Apology: There is no excuse for letting a web site lanquish and this one lanquishes more than most, but I realised that digital media is just swallowing so much of my time I can barely keep up with my regular magazine Hackwriters.com, teaching full time and researching for my novel. (And now the next novel.) Luckily this leaves no time for Facebook or any other distractions either. So I am not on Facebook or Linked In and whatever I have joined I want to leave. Someone told me that in a survey of students activity that 79% of their time is taken up with Facebook. Some students confess to spending 5 hours a day on it. Extraordinary.

So what am I doing right now? Just completed a new novel set in 1941 and delivered to my editor. Finally finished reading and marking undergrad student work, only the major works on the MA in Creative Writing to read this September then I am done at Portsmouth. It's a more uncertain world for me, but then again a return to normal.

For light relief I treat myself to movies such as the death-porn flick 2012. I'd quite like to sit down with John Cusak and just make him realise that as fun as this movie is - intentional or otherwise, he should be making a sequel to Grosse Point Blank or at least movies as great as High Fidelity. Can't we rescue this fine actor from the choices he makes? I was happy to see that Hot Tub Time Machine was at least funny and surprised to see he was the producer. (Get it on DVD when it comes out.) See what happens when you put personal thoughts to the page. Complete trivia. I sit thinking about someone else's problems, avoiding my own.

I guess there's a lot to worry about out there. The Oil Spill in the Gulf for example - how does that coastal area come back from that? More than two months of oil spewing out now and Hurricanes to contend with as well this month. Then there's the danger of double dip recession and the fate of the Euro. Times are tough. Should produce some good fiction by the survivors don't you think?

It is now confirmed I am leaving Portsmouth and moving to West Dean, where the novel and the new MA in Creative Writing there will be taken very seriously indeed under the leadership of Greg Mosse. West Dean (in West Sussex) is one of the most special places for learning ones craft in a huge range of disciplines in the UK and worth exploring.

What one should recommend graduates aim for after University? It's much harder to advise now. But I do know that we are in a radically changing world. I try to make the connection between disappearing newspapers and jobs with students. If they don't buy them, why should anyone on a newspaper hire them? They don't get it. They have become so used to everything being free, instant, delivered without depth, they can easily survive without 'news' or 'opinion pieces' or 'reviews'. They already know from Twitter what a film or new album is like. Am I generalising? Perhaps. But I think this generation are going to have to develop their own employment opportunities as they are so throughly disengaged from the traditional forms of media. (You should have seen the fallen faces whan I made students listen to drama on Radio 4 on BBC this year). Not one of them own a radio for a start. It will be different in the next decade for media or publishing jobs. It may not generate the kind of living students want, or even royalties from content. But then again, as Rupert Murdoch says, 'people will pay for content if they value it'. We shall see. *Are you buying The Times on-line? No, I didn't think so.

I want to thank people who have been downloading or buying the print version of 'Another Place to Die' recently - over 2650 copies sold to date, not so bad considering it's only available on-line and can only be ordered in bookshops. I am more than ever of the notion that had it been available in the bookshops at point of sale I would have had a big seller with that. Of course I would have had it anyway if I'd called it 'Another Place to Diet' but you live and learn huh.

Right now I am packing my bags to go to Bayonne then Vigo to research and write for my next book. I have the characters, the situation but no real plot. There goes my theory that characters drive plot... darn. Hope you have a good summer break.
July 2010