It’s odd how these things go. Many years ago, in France, when I unexpectedly survived a three-month terminal diagnosis for cancer, I started thinking about why I had been saved. Better people than me had died - I’m thinking in particular of a chemotherapy-ravaged little girl with leukaemia who used to tour all the wards in the morning with the hospital cleaners and visit us old crocks (I was 39 going on 80, so I qualified). She used to delight us with her antics and high jinks, and those of us pretty much unable to leave our beds - we were either too weak, too much in pain, or too beaten down by the drugs they were attempting to cure us with - used to look forward to her visits unconscionably. She was one of us, you see - one of the chosen - although, in an ideal world, she shouldn’t have been. She should have been out playing with her school friends, or making plans for the holidays, or thinking of ways to change the world for the better. Even then I didn’t figure myself for anything special (still don’t), so there had to be another reason why God had spared me and not her. Maybe I wasn’t really needed where He was? Or maybe He had other plans?

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it again recently (I’ve been ill, on and off, for nearly 22 years now, which concentrates the mind wonderfully - two cancers, a heart attack due to chemotherapy damage, septicaemia, what have you) and I’ve decided that the only reason God bothers to save anyone is so that they can serve Him. Call me stupid, but it took me quite a while to work this out. The others - the fallen ones - He takes to His bosom, and those of us left behind have to work our way somehow in this world and pay what we owe. How we do it is between us and God. But do it we must, because otherwise we are betraying all those who have gone before.

All right. I may be sounding a little fey here, but listen up. During the course of my life I have saved four people from drowning - not because I am any great hero (I’m not), but because I’m strong (God again), and I have been in the right place at the right time (usually showing off, or doing something equally stupid). I’ve also saved one man from being shot outside a night club in Paris, and two people from choking via the Heimlich Manoeuvre - the last of which occurred just two days ago. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to think that there may be some sort of pattern emerging here.

The most haunting thing of all occurred last summer, when I was visiting friends in Holland. We were at the Zuidersee Museum (the Inland Sea Museum), and I suddenly saw my name (Redding - an alternative spelling - same name) above a wooden boathouse. “Why’s that there?” I asked. “Oh, it means ’saving’ in Dutch. It’s the Royal Dutch Lifesaving Society. KNRM.”

It’s silly, I know, but I suddenly felt as if someone had laid a hand on my shoulder and pushed me out into a circus ring as some sort of involuntary volunteer. And yes. I’m compensating. It’s clear, isn’t it? For years I’d blocked all thoughts of the little girl, because I’d wanted to save her and couldn’t. I even used to get nightmares about it - of pulling young girls out of the mud, or from bogs, or from the sea (and yes, you’re right, I may have been trying to reclaim my anima too). Frankly, if you’d asked me at the time, I would happily have given my life instead of hers. Again, not bravery, but simply logic. I’d had a fair run. Wasted most of it. Made my peace. I was actually happy to go. But it wasn’t my time. That will come - sooner, probably, rather than later, but that’s as things are. We can’t kick against the pricks. But in the meanwhile I shall try my best to live up to the name I have inadvertently been given, by writing and saving. Because it’s clear to me - and it gets clearer every year I live - that we’re here for a purpose. There’s no such thing as free will. Best live with that, and not fret.

I woke up this Christmas morning dreaming of a 100 lb salmon. It wasn’t actually me who encountered the fish, but someone else. This man told me that he had encountered a true 100lb salmon, and had then lost it. He had a number of blurred photographs showing what appeared to be a humungous fish, nearly the size of a small shark. By a clever sleight of the unconscious, I then transferred this story onto me, and the next thing I knew, I was playing this enormous fish, and shouting to my friend, Michael Mann, that he must take a photograph of it when next it leaped. Thus go wish fulfilment fantasies. I had a lovely time fantasising about playing the fish, but didn’t actually have the metaphorical balls to land it. It wasn’t really my fish for a start, bearing in mind that I had seconded it from another - okay, let’s face it - aspect of myself. One might probably call this the ‘wannabe’ aspect.

