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Everyone has the faults – I have more than my fair share. As an author, these flaws can gather enormous momentum, barrelling the writer down a path to a point of no return. I’ll talk about two of them here – rabbit holes and red herrings.

Follow the two-metre rule, they said. Wash your hands regularly was the advice given. Please take this sanitiser six-pack with you, they offered. You’re on your own as far as beer is concerned. Ha, ha – very funny.

The assignment, should you to accept it Jim, is to watch Mark Ravine.

I enjoy all kinds of books, written from any and all perspectives. To me, each style has its own distinct, and sometimes, distinctive advantages and disadvantages. Let me explain.

The smartphone is as ubiquitous as the internet, the two intertwined to the extent that a valid complaint is that it’s taken over our lives. The question often asked of me is quite simple, the answer perhaps more complex. Is my identity safe?

I’m sure that I’m not in a minority here, book lovers who lost their passion for reading books. I’m most definitely in a minority in that I regained it. Here’s my journey.

My fingers gripped the arms of the narrow coach seat as the aircraft hurtled towards the airport in Hong Kong, a knot forming in my stomach. Michael Douglas, in one of his earliest film roles, with future soulmate Catherina-Zeta Jones probably a prepubescent preteen at the time, fiddled with the camera, making adjustments, while Jane Fonda prepared herself for the interview.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching after I published the Tech and the first set of reviews started pouring in. Many questions were asked, all of them valid. Before I continue, I must thank all the reviewers, one and all, for their forbearance in reading close to 500 pages of what some of them must’ve certainly felt was rather a long book.

Frankenstein. Rockets to the moon. Buck Rogers. R.U.R. What do they have in common? They’re all iconic firsts, marking the beginning of science fiction in their varied forms – novel, movie, radio and television respectively.

Many of you probably don’t know the reality of modern Artificial Intelligence and the way it’s changing our lives, but more of you are scared of it. And it’s not just the extreme views of conspiracy theorists that see it as a very real threat taking away our jobs, or worse the implausible – become humanity’s mortal enemy as in I, Robot, Terminator or ex-Machina.

Lockdown. Social distancing. Fomite. Epidemic. Pandemic. Outbreak. Community spread. Contact tracing. Self-isolate. Covidiot. Words I had forgotten. Phrases I don’t even remember had been commonly used not too long ago.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to entertain the debate around the definitions of romances and whether unhappy endings can ever be part of the romance genre. Have you read a romance with the lovers not uniting?

Look out for it. By the way, I’ve been reading some of the reviews that have come out – good and bad, with bouquets and brickbats about a common and necessary ingredient in any work of fiction – conflict.