Long time, no blog, as the year has ended in a flurry of travelling. Just like most of 2025, in fact. I spent around 120 nights away from home, splitting the year more or less into equal thirds of writing, archaeology and travel. January was mostly spent recovering from the flu, but following the successful relaunch of the Flint box set in 2023 I switched my writing back to archaeological mysteries.
In February I took the plunge and did my first ever cruise, not expecting to like it as much as I did. In between shore raids on Caribbean Islands I was able to work quietly on the new book, Project DLE.
March was the fantastic Alderney Literary Festival, which is sadly taking a rest in 2026. Being in Alderney, and stopping in Guernsey on the way also created opportunity to discuss this year’s dig and the write up of the Nunnery project with my colleagues.
With the rollercoaster of literary events underway, April saw me help organise the Northern Symposium for the Crime Writers’ Association in Ilkley.
In May, it was back to Alderney for the Dig Alderney excavation at Les Huguettes. This year I wasn’t running the show, simply a digger. The iron age site overlooks he Nunnery which served as our excavation base and is a very atmospheric place to stay. It required a quick change of garb to fly back for what could be the final Crimefest in Bristol.
June became a rapid change-of-hats month. I dropped in on the Sykehouse Film & Writing Festival as well as giving three talks as part of Crime Writing month across Yorkshire. Then flying back to Guernsey for an actual holiday – no conference, no dig, just family and friends.
The summer brought fine weather to the north of England with half a dozen heatwaves smashing records. Away from meeting up with friends and colleagues at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, I was able to explore the north in July and August. The castles of Northumberland are simply stunning, and inspired me to read up on the Wars of the Roses, a period I’d not known a great deal about.
A personal goal is to keep climbing Yorkshire’s peaks, and this year I added Great Whernside to the list. Typically, after a fine week, the day of my climb there was low cloud on the mountain making my planned ascent by the little-used northern route a tricky one. It was swampy, the path vanished and the map and compass came into play. The OS App also came in handy.
The writing hasn’t stopped, it’s just not very photogenic (other than that shot of me in the loud shirt on the cruise ship). While sitting in airports, hotels, the dig house and said ship I was working on Project DLE. By the end of September the manuscript was ready to share, and I went off on a tour of ancient Sicily. A fortnight of Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians and red wine!
My attention could switch back fully to the publication of 14 years’ work at the Nunnery, which now had the working title ‘A Late Roman Fort in Alderney’ with the intention by British Archaeological Reports to publish it in 2026. The draft text was edited by my colleague Dr Phil de Jersey and half a dozen other friends sent in critiques as well as contributing further illustrations. The book needs around 100 images and we were soon down to a dozen that needed replacing or drawing from scratch. I had fun at the Death in the Dales crime writing event to pull me back into the world of novel writing for a weekend.
Then November, wow. Often a dull and miserable time up here so the cunning plan was to venture into the land of the Maya in Belize. It is of course a rain forest so we had plenty of rain amid some truly awesome Lara Croft ancient sites.
The adventure ran well into December, leaving just time for another trip back to Guernsey. Ensconced with my colleagues around the image management system we soon had the wish list of Nunnery images down to three. The manuscript meanwhile was off for Peer Review using holding images. Christmas then rampaged down the corridor of time and that was another trip around the sun completed.
I kid myself that 2026 will be quieter but the rollercoaster is already mapped out until July. The Nunnery book should be published in the middle of the year, and I’m crossing fingers for news on DLE. In the meantime, the next book on the block is Project PHF! Happy new year to you all.
Many of the items above have been covered by separate blogs, which you can fin by hovering your mouse. Coming up soon will be fuller reports on the Sicily and Belize trips too!
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