I did once catch a 47 lb salmon on the Lochy, whilst conducting out-of-season broodstock fishing for the hatchery. The fish took me nearly an hour to get into the net, an event both witnessed and aided by fellow fisherman Humphrey Stone, who had the good sense and presence of mind to insist we measure the fish three times. So I do know what it feels like to have a mammoth fish on the end of one’s line, and then let it go. Being a sometime writer about dreams [The Watkins Dictionary of Dreams 2007], it also occurred to me that something must have triggered the dream. Then I remembered that at Christmas Eve dinner at Michael Mann’s house, I had briefly seen a book about super-large salmon - thus both his and the salmon’s appearance in my dream.

Fish, in dreams, also tend to have mystical connotations, and Michael and I had had a discussion, that same evening, about Ramesh Balsekar’s book, Enlightened States, and we had also read a number of poems to the room-at-large, which included Eliot’s Four Quartets and The Magi, Edward Thomas’s Roads, and Rumi’s quite extraordinary poem which starts ‘What can be done, O Believers, as I do not recognise myself…’. Add to that a visit to Midnight Mass in Tisbury Church, and it’s hardly surprising that my dream thoughts had veered towards the mystical. What was wonderful about Rumi’s poem was that it so perfectly echoed the way I feel about God. Namely that all dogmas are misleading - all theology flawed - all religions expedient. God, as Rumi says in another of his poems, is only in the heart ['Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.']. This tallies perfectly with my own religious convictions, that may be summed up in four simple words: ‘There is only God’. All the paraphernalia and brouhaha of organised religion seems to me a perfect way of distancing oneself from God. The Midnight Mass service was all very well, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But God is found in the heart and nowhere else. One doesn’t need church services to conjure him up. One simply needs to love and thank him. And my great fish, of course, was God.

I’ve just had a sales update on The Nostradamus Prophecies, and it appears that we have already breeched the 100,000 sales mark worldwide. Frankly, I’m delighted, as most of my foreign publishers [including the US] have yet to bring out their versions of my book, and this will no doubt serve as welcome encouragement! Buoyed up by the good sales - in what has surely been a very difficult period for publishers - my UK publisher, Atlantic, has just bought number two in the trilogy, and, in consequence, I’m really looking forward to working with the same team that has made such a signal success of the first novel. As far as my writing goes, I’m just putting the finishing touches to two non-fiction books, and then I shall be starting the third novel in my trilogy in the New Year. Trepidation mixed with excitement - the usual authorial equation, in other words.

Sad news on another front, with the death of my great friend, Tom Baring. I met Tommy in 1976, when he was running Stourhead Polo club, and, despite an age difference of 26 years, we soon became firm friends. Tommy had a wonderful eye for both a painting and a horse, and he was also deeply fascinated by the Cathars and their odd footnote in history. I remember numerous trips to Montsegur, 3000 foot high up in the Pyrenees, with Tommy standing below the famous pog, contentedly pointing out the spot from which some of the Perfects were forced to jump, and also the place where 220 of their remaining companions were burned en masse for refusing to renounce their faith. Another of Tommy’s passions was 1930s and 1940s jazz and musicals. It took very little effort indeed to encourage him to play his choice collection of 78 rpm records on his vintage player. I remember one particular evening, many years ago, in which with John Fowles and his wife Elizabeth, Tommy and I, capered maniacally around his drawing room carpet to the Boswell Sisters’ 1932 version of Sammy Fain and Joe Young’s ‘Was that the human thing to do‘. Tommy had had an American mother, Virginia Ryan, and he must have derived his instinctive knowledge of Transatlantic mores from her, because he was always very much at home on both sides of the Ocean. In many ways Tommy twinned an old world elegance and sophistication with a very up to date wit - it was an endearing equation. So this is by way of being a far too short appreciation and a far too truncated tribute to a very special man, whose friendship I valued, whose companionship I cherished, and who always made me laugh. Friendship is a precious thing, and I shall miss him.

