead … nothing. The sound of tumbleweed rolling across the desert of my social life. It’s affected sales – of course it has. There’s no excitement, there’s no buzz, there’s no word of mouth.
So, like everyone at some point over the past year, I’ve allowed myself a brief pity party, but then the sun came out and I was able to enjoy the good weather outside. I’m so lucky to live near Richmond Park.
And the river …
I even got to cycle as far as Hyde Park.
And then today I found this lovely review for Something Wicked.
See: life’s not so bad. And lockdown can’t fo on forever, can it?
Of course, you could always make things even better by buying one of my lockdown books (or read them on Kindle Unlimited). Click the images to be taken to the Amazon page.
How have you been spending lockdown? And what do you do when it’s all getting just too depressing?
Let me know in the Comments below.
It’s not really just lockdown here, it’s being unable to travel off island, especially with so many friends and family in the UK. It’s really getting me down now. Like you, we’re lucky to live near some beautiful places and a dog walk usually helps, although even that’s not as simple as it used to be since all the usual places we go tend to be heaving with people who have nothing else to do. Work is good, it makes me forget about it for a while.
We can’t really travel. You can’t stay away overnight and there’s nowhere to eat, few toilets and nowhere to shelter if it rains. Some people have been fined for driving a few miles to get a change of scenery when they exercise (including quite near here). Most importantly, we aren’t allowed to visit Wales, even to stay in an empty house and self-cater. I think for most of the past year I’d have swapped London for the Isle of Man!
These are lovely – my favourites are the tree with the blue sky and the one below.
By the time we can travel again I won’t be able to anyway because I won’t have an ‘obedient citizen’ passport. Time for me to say, okay, you chaps can come to visit me, instead!!
Lovely, cheerful photos, Tom. Like you, I’m looking forward to the end of lockdown and seeing family again, but still another couple of months to go – driving over one hundred miles to sit in a garden for a few hours in uncertain weather, before driving back home, is a bit too much at the moment. Good luck with the sales of your books, I’m looking forward to reading about Burke’s adventures in the Peninsula.
Those flowers are so pretty! Toronto is just starting to get a few tiny flowers popping up, but our nicest ones won’t be around for another month or two. 🙂