I've been expecting you...

Well, what can I say about my absence? Sorry, according to Sir Elton seems to be the hardest word! Actually, since my last blog I've been drowning, not literally, or even literarily, but in my day job. That's right, the one that continues to provide incredible stories - and invariably the ones that involve a certain John "Jack" Cade. I can't tell you what I do or Jack would have to pay a visit, but needless to say it involves keeping an entire nation safe. No please, it's the least I can do...

I've been busy lately trying to forge ahead with the sixth novel 'Orchard Road' - I say trying, it's not for want of trying, or even writer's block (which I've never suffered from) more a case of time, that most valuable of commodities. Time, that thing that creeps up on us all, the look in the mirror, a few more greys, the news item that starts with 'It's now ten years since famous singer X passed away' and you sit there thinking 'No? Surely not, it seems like last Thursday.'

Time - the commodity most of us would pay good hard-earned cash for - a chance to buy back a few years - I've often wondered where I'd pay to go back to. I'm thinking 1993. The kids were still young and needed us (they still do...) I was younger, had more hair and in the prime of my life. Little did I know that a year later I'd be in an ICU bed fighting for my life. That time, alone in a ward of old dying men made me promise myself that I'd live every day as if it were my last. I'm pleased to say I have. Another more recent run in with the Devil himself in 2019 put me into a different high-dependency ward in a different country. Once again I laid and watched the clock move agonisingly slowly towards morning and the hope that I'd get to see the sunrise from my bedroom window. Once again I promised myself I'd go forth - and I did. I started writing with gusto and soon out of the blue in the worst pandemic in our lifetimes I secured a multi-book publishing deal thanks to two amazing people who run the UK publisher called Hobeck Books. Today I'm chatting to a film company, tomorrow, who knows? "Lewis, I've got Damien Lewis on the phone...says he wants to talk about playing Jack Cade..."

One thing's for sure - I can't go back to 1993, things have changed. Apparently the Spice Girls have also aged and frankly I still look pretty good, even without much hair. Another funeral this week made me take stock of what I have, and importantly who I have around me. And that has given me the size 12 kick up the backside I needed to get on with Orchard Road - because I have a new book just waiting to burst out of me and onto the page and that one is keeping me awake at night. A working title of 'No idea yet' doesn't work so you'll have to wait. Meanwhile have a read of any of the series, starting with Seventh and ending with The Chemist - trust me, they will do their best to keep you awake at night too. As one wonderful UK book reviewer said recently "The bad guy in The Chemist is the most f*****d up individual I've ever read about!"