It's been very quiet here for a while, but that is because my focus, for now, is elsewhere. The manuscript for Feather, Leaf has been with John, my publisher, and he has edited and also restructured the end a little. Like many of my books it wasn't linear, can be shuffled, and between us we have been trying to gather together the leaves, bark, stones etc into the right order. Part of my work today will be to check what John has done, and then, my friends, it will vbe sent off to Alison, where it sits and waits in a queue of design until she turns her gaze on it.

All in good time. And in the meantime I have been working hard on other things. Soon Wild Swans and East of the Sun will be published in the UK and The Unwinding will come to USA. And soon, very soon, I hope to be going to North Moor House in Dulverton for The Unwinding event, postponed from last year- if all is well, and we are allowed. There may still be a place left, so contact Seven Fables if you wish to join us. I think it will be quite an emotional event.

I've been reading, and have a new project, supporting the books of others. I think, but am not sure, that I first heard of Mrs Death Misses Death from Backlisted Podcast, but maybe it was the cover. Anyway, I have blogged about the book and am offering my copy plus an original bookmark to go with the book to one of the people who comments on the post, and there are such moving, beautiful comments there. Follow this link to find out more, and below is the bookmark.

Backlisted is a wonderful listen, while I am working. And this is what I have been working on; it's this year's Help Musicians Christmas Card and will possibly become, at some point, a new Unwinding, along with last year's. It is almost finished. I'm intending to go and sit by a small pond where a family of swans live to find words for it, and then have a plan that I have just passed on to Help Musicians, that might just make something a bit magical.

I'm now reading this, and intend this to become part of 'the bookmark project' too. It's the perfect summer book. But also, maybe the perfect winter book. It is a real soul's ease that fills the mind's eye with beauty. And, like The Unwinding, part of its origin was on twitter. How wonderful that something often associated with hate speak can bring forth sweet beauty through the hands, heart and mind of a creative genius like Joanne Harris.

I'm sorry I can't report more progress on Feather, Leaf. Books take such an age sometimes. I am working on some new things with John that are in contractual phase and hopefully there will be more about them soon, and settling my feathers to the Book of Birds. But for now, I need to go and catch words in the sunshine, and look at the shape of the swans. Honeycombe may find its way in to my bag also, as it would be the perfect place to sit quiet and read.