I spent a fascinating day in the Great Wen [William Cobbett's somewhat disparaging term for London] on Tuesday filming a documentary for National Geographic. Filming took place down in a cellar somewhere near the Tower of London. I stood near a see-through blackboard [white board? glass board?], and opined away about my index date breakthrough in the Complete Prophecies, scratching wildly on the board all the while with a sort of yellow marker pen. The crew, which consisted of our producer, Caroline, her assistant, Millie, our Canadian interviewer, Jeff, and a couple of very cheery camera and audio technicians, made the whole process a delight from start to finish. Caroline, Jeff, Millie and I were able to bond over dinner the evening before, so by the time were were ready for the crack of dawn interview, we were all comfortable with each other, and were able to crack a few jokes to lay the ghosts of the dead.

Emerging from the Kensington Hilton, pre-interview, at about a quarter to seven that morning, I realised afresh why I live in the country. It’s simply a far more civilised environment to conduct one’s ‘drab, wretched’ life - pace Tom Lehrer - in. On the train back, later that afternoon, my spirits soared, as usual , upon my first sight of a wood. Then I started looking out for deer on the edges of the woods, followed by hares, partridge, pheasants, rabbits, and sundry birds of prey. I saw all of them during the two hour journey back to Wiltshire. One only needs to look. I’m sure cities hold similar joys, but I tend to tire of them sooner. Paris is something of an exception, of course, but if I’m honest, I’ve never spent more than a week or so there at any one time, and I would probably tire of even that. The countryside, on the other hand, never palls. Yesterday I saw roe deer, muntjac, pheasant curling in the high wind, buzzards, a badger, four hares, and I heard, rather than saw, a plethora of owls intercommunicating. Total magic. Now I’m sitting in my study, looking out at the sunshine and a field full of horses. Sublime.

It’s nice to know there’s already considerable interest in my follow-up novel to The Nostradamus Prophecies, provisionally entitled Corpus Maleficus. My publishers in Brazil and Poland have both pre-empted the novel, setting us on what I hope and trust will be a similar trajectory to TNP [for which foreign rights have already been sold in 34 countries].

To be frighteningly frank, it’s a great feeling being wanted as a writer. I spent so many years fending off rejection slips from pretty much every quarter under the sun, that now it is really satisfying to have people actually vying to employ me! I know I’ve said this before, in a marginally different context, but I can’t emphasise enough to budding writers that they must be flexible. It’s all very well convincing yourself that what you are writing probably contains the sum total of all world knowledge, but the reality in publishing is that you are highly unlikely to find anyone else prepared to agree with you. Especially if what you are writing represents the commercial viability of a three day old sandwich.

No. If you fail with one line of attack, change tack and have a go at another. Check out the market. Play to your strengths. Do your homework properly. Conduct your research on the ground. Be prepared to make a significant investment in both time and money before you hit pay dirt. Flexibility also implies that you may not be the best person to decide where your real strengths lie. So don’t be afraid of asking the opinion of other, hopefully enlightened, beings. And when you are given advice by people who really know what the writing trade is about, take it.

No one likes revising - especially at the beginning of one’s career. One wants it all to be easy. But it isn’t. Revision will be your strongest weapon, and will make the difference between being treated as a professional or being sidelined as an amateur. Virtually all the books I see by putative writers, and that I suspect won’t make the grade, simply have not been properly revised. When I explain to would be writers quite how much revision I do in the course of writing a book, they look at me in horror. But that’s what it takes. One good writer in a million can just churn out the words without needing to go over, and over, and over them again. I work on some individual chapters 50, 60, or even 70 times. I never get bored. Not if I’m improving the text by even one iota. And this applies to commercial fiction as well as literary fiction [and I've written both].

It is very complicated indeed to make something seem simple. To make it trip off the page like a flake of gold dust. Read some of the Greats, but with your eyes open. Then work on creating your own voice. When you get a rejection slip that contains even a sliver of advice, don’t tear it up in a snit, but ask yourself why the person rejecting you has bothered to give an opinion, when all they really needed to do was to send your manuscript back via S.A.E., with an agency card pinned to the title page. Ask yourself whether what they might be saying could actually, horror of horrors, be true. And then re-address those aspects of your work they found wanting. If you do this, you’ll almost certainly make it in the end. I hope you do. It’s really worth the journey. Every last bit of it.

