It's been a long week of watching World Cup football (soccer, for my American fans) matches, doing work on our extension, answering fan mail, and editing. The footie first -- while I haven't watched ever game, I've tried to see quite a few, especially now that it's got to the knockout phase. I had a sneaky suspicion that England might overcome their shocking early form and go on to sneak victory for the first time since 1966 -- but a 4-1 thrashing at the hands of Germany today put paid to that notion!!! Now I've no idea who might win it. I suspect one of Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Argentina or Germany. If I had to place a bet, I'd probably go for the Germans, who are looking well organised and clinical...

As I've mentioned here before, my house is currently being vastly extended, and we've been living in another house next door to it since last October. Building work is coming along very nicely, but it's now reached the stage where we have to get involved and make decisions. So I've spent much of the last week meeting with my architect and builder, and going to look at things like toilets and doors -- not much fun, but it has to be done!!

While watching most World Cup matches on TV, I've been answering fan mail  at the same time -- I'm able to multi-task!! That's good, because a literal mountain of mail had built up over the last couple of months! I've almost got through it all now -- another game or two and I should be there!!

Finally, in between all the above, I've managed to squeeze in some editing too! I've been working on the first couple of books of what will hopefully be my next long series after "The Saga of Larten Crepsley". I can't say anything about it yet, other than the books are short, sharp and very, VERY bloody!!! I'm really enjoying them! I had to write a new chapter for the first one -- it started a bit slowly in earlier drafts, and I felt it needed to begin with a bang. Once I'd written the new material I ploughed through the rest of the first book and have now got stuck into book 2. More to follow...

Finally, on Friday I went to Dolans to see Battle For Bob, a contest for 5 local Limerick bands, the prize being opening spot at Thomond Park in July, playing support to Bob Dylan!!!! My friend Pa is lead singer in a band called Last Days Of Death County, and they were one of the five finalists. They rocked the joint to its very foundations and were by far the most enthusiastically received of all the bands on the night. But judges don't always see it the same way as the audience... but in this case they did and Last Days won -- hurrah!!!! I was delighted for them, especially for Pa. It will be an amazing day for them, as they say themselves, the stuff that dreams are made of... You can check them out on MySpace by CLICKING HERE.