OK. It has arrived THE PANDEMIC, the one The Medical Community knew would happen-Fact.

Sour observations: The one survivalists have been just praying to happen.The one you read about in SF/Dystopian Fiction but never thought would happen in your lifetimes and now those books don’t seem quite so ‘entertaining’ do they?

Personal Commentary (No self-pity. No ‘Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt’ soliloquy). Just facts, brief. Like about 50% of the population in affluent West, our Lives have their buckets of problems. For many reasons we can’t get to see our three children and five grandchildren- no personal rifts just those ‘Circumstances’ that dog many a life. We were planning to visit our son, daughter-in-law and two grandsons- Pandemic arrives. How many other folk have seen plans pulled down I would not like to say.

We have health issues of one sort or another which limit our getting out as a couple to ‘go places’, ‘do things’. Pandemic puts the lid on the few opportunities. Life wasn’t much fun before, now? Do the allegorical maths. So us and a few tens of millions around the world. Didn’t need this, but we got it. It happens folks, it happens. Compare this to what is happening in Syria, Yemen or too a host of minority communities around the world and what’s happening to you, me, us in The West…..Just a scratch…At present almost a walk in the park. Of course it could get worse.

My Own strategy

So what do I do? Try and adapt, obviously.

But what else?

Write, of course.

In this we are fortunate. My wife writes poetry, is in contact with other poets, gets work published, gets good feedback and has a collection she sells privately. I am so proud of her and every time she gets a poem published I am so damn happy. Gives me the fuel to carry on.

Me?

Well, to summarise….. there’s R J Llewellyn on Kindle. Of late I’ve been working away on a fantasy series, self-published (still with those typos)

Precipice Dominion series

Y’know what, folks? Here I am stepping out of my normal British character here, but overall, typos and syntax aside I-am-so-very-pleased with these…There I said it! The characters are alive (so much so they nag me all the time) and the plot is chaotic as it was meant to be. (If you read some military history you will get to appreciate wars are won on the basis of the other side making more mistakes than yours- there are no perfect plans, no villain is always ahead of the game until the last few improbable chapters)

Vol III was having a re-write for typos, continuity etc, when I thought

‘Heck (or words to that effect) we can do better than this’

Learning to Live with ‘The First Draft’ and its Consequences.

And now it’s undergoing a whole re-work. This will be finished, virus or not. I will have my Three Volume Series (was supposed to be four but reflection suggested the narrative and plot would be getting thin in Vol IV and a lot of repetition would take place–too slow). I have an upbeat ending, because I like positive endings, it is a quirkly good one….There I said it (again). Three Volumes completed, I will be content, pleased, at rest.

Now this is how I personally tackle a Life-Threatening, Life-Changing  Pandemic. This is my way of minimising the effects.

I-WILL-WRITE.

I WILL BELIEVE IN MY WRITING

Let this be your pledge to yourself in these uncertain times

Seriously folks… The Joys of Writing

PS. Explanation. Some regular readers might by wondering about the amount of unusual and aggressive affirmation regrading my personal opinion on my own writing. This is due to a severe case of Full Metal Jacket haranguing at me by one of my characters Arketre Beritt, a solider, of an elite unit. If you are new to writing be prepared when the characters take over, it happens)