On Saturday I enjoyed a splendid evening reading my poetry, alongside fellow poets Peter John Cooper and Keith Bennett, as part of the Bournemouth Literary Festival’s Poetry Mash Up. I still don’t quite understand what a poetry mash up is, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The audience at the Winchester Pub were both attentive and responsive, and I even sold a copy of my The Complete Nostradamus to some unwitting punter [all right, it was a friend from the Village Writers' Group, but 'unwitting' sounds so much better]. About half way through the evening I began to think that I might be over-egging the sad cake [or melancholy pudding, what have you] by reading too many poems about cancer and death, but the audience were kind enough to respond to the occasional glimmer of hope I laid before them, and I didn’t end up tarred and feathered. One young man even came up and told me that he particularly liked my poem on happiness, called The Decline of Philosophy, so I gave him my copy, duly signed. In a few years time it should be worth even less than it is now. Lillian Avon, who established the Bournemouth Literary Festival, ran the event, alongside photographer and Management Committee member Noel White. The whole evening was a credit to them both, and I wish the Bournemouth Literary Festival many happy returns!

I’ve just spent a marvellous couple of days in Bucharest, Transylvania and Moldavia. On Monday, my Romanian publishers, Litera, in the guise of Director General Dan Vidrascu, and his beautiful wife [and marketing and PR coordinator] Cristina, took me and my Romanian agent, the irrepressible, cat-loving, Simona Kessler, out to dinner. Then, on Tuesday, Dan and Cristina arranged for me to be interviewed by Spatamina Finanaciara, one of Romania’s major newspapers. It came as a complete surprise to me to find out that my book, Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies For The Future [the title in Romanian is Nostradamus Prohpetii Complete 2001-2105] had been their bestselling book of the year, with an initial print run of 50,000 copies. As my thriller, The Nostradamus Prophecies, is due out there in December, I am suddenly paying a great deal more attention than previously to my Romanian readership! This is why personal visits to a country are so important to a writer, and the trip has been a lesson well learned [here is the link, for my Romanian readers http://www.okazii.ro/catalog/19375546/Nostradamus-profetii-complete-2001-2105-Mario-Reading.html].

Romania has proved a real discovery for me - delightful people, beautiful countryside, and the famous Moldavian painted monasteries are one of the Wonders of the World. The Doom painting at Voronet absolutely bowled me over, and I heartily recommend the country to anyone with a taste for adventure and beauty. As we stood inside the Voronet monastery [now a nunnery], I heard some wonderful singing coming from outside the church. At first I thought it was a recording, but then a priest entered, followed by fifty religious pilgrims. It was a magical moment to watch them all entering the crypt in single file, with the great frescoes surrounding us, and only the light of their candles as illumination. I shall never forget it.

I seem to be writing about cats pretty much full time now, which is rather worrying. Still, they are entertaining - if a little perverse - and just batting on endlessly about books can pall a little, if one isn’t careful. Beachy Bede [a.k.a. the Fonthill Fiend, a.k.a. the Assassin], came to visit me in my study again last night, presumably to congratulate me on having sold [or had sold on my behalf] 50,000 copies of The Nostradamus Prophecies in Britain and around the English-language-speaking world [bar the US] since it came out at end July [there - I've got the book bit in - phew! - my publisher will be pleased]. Anyway, there he sat, as good as gold, beside my left arm, the proverbial slab of butter intact in his mouth. After a bit, though, he got bored, and tried his creeping trip - destination, my lap. He’s convinced that I don’t notice how he puts first one paw, then the other, paralysingly slowly onto my leg. Then he eases his body across [convinced that I am still entirely taken up with my work], until fully half his body is on me, half still on the rocking computer box I use as my mouse stand [and which he SHOULD be sleeping on - that's the deal - ha!].

