Working From Home With A House Full

August is always a bit of a weird month. Being someone who does a lot of work from home, including, kind of obviously, my writing, it becomes a hell of a challenge when you’re joined by a wife and two kids in your workplace every day.
That’s not to say that they’re disruptive. I’m really lucky. They do an amazing job of keeping disruptions down to a minimum. The kids have never been the noisy, bickering type. Okay, so sometimes they can be noisy. But they’re never at each others throats, which makes for a happier household. If they fought like cat and dog whilst I was working, I think I might have gone insane. Or away for the summer. One of the two.
Normally they’re out of the house at least a couple of days a week, but my wife recently changed jobs and now she too has the whole six weeks off. Add to that, she’s decided this is the summer to decorate the kid’s bedroom, the room next to my office, and it has been an interesting summer so far. 
But we’ve always been good at this. I was homeworking before it was made cool during the pandemic. I home worked with babies in the house. Then toddlers. We all know the drill. We all know the stakes. No work done = no roof over the heads! 
Which all means I’ve been fairly productive. And not just in the day job. This summer I’ve had to contend with promoting a brand new book. Dead Men Don’t Pay came out at the end of July (I nearly missed it.) A big thanks to those who’ve had a punt on it. It’s a new genre for me. I know it won’t be to everyone who reads my books taste. It’s definitely slower and more methodical. But then again, in comparison to The Regulators it couldn’t not be. You can have a listen to me talking about Dead Men Don’t Pay on The UKCBC, with Sam Brownley.
I also need to give a big shout out to all the authors who’ve shared links to Dead Men and in particular, T E Scott who gave me a lovely shout out in her newsletter. The crime writing community is such a wonderful place, filled with the best people and once again, there’s always people there to pull for you.
I’ve been writing two books at once right now. The next Regulators and a brand new book in a brand new series, that’s currently got the working title Provost. That’ll change, but at least it has an identity. 
I’ve also been having some great chats with authors over on the Criminally Inspired. The latest episode was with the brilliant Brian Price. Do go give them a listen. There will be a new one out August 13th with Bryan Mason.
Finally, it’s been absolutely fantastic to see the X-odus continuing as people leave the artist formerly known as Twitter to join Threads and Bluesky. I post mainly on Threads, I think Bluesky is more a sort of green room for creatives, rather than somewhere where you can keep up with what’s happening. But it really is time we all made a conscious effort to move away from Elmo’s crap. People who are unaccountable to anyone, attempting to influence political discourse and stirring up division and hatred are extremely dangerous. It’s really hard for them to truly appreciate the impact of their words, or for them to be policed in the way me and you would be.
If only there was some sort of underground vigilante group out there who could be tasked with looking into them…