Not dead (yet)
November 15, 2025
It's now over 2 years since my last blog post. I've been a bit distracted trying to help my parents, both in their eighties and experiencing various health problems. That led to a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between London, where I live, and Exeter, where they live. They were both (eventually) diagnosed with dementia and had to go into a care home. My Dad died peacefully in August this year. I may have a bit more to say about all that in due course. But this is just a short post to show that I haven't entirely given up on this website.
The site hadn't had much attention for a while, so I've given it a bit of a facelift. In particular, I've tried to improve how it looks on mobile devices. As for future blog posts, I'll try to get back to doing some more book reviews, in amongst the odd digression onto other topics (I did manage to read some books during my absence from here – so there's no shortage of material there).
But mainly what I want to do is make some progress with my writing. I have about 30,000 words of what started out as a long short story - although it is now looking like it will be at least a novella (if not a short novel).
One of the problems with self-publishing is that you don't have a commissioning editor badgering you about when you are going to finish the damn thing (and threatening to terminate your contract). And that lack of pressure is certainly one reason for my exceedingly slothful progress. So I suppose that by announcing it here, I'm trying to shame myself into making headway with it.
But unless you're a fan of watching paint dry, you could check back again in say, 6-12 months' time to see if I have anything to report.
In the meantime, there's a fair amount of other content on this site to randomly browse, to while away the time. If you like books and want some suggestions for what to read next, try here – hopefully, you'll find something that piques your interest.
Posted by Paul Samael. Posted In : Self-publishing
Welcome to my blog, "Publishing Waste" which will either (a) chronicle my heroic efforts to self-publish my own fiction; or (b) demonstrate beyond a scintilla of doubt the utter futility of (a). And along the way, I will also be doing some reviews of other people's books and occasionally blogging about other stuff.
