State of the Nation August 2023!

 

Hello lovely readers.

 

Apologies for my recent absence. While the long term readers know I routinely take a bit of time off now and again, the circumstances this time around were a bit different.

 

I did decide to take a few weeks off after Christmas/New Year, and as always once I stopped writing for a while it grew to about three months. Not my worst absence, but I decided then to get cracking with finishing Outcast of Gor and posting the final chapters I’d received from Tracker and Arizona Wanderer. 

 

Only… no sooner had I begun than I finally came down with Covid. Yes, I’d been spared it up to that point. The Covid itself wasn’t too bad, but I seem to have what’s commonly referred to as ‘Long Covid’ following my bout with the virus. This has left me very drained – a bit like suffering from ME, I suppose, and it very much affected my ability to get much done. I had just about enough energy to deal with the day job, but not much else. I’m still suffering from the after effects, though in recent weeks have been a bit more clear headed, hence why I’ve kick started the next book, but I confess I’m writing slower than before, when I routinely knocked off a chapter a day in-between meals. 

 

From what I’ve read, this should improve. I’m generally pretty healthy, eat well, exercise and so on. But you may see my output a little slower while the Long Covid lingers.  

 

I do seem to have a bit backlog of stuff to sort through from Chloe (loads of pictures!) and story instalments from other writers in my inbox. These have suffered from the Long Covid, but I intend to sort through everything and start posting it. The ‘brain fog’ however tires me out after a while. 

 

I’m still faster than George R R Martin though! 😊

 

I thought I’d also addresses some remarks from the recent comment threads while I was away. 

 

Blogger seems to have changed its rules relating to *cough* adult-orientated blogs, and it now requires some form of age verification to view them. I discovered this the hard way when I couldn’t even go to view my own blog! I really didn’t have the time, energy or inclination to go through whatever verification process they insist on now, so I simply switched the ‘adult’ tag off for this site. Voila – you can now go straight into this site without warnings. To be honest I was never really sure whether the adult content tag suits this site. Chloe’s pictures are no more risqué than a mid-1970’s copy of Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan comic, or the pages of the comic, Heavy Metal, and as my writing follows the style of Mr Norman, there aren’t really explicit sex scenes. I have posted some more risqué pictures at times (mostly in respect of stories from other writers) but on the whole I think this site probably doesn’t warrant an adult content warning. John Norman’s books, after all, are commonly available without any such warnings attached, so the content has avoided ‘top shelf’ labelling. 

 

That said, these are challenging times, and it wouldn’t surprise me if one day I find someone has objected to this site and complained about it. I suppose we’ll cross that hurdle if we ever reach it. There does seem to be a growing form of cancel culture and woke puritanism that is objecting to many principles of free speech. I remember when John Norman spoke about the cancel culture (before it was known as that) that affected his Gor series in the late eighties, but I think few people considered it might grow to the extent it is now. These are uncertain times for writers and artists who believe in artistic freedom of expression.

 

We shall see.

 

-       Emma