Friday 1 January 2016

A book is like a year



2015. Bo-nn-nn-g. 2016. Adrenaline sparks above the trees, towards Knightstone, beyond Brean, over Cardiff, the fizz and crackle of ignition and flight as the burden of a heavy old year falls away. Hope hangs with the sparks and is doused by sky and another year is picked up and strapped on. Orion is there. She doesn't change at all. Small clamour and great peace share a space.


I typed The End yesterday on the final book of The Waifs of Duldred Trilogy. I was looking forward to a break from the pressure of writing to contract, but already I have strapped on the bag and am filling it with ideas. Plot lines are snaking across the hemispheres. The real preoccupations develop without conscious shaping. The subtext ferments without attention. We think we are driving but we're on a travelator from alpha to omega. Signposts appeared throughout the books. I didn't know what they were pointing to until I arrived; some were small and essential, others big and astonishing. It's only at the end of the year, at the end of the book, that we get some idea of what it all meant, where we moved from and to and why.

I hope the books make the same sad-happy-funny-absurd journey from the overwhelm of circumstance to a way forward, from hopelessness to action, from small clamour to the great peace.

Wishing the same for all of you. Happy New Year.