Blog - November 2025
November 2025. Bonfires, Birthdays, and the Glorious Dead.
November always feels cramped. Halloween has only just ended and ghosts, vampires and gravestones are still littering the shelves when Bonfire Night turns up with the usual bangs and bravado, and somewhere in that noise my birthday tries to squeeze itself onto the calendar like an afterthought.
It is also my wife’s birthday 5 days before, most women have birthday weeks not days, so that overlaps my birthday, her ballons and cards are still up. My wife is four years younger, which she mentions as often as she can.
This year I turned 47. I don't feel 47. Does anyone? I still train, still run, just not as far or as fast as I used to. The laugh is that I am stronger now than I was at 25. Back then I had more ego and less sense. Now I have the reverse, most days.
I had a genuinely good birthday. Quiet, warm, with people I actually care about. No fuss for the sake of it. My present to myself was tickets to see Counting Crows in Leeds. It was more of a trek than Manchester, and the venue was rubbish. Bad layout, people trying to stand in front of seated areas and acting offended when someone asked them not to, including one guy who threatened me until I stood up and then he appologised. I guess it's just the standard modern entitlement. None of it mattered once the band started. The Crows were brilliant.
Remembrance
November also belongs to remembrance. I attended a few events this month.
We ran our own at the Turf Moor Memorial Garden for the Arsenal game. It was really well received. It is a strange thing, building a space for reflection next to a football ground, because football is all noise, passion and tribalism. The garden is the opposite. I think sometimes that contrast is the point.
Remembrance Sunday in the town centre was the usual affair. I don't really get involved and I tend to stay on the periphery. I cannot fully explain why. Part of it is that I prefer my reflection to be private. Another part is that I have never enjoyed being marched about and applauded by civilians as if it is a performance.
That day is not for me. It is for those that died.
As always, my wife was there, drove, kept me steady, and let me have a pint or two afterwards. We went to the Miners and the Royal Dyche. I was shocked by how quiet the Miners was, but I was happy enough to take a free Bennie and Hot from them. It tasted like generosity and smelt like cough medicine.
Work
I also started a new job and it has taken more out of me than I expected. It is fast paced, brutally so, and the learning curve is steep.
I have questioned whether I am good enough more than once this month. That is not drama. It is just honest. The answer, I think, is to keep my nose to the grindstone and focus on picking it up properly. No shortcuts. No sulking. Just work.
Writing
I have been writing too. Only a bit. Not as much as I want.
I have two works in progress.
The first is set before Protegimus, back when Knox is a soldier in Sennelager. The story lends itself to real events that happened there, although not how it really concluded. I am taking a few literary jumps to build the story into something that works on the page.
The problem is, I am not convinced it is exciting enough. I have written the full outline, but it feels like it needs more bite. More jeopardy. Or maybe it is fine and I am just too close to it. Either way, it needs time and I need space to think.
The second book came from a dream in Cyprus. That is not as mystical as it sounds. Dreams are just your brain emptying its pockets. Mine tends to drop plot lines.
That story arrived strong, but once I started writing it, it was not long enough and the antagonist was not what I wanted. It read like a novella. Then yesterday morning something finally clicked. I think I broke the back of it. It is now a full novel in my head, not a short sprint that runs out of road.
I have six chapters down already, which means I can properly hone in on it now.
It is a direct sequel to Protegimus. Knox is in a dark place after the last book, and I do not want to fall into the usual action routine where he just shrugs it off, loads a magazine, and gets on with it. That is not how it works. Not when you have been through enough.
So this book is going to deal with his anger. Properly.
I understand that arc because I have lived bits of it myself, especially after my mother died. Anger is not always shouting. Sometimes it is silence. Sometimes it is decisions. Sometimes it is the way you treat the people who did not deserve it. Putting it on paper feels like the right direction for Knox, and maybe for me too.
I am leaning towards calling the book Knox Investigations.
I know Protegimus ruffled some feathers, especially in the Close Protection world. I am not worried about that, but I do think the title made the book sound a bit pretentious, or at least unclear. If people do not know what a title means, they do not know what they are buying. This one is cleaner. It tells you what it is.
That is November. Birthdays, remembrance, work, and the slow grind of building stories out of thin air.
See you next month. And Merry Christmas if I do not speak to you before.
Pete
