On the 20th January my daughter popped out a new baby boy. Hello to Nathan Robert Monk. He’s the spitting image of his big brother (nearly 3), Oliver, who has to be prised off from cuddling Nathan to give others a chance.

Today I received another book to review. It is a collection of short stories by Tony Rauch – “eyeballs growing all over me… again”. I’m looking forward to making time to read these amusing and no doubt lateral-thinking tales. His blog is at http://trauch.wordpress.com/

I’ve now reached chapter 33 in writing ARIA volume 3 – about two thirds of the way through. Volume one – Left Luggage – has had two edits by LL-Publications editor and is now being finely proofread. In the meantime artist Andy Bigwood has produced this marvelous image for the cover. This also is in its third draft.