Hallo lovely LaGuardists and Passion supporters of all stripes,

I have the book in my hands! Or the book proofs, at any rate, and I’m going in with my red pen to change every single word very slightly before sending it back to the good people at Unbound.

They will then engage in various arcane mysteries and preparations beyond the ken of mere mortals (gathering approving quotes from 'book quote givers', throwing a wicker man into the ocean, leaving a bottle of sparkling grape juice at a particular crossroads in Kent, putting all the words and paper and glue into a big quantum machine and pressing the huge red button that says 'book') and A Passion for Passion will officially be published on 6 Feb 2025.

Yeah, that’s right! There’s an official release date! Set free the doves of peace! Alert the people that give out laurels! Clang some bells! Put 6 Feb in your calendar and smoke it!

I thought I wouldn’t have a lot of opinions about formatting, but it turns out that because it’s a comedy book, and comedy is all about timing, the way you lay out words on the page is basically the musical score for the timing of how people will read it. So I have LOTS of firm thoughts. Not since the last time I watched Olympic synchronised diving have I gone so quickly from complete ignorance to incredible certainty in the rightness of my subjective taste.

It’s also fun to read the book as a whole with some distance from it, having not done that since I wrote it while pregnant, with a toddler, mostly during the Edinburgh Fringe last year. I laughed. So that’s reassuring!

Sending you all romantic smooches under a barely clothed night sky.

Xx

Alice