Recovery is tiring.

Just a little update from me as I realised it’s been months since I sent out a newsletter. I’ve never been the best at keeping up with this sort of thing, but there’s a reason why I’ve not been around much, and I’m afraid it’s not a nice one. 

I am currently recovering from surgery to remove a very teeny tiny bit of breast cancer. The surgery went well, no cancer was found in the lymph nodes and so I don’t have to have chemotherapy. I do, however, have to have radiotherapy (I don’t know how much yet). 

It’s been a rough time, but the love and support from family, friends and the wonderful SFF and LARP communities has been incredible. The care provided by the NHS has been absolutely superb and I am deeply grateful. I am healing well, and the biggest impact it’s having on me at the moment is fatigue. I confess, I’m finding that really hard to deal with, as I am a bit of a workaholic and simply cannot do all the things I want to do. I will be okay, it was caught early, but it has slowed a lot of projects down.

However, I have just about been able to keep up with recording and editing episodes of Starship Alexandria. In case you haven’t come across it, this is a very cosy, nerdy podcast that I am doing with one of my most excellent friends Adrian Tchaikovsky. You might have heard of him.

It’s so much fun to record and I would dearly love it if you checked it out. Here’s where you can find all the episodes so far: https://starshipalexandria.com/ The latest episode is a discussion of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. We also have a patreon and publish a patrons-only episode every month too. The most recent one is a discussion of the much loved movie The Mummy (1999). You can find our patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/c/starshipalexandria/about

I haven’t yet finished the rather inconvenient cancer chapter of my life, but I am making the most of this brief period just before the radiotherapy starts to go to one of my favourite conventions, Bristolcon. https://www.bristolcon.org/ I’ll be doing a reading, am on a couple of panels and will be giving my workshop on overcoming procrastination for writers. I am really hoping my energy levels will let me enjoy the event as much as I usually do.

That’s it for now, as I need to go and have a rest. Take care, my lovelies.