This time last year

On Saturday, I did a reading from Slightly Jones and the Case of the Hidden City at the Dundee Book Reading Marathon - Loud and Clear - part of Book Week Scotland 2013.

This time last year I had three more weeks of frenzied writing ahead, to get the Hidden City manuscript finished.  (Christmas deadline - who thought THAT was a good idea?!)  There were bits - major bits - of the story where I still didn't really know what was supposed to happen.  And now ... now it's a book.  It is what it is and it's impossible to imagine it being anything else.  Isn't that weird?  It wandered into my mind while I was reading, how weird it was.  Weird, and a little sad.

But hey, what's fledged is fledged, and it's on with the new book.  Right?

Ah.  Well, what with the Marathon, domestic proof-reading (it's essay time, as anyone with students under their wings will know), a fantastic evening of readings by the Dundee Creative Writing MLitt students (including an impressive performance by Callum Heitler), trotting over Glasgow-wards to run some creative writing workshops for the Crookfur Primary/Eastwood Secondary Joint Reading Festival and a Tales from the Turrets event with a lively P3 class at Braidbarr Primary, a bit of mucking out before the arrival of house guests, and a much needed haircut, this hasn't exactly been a week of moving forward on the new book.  But next week ... next week is going to be as full of words as the penultimate nest in the picture.  

Onwards, as they say!


P.S.  Earlier this week I was posting on The History Girls blog about subversive hats.