So, Jackson, tell us about your 2019 so far ...
I got to have TWO holidays! It's been ten years since I've had a proper holiday and this year I've managed to have two of them! The first was a cruise from Melbourne to Brisbane. Some things I didn't realise:
Just how much the ship moves from side to side.
Just how much I can eat during a 21-hour buffet.
That I was made for trivia nights.
That the cheesy entertainment is actually quite entertaining.
Did I do the Titanic move? Of course. Did I sneak onto every floor? You betcha! Did I drink too much at the gin bar? Not even close.
We had a stopover in Sydney, in Sydney Harbour, right next to the bridge and the opera house. That was cool.
The big holiday was in Europe and guess whose passport expired in February and which dingbat didn't check it until the night before he was supposed to fly out? That's right – this guy.
We began in Yorkshire, flew to Switzerland, trained it through to Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and then made it back to Manchester. We were there for five weeks which was a little too long, since we were hopping from one place to another every few days. But the sights were great, the food was good, and the company was excellent.
The book was a challenge to write mostly because of the two aforementioned holidays. It seriously broke my writing flow and – coupled with jet lag – I lost a lot of time writing. Because I had a half-finished book while travelling around Europe it was still very much on my mind, but I just didn't have an opportunity to get the words down. This meant that by the time I was back home I just didn't have the same kind of motivation as before, and spending six months on a book wore me out.
What am I doing now? Taking a week off, catching up on some chores, and with any luck I'll be back to work this coming Monday to write Raike 5.
Peace.