I’ve been threatening to do this for a while. Pile up all the unread books I’ve got and take a photograph of them, just for giggles. So I did, and slightly scared myself. Clearly, I get far too much pocket money.

Here is Ellie’s to-be-read pile, in no kind of order, just how they came off the shelves. That’s over six feet four inches of books. Yes, I have just measured it; no, I do not think that is remotely sad.

This mountain of words does include some books I was given as presents Quite Some Time Ago, and a couple of them I’ve started and put down for whatever reason (Tad Williams’ River of Blue Fire, I’m looking at you here – and Trudi Canavan’s Magician’s Guild, don’t think you can hide at the back).

What it does not include is all the books I will have to re-read before I attempt to conclude various series, like the Dresden Files, and The Wheel of Time. What can I say, I have a terrible thing for completeness.

Whimper.

Still, they do say that the first step in overcoming addiction is admitting you have a problem.

Well, that’ll wake you up good and proper.

Wednesday is bin day here at Cooper Towers. When I opened the bedroom curtains this morning, I noticed that my beloved spouse, when he left for work at oh-my-god-o’clock, had neglected to put the blue recyclables bin out for collection. Not to worry, I thought; I’ll put it out after breakfast.

Except by the time I got down the stairs, I could hear the bin lorry in the next street. Oh noes!

So out I trot, barefoot but otherwise dressed, opened the gate and trundled this big 240-litre wheelie bin out to the path. Since wheelie bins are not the nimblest-handling things, I managed to trundle it over my left foot in the process.

More precisely, over my toes. And the bin was full.

All together now: owyabuggershitthathurts.

Sigh.

If you haven’t already heard about the Genre for Japan auction, where have you been the last few days?

Fantastic lots, many of them pure unobtainium, including critiques, artwork, stuff signed by really cool people like Neil Gaiman and Joe Abercrombie, your name in a book, Stephen Deas to do with as you will (more or less) for two whole days,  . . . and personalised ARCs of M D Lachlan‘s Fenrir and Songs of the Earth from, er, me.

If you’re a writer, a reader, connected with genre publishing or just a fan, you should check this out. Follow @GenreforJapan on Twitter or visit the website, and get browsing, get donating, get involved.

And get your bloody wallet out!

I haven’t had much to say lately. Not normally a problem for me, I must admit, but there you go.

It’s been a fairly grim couple of months. Progress on Trinity Moon was agonisingly slow, and every few hundred words I managed was hard work. Let me rephrase that. It was sweating-bullets, squeezing-blood-from-a-stone Hard Work. I was even beginning to doubt my abilities as a writer and stressing that I would miss my deadline to deliver the book.

Every day was an effort to drag myself into the office and stare at the computer screen.  Some days it was an effort just to drag myself out of bed. It was frustrating, demoralising, depressing.

In September, I had the first of two emergency admissions to hospital. Acute pancreatitis and jaundice. I couldn’t even drink water without vomiting. I spent my third wedding anniversary holding my husband’s hand in casualty for 6 hours, and the next two days on IV fluids. This also meant having to be catheterised to measure my hydration levels. After four days, they let me go home. I could eat again, but had no interest in food. All I wanted to do was sleep.

A month later, I was back in A&E, this time with acute biliary colic, and spent another 48 hours in hospital.  At least my liver function was normal this time; I was just in pain. In the hospital, they ask you to grade your pain on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. I’ve had a fractured spine, and a post-lumbar puncture headache, so I like to think my tolerance for pain is quite high, but even with 10mg of morphine in me, acute biliary colic hit a 7.

Two weeks ago, I had my gallbladder removed. The surgeon said it was “ready to come out” which I think is consultant-speak for “it was a bag of gravel ripe to cause lots more problems, so you’re better off without it”, and discharged me the following morning.

Keyhole surgery is something of a misnomer. They should call it keyholeS surgery. Four incisions, and a couple of random holes – whose precise purpose was unclear. I was a bit sore for the next few days, but as the discomfort faded I started to feel better. So much better that I could look back and see just how shitty I’d been feeling since the summer. No the wonder I wasn’t writing much, or well.

I’m still not massively interested in food, but at least now I know I can eat without worrying whether it will trigger another trip to casualty.  I’ve had enough morphine to last me a good while, thanks.

Fast! Effective! No willpower required!

Just follow this easy 3-step plan and you too can look forward to a wardrobe full of clothes that no longer fit.

Step 1. Develop numerous gallstones.

Step 2. Pass a stone sufficiently large to form a blockage in the bile duct.

