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 next novel. Luckily this leaves no time for Facebook or any other distractions either. So I am not on Facebook. 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? Researching a new novel set in 1941 for starters. Thinking about a follow up to 'Diamonds - The Rush of '72'. Most of the time I am reading student work however. 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? 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 recession in the UK is getting worse I think. Rumours of 5000 redundancies in the Higher Education sector this week in the Guardian. That has to be worrying since I am one of those in the rifle sights... and it was confirmed just yesterday by our own Vice-chancellor that redundancies are coming in January.

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 Radio 4 on BBC). 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.

I want to thank people who have been downloading or buying the print version of 'Another Place to Die' recently - over 800 copies sold to date, not so bad considering it can only be ordered in bookshops. I am more than ever of the notion that had it been available in the bookshops 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.
Guest writer Marcel D'Agneau has provided a grim story called Dr Death for good Christmas reading - a link to which you'll find on the front page.
Enjoy the winter season and a prosperous 2010 to you all.
Sam December 2009