Michael Harling's Blog, page 14
November 6, 2021
Glasgow
When my wife’s Scottish relatives organized a family event to take place on the 30th of October, I am sure they had no idea it would fall on the weekend of the COP26 kick-off. Likewise, when we accepted the invitation, we had no idea we would be heading into Glasgow along with 20,000 foreign dignitaries, negotiators, staff members, reporters, hangers on and protesters. If we had, we might have booked a table at Ask, fearing that it would be too crowded to get a seat there, even at one o’clock in...
October 9, 2021
It’s a Wrap
Eight years of writing The Series. Then a full year of rewriting the initial instalment. And now—eight years and eight months after the story first came to me—Book I of the Talisman, The Magic Cloak, is finally done and dusted.
Many, many changes to the manuscript occurred over those years, and I wavered between trying to have it published, publishing it myself, or not publishing it at all, time and time again. The conclusion, for better or worse, was to publish it myself. So, I did.
The M...
August 28, 2021
A Year of Writing Dangerously
On the 24th of August 2020, I began writing the revised version of The Magic Cloak. I had a prototype version already completed. All I needed to do was flesh the plot out a little. How hard could that be? It shouldn’t take more than a few weeks. Two months, tops.
As it turned out, I finally finished on the 22nd of August 2021—364 days after I started.
So, what went wrong. And what went right?
I hit the ground running and dashed off over 8,000 words in 10 days. Then I wrote absolutely no...
July 18, 2021
Freedom
Freedom!!!! But don’t go crazy.These are the days:
July is half over, school is a month in the past, the mornings are bright, and the afternoons long and lazy. My friends and I spend our days at the creek, where time slips by—steamy and sultry—while we splash in the green water. It’s summertime, and the living is, indeed, easy.
Who could have predicted, during those long summers of my youth, that I would end up, many years later, living in Britain, sipping tea in a quaint café, watchin...
June 25, 2021
Lockdown Observed
This is not a book review site, but I recently had the privilege of reading Jenny Bathurst’s Lockdown Observed: becoming an adult without leaving the house, which is a weekly account of her lockdown experience from 18 March 2020 to 3 April 2021.
It’s not going to set the world on fire and I’m not telling you to rush out and buy it (although you can), I’m simply going to recount how enjoyable I found it.
Jenny, an 18-year-old student who lives and attends school in Sussex, was asked by a ne...
June 11, 2021
Hailing From Hayling
As of this writing, I am on Hayling Island, on something the Government insists on erroneously referring to as a Staycation.
Staycation (stay ca’ shun): a holiday spent at home and involving day trips to local attractions.*
I am, however, on holiday (US: vacation) because I am not in my own home; I’m in someone else’s home.
As is my habit when I report on a holiday, I am going to provide a review of the holiday cottage we are staying in. This time, it’s going to take up more column inch...
May 18, 2021
Painting
It started with a patch of mold. That’s it—just a nasty surprise when we moved the living room sofa. Nothing a squirt of Dettol Mould and Mildew remover, a roll of paper towels and a bit of elbow grease couldn’t handle. But a few weeks later, I found myself straining to pull a wardrobe across the bedroom floor, while my wife struggled to push it, so we could paint behind it.
Not affiliated with this blog in any way, and not providing compensation for mentioning them in this post, although th...
May 14, 2021
Moving
No, we’re not upping sticks and heading to Corfu to become beach bums (though that doesn’t sound a bad idea), I’m merely moving my blog from its current home at Blogger to new digs at WordPress. I’ve done this before, twice in fact, so it feels a bit like re-marrying your ex-wife, divorcing her again, then marrying her for a third time, which is certainly a case of optimism triumphing over experience.
When and why I switched from Blogger to WordPress and back again isn’t important, and to tel...
Moving
No, we’re not upping sticks and heading to Corfu to become beach bums (though that doesn’t sound a bad idea), I’m merely moving my blog from its current home at Blogger to new digs at WordPress. I’ve done this before, twice in fact, so it feels a bit like re-marrying your ex-wife, divorcing her again, then marrying her for a third time, which is certainly a case of optimism triumphing over experience.
When and why I switched from Blogger to WordPress and back again isn’t important, and to tell t...
April 25, 2021
A Man Walks into a Pub
Last Friday I went to my April Book Club meeting. I haven’t talked about Book Club on this blog because, well, the first rule of Book Club…
Anyway, this month was The Hearts Invisible Furies by John Boyne, and if you haven’t read it, you should. I warn you, about halfway through I was tempted to fling the book across the room because the main character did something I couldn’t abide, and I lost all respect for him. If that happens to you, I encourage you to persevere. You’ll thank me. If, on ...