Step 3. Contract acute pancreatitis.

Side-effects include: extreme pain, projectile vomiting, dehydration, jaundice and a trip to hospital for IV fluids and morphine.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my husband dearly.  In fact, if I loved him any more, it would be downright unhealthy.  But I can’t write whilst he’s in the house.

He’s had a week off work, and it’s a miracle I’ve got any writing done at all.  He’s trying not to interrupt me, bless him, but just having someone else in the house creeping about trying not to be a nuisance is driving me up the wall.

Part of it is my fault.  I’m very conscious that he works hard and he’s having some time off and deserves to be able to relax, but I’m sitting here at my desk worrying that he’s feeling bored/under-appreciated/neglected in some way, instead of what I should be doing.

When he goes out to the gym, it’s fine.  I can’t hear him, and don’t need to worry about him.  But when he’s here…

If he’s watching TV, I can hear it up here in the office.  Even if he turns it down, it’s audible above the volume of my music, which lately I’ve taken to listening to at incredibly low levels so it drowns out the silence without distracting me too much.

If he goes for a soak in the bath, I can hear *his* music over mine.  If he’s using his computer in the study along the hall, I can hear him watching music videos, typing, or God help me, farting.

Of course, I could shut my office door, but then the cats can’t get in and will sit outside crying and pulling at the carpet, making me feel a heel for ignoring them.  I’ll feel twice the heel for only communicating with my husband when he brings me a fresh cup of tea.

The other alternative is to take a break from writing, and go curl up on the sofa with him.  But if I do that, I start worrying about deadlines, and whether I’m neglecting my book, and I’m unable to relax.  I can’t win.

Noise-cancelling headphones.  It’s the only solution.  That, or divorce.

Regular readers will know (don’t try to hide behind the sofa; I know there’s at least four of you) that I am busy finishing Book 2 of The Wild Hunt, Trinity Moon.

What you may not know is that as if MS wasn’t enough fun by itself, I’ve also been diagnosed with gallstones. Honking great gallstones, measuring 1.5cm across. The surgeon I saw at the hospital last Tuesday was quite impressed. I assured him that I do not do things by halves. Neither, it seems, does he.

He wants me to have an MRI scan to check that there’s no small stones (the technical term is gravel, seriously) in my bile duct, before he whips my gall bladder out. Ultrasound, like the one I had a couple of months ago that revealed the pesky stones in the first place, isn’t very good for looking at this because the bile duct lurks behind the bowel, and there’s air in the gut which doesn’t transmit the ultrasound very well. MRI, of course, is like one of Her Majesty’s VAT inspectors: it goes everywhere and sees everything.

Lovely chap, the surgeon. Warm hands, which is always a good sign, and a dry sense of humour. I am not in the least freaked-out by the prospect of any of the upcoming procedures–even if they can’t do a keyhole cholecystectomy and have to do a traditional large-incision, in-up-to-the-elbows job. My heart is plodding along at its regular resting rate of 59bpm and if I was any more laid back I’d be horizontal. So why am I finding it so hard to empty my head of all this health-related stuff and get back to the business of writing?

I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline. I’ve had the first instalment of my advance, so I’m on the company dime, as it were. I want to finish this book so I can make a start on the next one, because I want to find out what happens next. Powerful motivators all. So why can’t I write the last five chapters?

After a bit of a sticky patch I’d been going great guns again, and then WHAM! Straight into a brick wall. I was washing my hair in the shower, like you do, brain idling, and suddenly realised that the last chapter and a half had gone in completely the wrong direction and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Four days later, I still don’t. It’s not writer’s block, because I don’t believe in it, and we all know that stuff we don’t believe in doesn’t exist, like the monster under the bed. It’s an inability to focus.

I’ve turned off my music. I’ve taken myself out into the garden with the laptop, where the wireless doesn’t work reliably enough to allow me to get distracted by email or Facebook or reading other people’s blogs. I’ve even tried going back to pencil and paper to slow my thoughts down, let ideas take root. Nothing doing. Every time I sit down to sort this out my mind is flittering around like a butterfly in a meadow, never settling for more than a few seconds before it’s off to the next flower.

Argh.

The fact that I’m even blogging about it, instead of solving the problem, is just another example of my distraction. Why find answers when you can futz around talking about the question instead?

Double argh.

This is not a familiar place in which to find myself. I don’t like it. It smells strange and the people talk funny. Get me out of here!