When he was half on, I decided that enough was enough - I’d lift him up and put him in his floor level snug basket [he usually doesn't mind and goes straight to sleep]. Unfortunately, he’s beginning to put on a bit of early autumn condition [i.e. he's a bloody large cat], and the extra weight of him in my arms suddenly tripped the catch on my office chair which converts it from being an upright, busy-sort-of-a-chair, into being a bendy-backed, rocking-sort-of-a-chair, suitable for watching things on BBC IPlayer, and bouncing while one does it. I shot backwards, the cat shot upwards, the chair shot downwards. At the last possible moment, thinking that I had finally flipped on him and had turned assassin myself, the Bede launched himself desperately even further skywards, using my legs, forearms, and stomach as a take-off pad. Once in motion he twisted in the air like a leaping salmon, and, somehow, human canonball style, flew, like a homing pigeon, straight into his igloo basket, from which he then emerged [I'm running out of similes here] like a bat out of hell [cliche!!!] to go and sit over on one of my leather armchairs and ponder his next move.

Bleeding copiously - something that is obviously becoming a regular habit with me- I calmed him down, apologised, then limped off, in the absence of my wife, to get the hoemoplasmine again, images of hardpad, septicaemia, and feline dropsy seething through my mind. All’s well that ends well, however. I don’t have the dropsy, and the Bede was back in my study again this morning, acting as if nothing had happened. He avoided my mouse platform, though, I noticed, and now he’s sleeping on the spare bed. Cats, you see, don’t need to master the power of speech, as their actions speak louder than words.

Well, the cat’s done it again. This morning, at 6 o’clock, I was awoken by a terrible scream out in the hall. My wife had trodden on the remnants - spleen, gall, etc. - of a mouse that Beachy Bede had left just outside our bedroom door. In bare feet, needless to say - her, not the cat, who’s always in bare feet, so to speak. I suppose he means these gifts he brings her as signs of affection, but the headless rabbits underneath her desk and the vestiges of corpses buried beneath a thin covering of moss on our lawn are beginning to tell. She now calls him ‘the assassin’. Stories of his exploits are bruited far and wide by the stud staff, who regularly see him pouncing on unsuspecting creatures out in the fields. ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’. There we have it. He even caught a racing pigeon the other day, but decided to reprieve it, and simply left it sitting in our upstairs hallway, feathers everywhere. I carted it out to the Pink Barn, gave it some food and water, and turned it loose. I suspect, after a little soul searching, that it flew back home, a luckier and a wiser bird.

Books, though. Books. How are The Nostradamus Prophecies doing, you are doubtless asking yourselves [or maybe not]. Well, anyway, they are doing very well, and Atlantic have doubled the reprint run, which must be a good sign. India have reordered [bravo!], Asda have made us one of their Christmas selections [doesn't Christmas come early these days!!] and Switzerland are comparing me to ‘an upmarket Dan Brown’. I wonder if Dan Brown ever thinks of himself as downmarket? I shall suggest he asks the Swiss, who always have elegant taste in these things…

The cat has just leapt up onto the old computer box which houses my mouse, missed his footing, snatched at mouse, rug, box, and, on his way down, my leg, and left me staring at my morning’s work and wondering how much of it he has managed, inadvertently, to erase. He usually approaches my writing desk using the long route, i.e via a pile of books, then behind a bookcase, across a side table, and onto the mouse box [specially designed by me so that I would not get repetitive strain syndrome by having to reach forward all the time]. Instead, I now get repetitive cat syndrome, because he loves to lie there, as near as he can get to me without actually being on my desk - which he knows is verboten - and then resting his paws on top of my notebooks, and occasionally giving my left arm a clean, when he feels the urge. Today he decided on the disastrous shortcut. Bedlam ensued. Even my wife came running in with some homeoplasmine to tend to my cuts. The cat, needless to say, was fine, and returned to his underchair basket, dignity miraculously intact. I didn’t actually lose any work - I think - so all’s well that ends well. But it serves to remind one of the essential unpredictability of life. Felix ille tamen corvo quoque rarior albo. ['A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.' From Juvenal's Satires. Sat. vii, l. 202].