Life

If you imagine that I’m listening to Poison as I post this, then these photographs pretty much sum up the last fortnight:

(Well, Nick is pretty much a constant, of course—thank goodness for that.)

You know what’s noticeable by its absence above?

Books.

I haven’t read a new book in weeks—though I have a brand-new Diana Wynne Jones that I had to shove on a shelf out of my sight because it was staring at me accusingly. And the new Jasper Fforde. And the first book in a boarding-school series that I’m fairly sure doesn’t include vampires but is bound to include some other kind of sexy supernatural creature who makes a surprisingly good boyfriend.

But I can’t risk getting caught up in a book I can’t put down. Frankly, I’m surprised at myself: I’m not normally good at delayed gratification.

I’ve been writing, though. Writing, and writing, and writing.

I’ve teased out issues of law and social custom in the U.S. Deep South in the 1930s, something that involved some fairly unpleasant Googling.

I’ve raised a dark menace from the sea, deleted a king, and nearly drowned two fictional children in a chameleonic city with no name.

I’ve tried desperately to keep up with Steven Moffat’s whipcrack dialogue.

I’m loving the writing.

But this, after all, is The Circulating Library. It would be fairly egotistical even for me to only read what I’ve actually written myself.

Still, I’ll have time to read Enchanted Glass soon. Surely?