Hello, it’s been a very long time since my last update for which I can only apologise. The only excuse I can offer is that it has been a very busy time in my life for the past nine months what with one thing and another. It's only now that the world itself has come to a standstill that I have been able to take a step back and catch up with all those things I should have been doing in the meantime. Like this update.
First of all, I hope everyone is all right and coping with the new normal. On a personal level I'm all right as lockdown isn't hugely different from my normal life. True, my work – which over the past two years has been contract work at the same location – is now being done from home rather than from an office fifteen minutes walk up the road, but I do have past experience of that. Since going freelance at the tail end of 2014 a lot of my work was done at this desk in my flat with my back to the front window. Work aside I've never done that much socialising either, especially in recent years. Not because I'm anti-social (I'm not) but because I find the conventionally accepted ways of socialising difficult, confusing and exhausting. Lockdown has at least allowed me to recharge some of my mental batteries.
However I do realise that many people don't feel like that at all and are finding the lockdown exhausting and distressing due to the lack of social contact. I can definitely empathise – once starting my current contract work I really appreciated going into the office and being surrounded by people (even if half the time I was wearing my noise cancelling headphones) as it's essential to get some form of human contact, especially if you live alone.
I suppose in many ways work was my social life, even if I was the quiet one who didn't say much.
Of course there is one big area of my life outside that – writing. Specifically my novel Comeback, which is what you're all here for after all. The last you heard from me the funding campaign had successfully reached 100%. While you may not have heard anything since, it's been far from quiet behind the scenes. Firstly the manuscript went through a comprehensive structural edit courtesy of Hal and I'd like to think the story is much stronger as a result. Then Sara applied herself to the copy edit which ironed out all of the potential linguistic wrinkles, leaving the manuscript lean and mean and ready for publication...
Huge thanks to the two of them for that!
I've also been looking at cover designs – I'm very happy with what I've seen so far and look forward to being able to share an image when it’s finalised. I've also been organising the rewards for the higher tiers - prints and postcards, so I look forward to being able to share them too as soon as they're ready.
But the biggest and best news of all is that we now have a publication date! A little later than originally anticipated, but that's understandable as the pandemic has changed everyone's plans. On the upside I now have a very memorable date to look forward to.
21 January 2021. 21.1.21. Put it in your diary; that’s when Genie, Wendi et all will arrive...