Niall Teasdale's Blog

Update, June 2025

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but…

On the 29th of May (I think; time is blurring), my father died. I had been spending more or less all my time looking after him for the past few months. He turned 91 on the 13th of May, and I was pretty convinced he was going to keep going for years. He had a major stroke on Sunday night, slipped into unconsciousness, and finally died on the Thursday. It was quiet and he was not in pain. With dementia and Alzheimer’s getting very steadily worse before he died, I admit it came as something of a relief. Really, the man who was my father ‘died’ months ago.

So, yeah.

Getting back into work is not going to be as easy as I’d hoped. We haven’t had the funeral yet, so things may improve after that. I plan to take a few days holiday after the service and wake. Then we’ll see what happens. I currently have no idea what my next book is going to be or when it’ll happen. I am starting to realise what being a carer for the past year-ish has done to my head. People who have to do that for years have my total respect; I’d need therapy. Possibly, my general state is partially because my sister is taking care of most of the work required after a death. I had to do it all for my mother (it was during COVID), so she’s taken it up for Dad. Left with nothing to do, I’m not doing anything. Maybe…

More news when I finally figure out what I’m doing. I have about two books started; I’m not sure whether either of them will be the next out.

Not a Gods and Monsters Art Dump

As I said, I didn’t do a lot of art for Gods and Monsters owing to family circumstances. So, I’m not doing a proper art dump, but here are a couple of images I did do.

This was my idea for what everyone would wear on Grimalkin. That place is hot, so everyone except Carina is in briefer clothing. Carina thinks it’s just warm since it’s autumn.

And this is another image of Michiko, probably from a party. She’s taking her makeup ideas from Nava, it seems.

Gods and Monsters

Gods and Monsters, the 8th Death’s Handmaiden novel, is now out. Hope you enjoy it since it’s been the first for a while.

Smashwords and other retailersAmazon:USUKAUDECA

Good and Bad News

This is the cover for the upcoming Death’s Handmaiden novel, Gods and Monsters. It’s ready to publish!

Now for the bad news. Smashwords merged with Draft2Digital, and this is my first time publishing through them. The book has been submitted, but I have no idea how long it’s going to take for their publishing process to complete (Smashwords used to be basically immediate). Meanwhile, Amazon’s KDP interface appears to be down, so I haven’t even been able to submit the book there. There is no ETA for when I’ll be able to submit it.

I’m not going to say this is out until I can say you can by it somewhere, so now I’m waiting. Hopefully, this will all be resolved at some point before next week. I guess I’ll get back to writing while I wait.

Additional: You can now purchase the book from Smashwords (who pay me more anyway). The link is: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1695409. Thanks to Rainer Prem for spotting that. I’ll make a new post with all the links when I can actually publish through Amazon.

Guess who

Have a guess who this is.

Death’s Handmaiden 8, Gods and Monsters, will be out by the end of this month, probably on the weekend before the end of the month. (As an aside: January 2025! Where did 2024 go?) The young lady above will be appearing in it, if briefly. Look forward to bigger explosions and the revelation of a new threat likely to result in really amazingly big explosions! Plus, in non-explosion news, marriage is on the cards for someone, and that someone might not be who you expect.

Status Update – Oct/Now 24 – And some pics!

So, what am I up to?

Well, I’m still writing the next Death’s Handmaiden book. It’s still going to be a while before it’s out, unfortunately. I'[d like to get it out for Christmas, but I think it’s going to be January/February at this point. I have been making rather better progress recently because it looked like my father was doing better and could handle being on his own for a while. And now he’s back in hospital with suspected heart problems. At this point, we’re kind of waiting to see what happens, and I’m plotting out Part Four because it helps get my mind off my dad.

While I’m here, I’m now on BlueSky for those wanting to ditch X/Twitter. Search for WitchesAndRayGuns. Hopefully, this post will be the first thing on my feed there. (If WordPress get their act together. Might have to do it manually. See how it goes…)

My graphics work has really suffered over the last few months, simply because the machine I use for graphics has been at home while I’ve been at my dad’s place. I actually forgot how to use the software! So, I’ve been working my way back into it as best I can with some easy stuff. I figured you might appreciate the images. Don’t take these as any indication of something which happens in any of the books, I was just checking out some outfits and relearning the software.

I’ll let you know when I have more news. I hope it’ll be good news, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a bit mixed. Such is life.

I’m, a .com!

I decided to get myself withesandrayguns.com, so you can now get to this blog via https://www.witchesandrayguns.com.

Hopefully, that doesn’t mess with the old address, but that’s part of the reason why I’m making this post. Please let me know if you have any problems.

That New Uniform

There’s not much art to dump for The Business of War, but here are the images I did for the new uniform.

The Business of War

Now available, the seventh Death’s Handmaiden book: The Business of War.

Smashwords.Amazon ASIN: B0D8BQ1VL5USUKDEAUCA

Problems and stuff

Isn’t life fun?

So, The Business of War, Death’s Handmaiden 7, will be out next month (or maybe late this month). No problem there.

I was planning to start a new series after that, but some things have come up and working on it would be harder than I’d like, so I’m going to do the 8th Death’s Handmaiden instead. It may be a little slow to produce, unfortunately.

Basically, my father isn’t doing too well and I’m having to take some time to look after him. I can work from his home, just not as effectively. That’s going to slow things down. Hopefully, this will be resolved one way or another by the time I’m ready to publish DH8, but we’ll have to see how it all goes.

Interestingly and sort of topically, Dad was ten when the D-Day landings happened (he just had his 90th birthday). Obviously, he was a bit too young to be on the beaches of Normandy, but he remembers bombers flying overhead on their way to Newcastle (it’s in the north-east of England, if you want to look it up) while the Nazis were attacking the major cities back in the war. No one was really bothered about that stuff, he said, until an aircraft attacked an anti-aircraft emplacement on a hill near the village he grew up in. I remember there still being an air-raid shelter in the back garden of my grandparents’ house when I was growing up, and that’s where Dad sheltered when the war got a bit too close. His memory of more modern stuff is getting a bit shaky, but he still remembers things from back then.

Anyway, enough of that. I’ll get back to the writing. Look forward to DH7 in a few weeks.