Hi, and Happy New Year.

You know, I have long longed for a chance to spend a large percentage of my day simply working on my books – and now I have retired I have that opportunity and I am loving it. Mind you, I still have to jobs around the house or pay the consequences.
But for me there is nothing greater than throwing yourself into writing a book and I find it more rewarding than reading because, not only do you constantly have something unexpected happening in front of your eyes as you type, but you can change the way the storyline travels and you can change the ending if you later decide you don’t like it.
My stories usually start happening as soon as I start writing, not before I write. I don’t really have a plan when I start to write, just an idea, and as a result many of my starting points, things that I decided I was going to write about, bite the dust fairly early in the piece, as something takes hold of my short fat stubby little fingers and takes me on a journey of totally unexpected events. My first book, THE NIGHT OF THE DAMNED, a story about a thirty five year old import/export clerk working in a large firm in London who finds himself doing battle with a creature that roamed the universe in search of new life to absorb started life as a story based on my coping with separation following my marriage breakup. Scrapping the first story denied me my chance to cleanse my soul by pouring out my emotions in the book I had intended to write, but I found the simple experience of writing did me just as much good and I have been writing ever since. And the second story ended up with two sequels,The Night of the Darkness and The Night of the Children, and I have never ever attempted to recreate the first story … I don’t need it anymore.
To be perfectly honest, though, I have been writing on and off all my life. Attempted children’s adventure stories, attempts at songs and other things, but it wasn’t until 1996 that I began with more seriousness to the content of my writings. Initially it was poems to clear out the heartache of a failed marriage after twenty five years, but even then I discovered the joys of writing when I found poems were entering my head from sources unknown and it was a natural progression to books which I have been writing ever since.
Now, to be perfectly honest, I cannot judge whether my stories are really up to scratch or I have a wildly inflated ego, but how I judge the quality and longevity of my stories is to put them aside for an indefinite period (usually several months to several years) then bring it back for corrective action and if I no longer feel the storyline and the passion within it then I abandon it. I feel extremely fortunate in finding most of my stories meet with my acceptance and there are several of them I love reading them over and over again even though I am constantly making little changes and adding more in, and I hope that any reader I attract to the story through my ramblings enjoys them as much as I do.

On a sadder note, one of my favourite things to do in life is store away trivia things such as the fact that JENNA COLEMAN’s (Clara) name appears before PETER CAPADILA’s (The Doctor) in the opening credits of the final episode of series 8 of DOCTOR WHO (DEATH IN HEAVEN) and her face appears in the opening credits instead of the doctors. Then in the first few moments the MASTER (Missy) tells the doctor that there are Cybermen popping up in cities around the world: New York, Paris, Marrakech, BRISBANE and Glascow. Then, of course, there is the satirical MARY POPPINS arrival of Missy (The Master) at the graveyard close to the end of the show. This is fact, but it is also pure trivia because not everybody knows the facts even if they watched the show.
There are always u.f.o. stories , ghost stories, unusual stories and unbelievably stupid people stories doing the rounds over the years, and I store hundreds of them away in a closet somewhere in my brain waiting for the right story to bring them out, but this year of 2014 has brought out so many disaster stories I am not sure I want to remember any of them.
Maybe I am getting a bit older and view life and death with a bit more feeling, but I don’t remember a year with so much pain and heartbreak. Nearly every day seemed filled with mayhem and disaster. Everywhere you looked there was someone being hurt. Drunken brawls, deaths through ‘Cowards Punch’, horrendous deaths being shown on the web, plane disasters and missing planes, a rubbish truck running amok through crowds of people in Scotland, Women allegedly thrown or forced to jump off high rise buildings, Ferry disaster in Italy … and the way so many parents mistreated their children … The list of incidents and deaths seems endless and I am certain the list is much higher than previous years.
I have no idea why all these things are happening, nor do I think that I want an answer, but I do know that my heart and prayers. like many others, go out to the hundreds of victims and the loved ones they left behind. Let’s hope that 2015 will be a better year.

But enough of this morbid time of the year.

Instead of romantic poems I have posted some extracts from one of MY children’s books to cheer you up after all that reflection:I Once Knew a Vampire Named Lizzie by me, of course.

In the meantime … have a ball in 2015 (we all deserve a happy year)

Tony

Extracts from I Once Knew a Vampire Named Lizzie by Tony Stewart
(By the way, the reason why I keep placing my name on everything I write is to help in search programs)

I had a cat named ginger
Who ate a green balloon
And the only way we could get it out
Was with a fork and spoon

I had a dog named Freddy
Who flew up to the moon
I haven’t seen him lately
I hope he comes home soon

Jessie put on her dressing gown
And ran out in the pouring rain
But then she ran back inside again –
She had forgotten to put on her brain

Millie saw a white cat
Its fur as thick as thick could be
Millie sprayed it with some paint
Now its kinda thinner – and purple as it can be

I once knew a creature named Mervyn
Who had one thousand legs
And he had a full time job in a laundromat
Where he leased them out as pegs

There was a young mermaid named Sally
Who swam in the deep blue sea
She never got the chance to eat burnt sausages
Or to try honey from a bee

But she thrived upon such salty things
Such as seaweed, crab and shell
But when she ate a long dead seagull
She didn’t feel too well

Mary was a big black spider
Who proposed to a mop named Larry
But Larry felt all washed up
And didn’t want to marry

See Ya