If there is any better example of how much I love living in this highly connected electronic future, it’s the fact that I can read the news, check my social networks and update my website while taking a bath.

I would live to be able to do my work in the bath too and to be honest, I probably could. It wouldn’t be a good idea of course, since I would almost certainly end up with hypothermia due to the water getting cold around me, but a girl can dream.

Today is the start of a firm plan to get myself back on to an early morning schedule. Ever since we moved to this new house, my body clock has been all over the place. Remember the time I said I was going on to a night cycle? That lasted all of six weeks. I am now trying to sort my body clock out but I fear it is probably another symptom of my nutty brain problems, or at least the medication I’m taking to keep that at bay.

Either way, I am trying to get all my writing done early in the day so I have more time in the afternoons and evenings to get comics drawn. We’ll see how that works out.

Some long term readers of this blog, or of my twitter feed, will be aware that i suffer from a chronic illness that causes a lot of pain and a reduction in my ability to move, walk and sleep well enough to recover quickly. People on twitter also know I suffer from bipolar disorder, a mental illness that has plagued me for many years and caused me to very nearly fail my first degree (“very nearly” in this case meaning going from a First to a passing grade).

When one of these illnesses is playing up, life gets tough. Recently I had a bad time with depression and started stockpiling paracetamol, fully intending to take my own life. As you can tell since I’m writing this now, I did not go through with it. I pulled out of the depressive cycle before I had enough energy to go through with the plan.

When I pulled ’round, I relaunched ink proof cannon. You can see how long the good time lasted.

Now I am pulling through a bout of chronic illness brought on by eating pizzas despite being allergic to wheat. This is my bipolar acting up again, which I realise now my head is a little clearer. I’m still down, I’m finding it very difficult to motivate myself enough to do any work, and I feel like there is too much going on for me to cope. Nevertheless my brain is clearer now and I think I may be over the worst of it all.

If I am, you can expect more comics, more of my nano novel and more videos. If I’m not, expect some quiet time before I show up much again.

Rest assured though, I will be back. xxx

As anyone who has read today’s section of my new novel, The Scream of Eternity, will know, I like to write horror. In particular, I like to write the kind of horror where the monster comes out of nowhere, without warning, and strikes in a way that permanently damages people.

Seren Oilean, my protagonist for this novel, is one such damaged person. I won’t go into details because you can read the extract in question if you want to know what happened, but suffice to say she’s irreparably damaged as a result of the events of the book.

I’m sometimes asked where I get my ideas for monsters from. The majority are non-traditional monster types. It is fairly simple, really. I get them from inside my head. They are my monsters. I don’t mean that in the “they are mine and you can’t have them” way, I mean it in the “these things live in my brain and they fucking scare me” way.

The monsters in The Scream of Eternity are monsters that have plagued me for several years now. They are the kind of creature that lurks in the back of the imagination, popping up occasionally in the corner of my eye because my brain is trying to work out what I’m supposed to be seeing.

My peripheral vision isn’t as good as it once was thanks to years of pressure on the optic nerve so there are bits and pieces in my vision that are 0nly there because my brain is generating a visual picture via extrapolation. When it doesn’t do it right, usually because of a change in light levels if my experiences are anything to judge by, it creates a monster.

That’s right. My brain creates monsters to terrify itself. Don’t you just love that?

I’ve spoken before about how bipolar disorder causes me a lot of problems. I sometimes don’t do work for days on end because I can’t face up to anything. I sometimes take on far too many projects and end up crashing and burning. In the past I’ve gone on wild spending sprees that got me thousands of pounds into debt.

These days, I have most of that under control, so my brain has resorted to other means of problem generation. It turned to my imagination and asked “what is the creepiest thing you can think of?” and then ordered ten with express delivery.

That’s where the monsters come from. When you read my stories, you will see what frightens me the most. I hope you enjoy it.