Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
January People
Plus: The Views From My Window
And: Bale Out! Just One More Time

Well, there actually aren't all that many January people, this year, at my new-ish health club. (Then again, there aren't too many regulars either, at least at the carefully off-peak time I go).

But, yeah – you know the January people:

  • The young, pumped guys – grunting, picking up way too much weight, not controlling it properly, then letting it crash to the mat like a construction site disaster. Then high-fiving each other.

  • The huffing, panting, badly overweight people who haven't gotten five minutes of exercise since last January, dripping rivers of sweat onto the machines, and basically not being entirely fun to look at or be around.

  • Middle-aged disco queens trotting in and out of 'Body Pump' and 'Legs, Bums, and Tums' in fresh-from-the-packaging lycra.

  • Weird spiritual guys doing wildly kinetic things in the exiguous and perilous confines of the free-weight area. (What are those guys doing?)

  • F*&£-heads gabbing on their mobiles in the changing room.

  • Other f*&£-heads dropping dirty towels and empty water bottles wherever they stand, just because they're so important that someone else should pick up after them, and the rest of us should just wallow in their golden detritus in the meantime.

But, then again, everywhere there's a simple and irresistable solution to the January People: February. Then we won't have to see them again for another eleven months.

My new-ish club, by the way, is the Club & Spa at County Hall. You might recognise this (County Hall) as the classical building, with the colonnaded crescent, across Westminster Bridge from the Houses of Parliament. Look upon my club, punks, and tremble:

Here's the view I see from my stretching mat:

Here's what I see in the mirror, over my shoulder, when I'm lifting:

And a propos of nothing, except that I heard it yesterday, and it's going to remain in my workout playlist probably until the end of time, and because it just never ever gets old, here's "Bale Out" just one more time. You're welcome.

Download the song for free from the web site of its uber-talented creator, RevoLucian.



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about
close photo of Michael Stephen Fuchs

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

THE MANUSCRIPT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
PANDORA'S SISTERS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
DON'T SHOOT ME IN THE ASS, AND OTHER STORIES by Michael Stephen Fuchs
D-BOYS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
COUNTER-ASSAULT by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book One - Fortress Britain, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Two - Mogadishu of the Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Genesis, by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Three - Three Parts Dead, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Four - Maximum Violence, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Five - EXODUS, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN Book Six - The Horizon, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Seven - Death of Empires, by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eight - Empire of the Dead by Glynn James & Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : NEMESIS by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Nine - Cataclysm by Michael Stephen Fuchs

ARISEN, Book Ten - The Flood by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Eleven - Deathmatch by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Thirteen - The Siege by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN, Book Fourteen - Endgame by Michael Stephen Fuchs
ARISEN : Fickisms
ARISEN : Odyssey
ARISEN : Last Stand
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 1 - The Collapse
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 2 - Tribes
Black Squadron
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 3 - Dead Men Walking
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 4 - Duty
ARISEN : Raiders, Volume 5 - The Last Raid
ARISEN : Fickisms ][ – This Time, It's Personal
ARISEN : Operators, Volume I - The Fall of the Third Temple
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