Hello dears,

Long time, no update - and I actually have some progress news to impart. The crowdfunder is at 80% and the actual book-writing more like 90%. The webpages here now feel horribly out-of-date so I've written some new content and Unbound have very kindly agreed to do a refresh. Once that's done, I'm going to give the funding a concerted 'push'. Lately I've been feeling a bit uninspired in terms of that side of things, just like I've exhausted every avenue and can't bear to bang on about it anymore. "There goes Laura pushing her book again, ugh," I imagine everybody thinking and rolling their eyes - not you, I mean, but people who haven't pledged! Anyway, I've done some brainstorming and found a few more tricks up my sleeve and I would be so grateful if you would help by telling your friends when the time comes. 

The actual manuscript itself is really coming together and I'm so excited to share it with you. I hope you love it. It's still hard to believe that this is actually going to happen. We are really nearly there - not super nearly there, but quite nearly there! I'm so grateful to all of you for opting in, for showing up for me, and then for sticking around for so long. In all honesty this has been much harder than I thought it would be, but luckily I like doing hard things.

We had covid again. It was grim, but not a patch on last time: only put my brains in the blender and took me away from the book for a few weeks. (Hallelujah vaccines.) And actually, it was beautifully timed, in that it created just enough distance for me to identify what wasn't working and shake a few things up. I've done a bit of restructuring and switched writing tactics for the moment: rather than ploughing through chronologically, for the ending I'm picking out bits as I feel inclined and then making a patchwork quilt of it. It will need smoothing out, or at least making the disjointedness a feature rather than a bug, but that's editing for you.

More from me when the new crowdfunding page is up, and then probably more from me generally for a while! I have plans to share.

With love,

Laura x