Hello dear readers (hope you are well, if not, quote : you can grab the chocolate bar by the paper . You can do anything. Unquote)

Soooo it’s been as usual ( you must resent me for letting you down so often on this blog thingie in between posts, really, really, please, it’s my entire fault) too long since I last posted something. I can only try to plead a formidable busyness and developments in both my projects and the country I am legally alien (ated?)  And a massive lack of subjects  I thought could be of  interest for you. But since I am such an uncurable ——– (fill in the blank), I thought I might inflict my somber thoughts on you no matter what.

Let’s start with the good : last September, UK once more honored me (I plead guilty your Honor, but I loooove  that) with a prize for a poem called Liberty , written in 2012 -so not on purpose, right? (about withstanding oppression and this little nugget labelled freedom and soon to be out of sight here in the States). (that was my me-time moment)

Yet, after the election of Mr Trumpkopf the First (German variation around Dumkopf, a word  for, how can I put it nicely? ah, yes, d*ckhead), and thinking about it a posteriori, it feelsit was the right thing to submit back then in May and so now, my fellow legal aliens and myself are entering in résistance. Or at least, we think we are. On our small expat level. Maybe just in our heads. First things first.

In that perspective, I am putting together a collection of texts and poems about the trenches, WWI and the absurdity of war , with various angles (like the flowers in the trenches, the Xmas truce, etc), mainly to finish the job started with the Poem “20 years old in 1914” , which won the Burland Prize too in 2014. Anyway. It’s been a project of mine for several years. To be released/published in November 2018.

I have also teamed up with a fellow theatre lover (well, she is the stage director , I am the writer and provider of creative/crazy/are-you-sure-we-can-do-this-on-stage/no way, José ideas. We want to create and produce a play about the many pacifist soldiers that were shot as an example, and were left  unsung, almost forgotten by the Grande Muette /the Great Silent  (this is how the French called the Ministry of War at the time and later, all the Army). We intend to intertwine the spoken text  with either poems, or images, a bouquet of mixed media or multimedia certainly and invite audience from all nationalities to join in the tribute. Because com’on, soldiers shot as  example were not just given this dreadful judgement in France, but also in all belligerent armies…

More news?

Ok, I got my first techno-thriller out on Amazon in November  and as a publisher, I published a collection of texts by 4 expat authors .

Then a bit of ski in Colorado with friends around Xmas (fab weather, 6o inches of gorgeous powder, an absolute winter dream, no one on the slopes, minus 20*C, sun and laughter).

Then back to work, putting together the last chapters (2) of a Sci-Fi novel (well, actually the novel I wrote in November during the NaNoWriMo challenge aiming at writing 50.000 or more words in 30 days or less, which I finished, one day earlier and with more that 50.ooo words (so proud of myself, yep). Said novel is a kinda “cross-fertilization” between 20.000 leagues under the Seas x Indepence day x 1984 (forgive me, it’s my first attempt at Sci-Fi, I have big standards).

Half-good news : Sherlock is back, after 2 years. Honestly, 2 years for that? Sherlock and CO might as well extended their attempt at taking Hollywood, because it was not up to expectations. And this ridiculous idea of the hidden-evil-but smarter sister… Not to mention Moriarty (I wanted him back from the dead or with a devious scheme to resurrect somehow and haunt the peaceful streets of London and Team Sherlock’s sleep) the toy of said sister, willingly and wrongfully scripted, and , last but not least, the disappearing chemistry between the Baker Boys. Nope, no more the wonderful and wondrous connection , the heavy subtext, and the tingling queerbaiting that we, Johnlock shippers loved to decipher. Nada, niet, nothing, nichts…SOOOoOOOOOO disappointing. Still, it’s visible. But the thrill has faded and waned and dissolved (that a lot for one sole thing).

(Nothing left to hold on to help tackle the big event of Jan 20th.)

And then…

Then it was blackout time when the final US election polls were revealed. An era of gloom and doom befell us.

I mean, Brexit had been quite a shock, and all (well, most of, rather) Brits here or there -namely in  Peru in June, in the middle of nowhere on the Altiplano ( I did not expect to stumble upon a journalist and several millenials traveling for fun alone between two jobs, but life is more fun that way) and striking a convo about how dreadful the announce of Brexiters’ victory had been. And so, painfully  and barely recovered from Brexit (BBC had been my endless supplier of prognostics and analysis since March as far as I am concern), BAM!  The Tsunami Trumpkopf hit us.  I fear only the worse can happen in May in France, now.

Trumpkopf has a very nasty way of making his decisions and political moves resembling more and more those of a certain man with a silly little dangerous moustache… America Great again? Dangerously similar to the slogans that reverberated throughout Europe; 80 years ago, in the form of “Making Germany great again”, innit?

And what shall we think of “America First”? Hum? Why not America über alles? Because, that’s what is sounds like and what it seems to derived from…

On a lighter note, I propose we create a Ministry of Silly Jokes and Impossible to put in Operation Ideas served by Utterly incompetent Secretaries..

What? It exists already? How is it called?

Trumpkopf administration?

Damned.

We are doomed.

My kingdom for a horse (and make it not a dead one, please)!