This is my first post of the new year, and my first post as a full-time freelancer. After four extremely happy years as an editor at Prospect magazine, I’ll now be spending all my time writing books – and writing for games, and speaking and consulting, and generally saying “yes” to a lot of exciting things that I’ve had to say “no” to over the last few years.

I’ll greatly miss commissioning, editing and working with the brilliant Prospect team; but this should be a fun year. Although I do have to finish writing a book by the end of this month (this book, since you ask), which means not quite as much speaking, meeting or blogging as I’d like in the short term. After that, it gets a lot more flexible. There’s this game, The End, to finish working on for the excellent Preloaded; a bunch of conferences and events; plenty of regular writing to do for Prospect, and other esteemed publications; and other projects that I can’t yet talk about, but which should be most interesting.

As I keep telling people, though, one of the things that most excites me about the freelance lifestyle is the opportunity to be more active. After several years of living and commuting in London, it’s an incredible privilege to have some flexible time; and I hope to be able to spend a lot more of my life out of doors, exercising, and generally not feeling like a caged animal for most of the week. My wife gave me a book called Country Walks Near London for Christmas, and the prospect of taking walking day-trips into Hampshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Sussex, Kent and Surrey is a lovely one. I can honestly say that few things make me happier than rambling around Britain’s various, quietly beautiful landscapes (or even its slightly down-at-heel transitional towns and suburbs), and I’m looking forward to getting back in touch with that part of myself – and quite possibly to writing rhapsodic blog posts about sheep, ale, birds, fences, motorway service stations and suchlike. Once I’ve finished the book, of course…