And … relax
We’ve made it home. The weekend with Mary, for her birthday, was a lot of fun. It was a lunch for 15, all ages. We had a fab time. But, it’s so good to be home. Next thing is picking Bex, Steven and Henry up from Birmingham airport on Saturday, dropping them with friends whilst they isolate and wait for negative tests to come back, and then picking them up on Monday for a short sprint to Christmas Eve. By then we’ll need another rest … I’m pretty sure of it.
Calm before the storm …I finished Book 8 (less the epilogue) over the weekend by gritting my teeth and eking our 4,000 words on Friday. I’ll push out the epilogue tomorrow afternoon and then let it soak for a bit. How long, I’m not sure. Part of me wants to read it to C – she’s always the first – but I can’t do that until I’ve finished the second edit. Dunno, therefore. It will be at least 144k words which makes it longer than the previous longest, Fuelling the Fire, and much longer than the next, at 134k. Again, I don’t know what I think about that. The second edit normally adds, rather than removes words. Mmm. I probably need a decent editor.
The other news is the audiobook of Unsuspecting Hero has jumped all the hurdles (what a relief) and is available now. I am purposefully not yet marketing it as I need to get my head around a few things before I do. Release is 10 days later than planned, and I’m happy with that. And I have already sold three books, two to the US; only 397 to go to break even! Much more details on this to follow once I am on top of it all. Hopefully I’ll be able to publish appropriate links on Wednesday, if you’re interested.
Next up I’ve got to recover Fuelling the Fire. That’ll be a trip up to Jen’s on Wednesday. At the same time I need to condense the paperbacks of the other five. That came to a bit of a halt at the end of last week, as I was writing away. There’s a long, dull story reference the typesetting Innocence of Trust, which I won’t bore you with. All you need to know is that reformatting it is a headache. To show some progress, below is the new cover of Unsuspecting Hero. I’m happy with it. But I do think I’m going to switch to glossy, rather than matt. If you have a view, do let me know.
And there is plenty of snow in Chatel. They’ve just had a huge dump. We’d hope to be over there in early January. I think we both agree that it will take a biblical event to stop us from getting on the ferry.
Anyhow, that’s me for now.
Stay safe. The first UK hospitalisations with the omicron variant have just happened. Let’s face it, you don’t want to be spending Christmas in a ward with a whole load of other sick people.
It’s Christmas 