There’s a clematis at the bottom of my garden.  A vigorous, large-leaved, free-flowering variety called Madame Le Coultre, which produces glorious paper-white flowers the size of tea-plates, in great abundance, every year, in spite of–or possibly because of–my sporadic attentions.  Like this one:

This morning, I discovered that Mme had fallen under her own weight, and was drooping forlornly into the hellebores.  I say “fallen under her own weight” because I wouldn’t dream of implying that my neighbours had pitched her back over when she scrambled clean up the 6ft dividing fence and made determined advances on their trellis, rather like a dark green, many-armed Napoleon across Europe.

Besides, I planted Mme nine years ago; she’s been here longer than they have lived in that house, so I reckon that gives her dibs on the fence.

So now I have to untangle the 8-10ft long stems and somehow tie them in to the acres of clematis netting I provided for Mme, which she has studiously ignored thus far.  As anyone who has ever grown a clematis will know, they are largely self-supporting.  This means they will grab onto and coil round whatever they touch; in Mme’s case, this is usually herself.

Picture the scene, if you will.  Yours truly, unsteady of foot at the best of times, waist-deep in hellebores and flag iris behind the pond (yes, that pond), attempting to untangle this monstrosity without snapping too many bud-bearing shoots.  It’s like trying to knit a Fair Isle sweater without a pattern.  In the dark.  In reverse.

However, I’ve managed to achieve some sort of order.  Mme’s many armies have been separated and espalier-trained across the aforementioned acres of netting.  Casualties were limited to one finger (a Swiss Army knife related injury) and one leading shoot, that is now hospitalised in a jam-jar of water on the kitchen windowsill in the hope it may root as a cutting for next year.

Even though I know full well what I am nurturing, I can’t bear not to give it a chance.  Where the hell I’m going to plant it, though, I do not know–give Mme free reign and she’ll annexe Poland before she’s three years old.

Anyone who’s ever owned – or been owned by – a pet has to face these decisions sooner or later.  This is the fourth time for me, and believe me it doesn’t get any easier with practice.

Knowing it’s the right thing to do helps a bit, but not nearly enough.  Gutted doesn’t even come close to how I feel.

I know, I know, it’s only a cat, but damn it, she was my friend.

Cleo, 15 Nov 1992 - 22 Dec 2009

Cooper Towers is under attack.

The enemy has taken control of the shed, and advance scouts have been making daring daylight raids across the patio for several days.   They wear no uniform, operating in plain-clothes, the better to blend in with the civilian population.   Modern defensive strategy is useless against this new insurgency.

Day 1: Elite operatives spotted setting up observation posts at high points around the garden.  Utilising local cover, the enemy scaled the feeder pole and dropped onto the seed tray.  After approximately 28 minutes, he base-jumped into the choisya bush and made good his escape.  Enemy tentatively identified as apodemus sylvaticus.

Enemy operative secures the forward observation post and reconnoitres the LZ

Day 2: The shed was taken, under cover of darkness.  Shed door frame shows signs of forcible entry.  No casualties except a 12.5kg sack of premium wild bird food.  Moved all provisions out of reach to force the insurgents to break cover in search of supplies.  Observed two low-level raiders at close quarters.  Stalemate.

Day 3: Aha!  They’re getting a bit cocky.  They’d established their barracks in a disused nestbox, and the guard let himself be seen.  I grabbed the box and removed it, but not quite quickly enough.  One of the enemy escaped via a daring leap onto the shelving unit, where he hid behind the hosepipe and watched as his two comrades were escorted out of the combat zone.  I have designated this particularly audacious combatant “Steve McQueen”.

Day 4: Requested reinforcements.  HQ sent in a highly-trained Counter-terrorist Assault Technician (CAT) which performed a thorough sweep of the combat zone, but the enemy was lying low.  No sightings reported.  CAT redeployed to other duties.

Day 5: All quiet on the western front.  No sightings, but picked up some high-frequency communications chatter.  Cryptographers are having no luck decoding it.

Day 6 (am): I opened the shed door this morning and noted that all traces of bird food on the floor had vanished, indicating that Agent McQueen is still at large.  Reconnaissance of the upper shelves found the little bugger sitting atop my gardening gloves watching me.  The enemy’s audacity is breathtaking.  Lightly armed and agile, they are superb edificeers, shinning up the wall ribs like lumberjacks up a Douglas fir.

Day 6 (pm): It is time to take the battle to the enemy.  I have formulated a Cunning Plan, a masterpiece of Baldrickian subtlety, which hinges on the enemy’s affinity for holes.  I have reinstated the nestbox, and this time I will place my hand over the hole when I remove it.  Take that, Steve McQueen!

The battle continues…