I wish I was au fait with technology to put that video of Leo Di Caprio from Wolf of Wall Street whispering "I'm not leavin'. I'M NOT FUCIN' LEAVIN'!"
It's been a long while hasn't it? How are you? How's life been for you? Don't mind me if I say, life has been kinda crushing. I've always said that I'm not someone who can write while emotional and given I've either spent the last nine months in tears, prostrate on my bed wishing I was looking up at an Japanese sky or drunk or all three, trust me when I say I have not been able to write.
Fast forward to December 2020. I've got M&S mince pies with salted caramel cream, I've learned how to perfect a roast pork with crackling, in a cider and apple sauce, I've discovered hot chocolate made with Baileys and I've spent more money on white wine than is sensible, I have taken to walking in the woods in wellington boots, like a heroine with resolvable problems and thereby discovered investigative podcasts! Billy has evolved beyond a fifties housewife!
You know when you have to do something, so you procrastinate? My state of procrastination is to put on marigold gloves and clean. I can't do anything in silence, so I usually play music but ever since one of my bezzies told me about a fascinating podcast by John Sweeney. Look it up - it's brilliant. Scared a few folks on a walk with it on full speaker volume.
The world is so changed from December 2019, I think to myself listening to Sir Sweeney's devastating investigations. What would we do without podcasts, Netflix, Disney+ (I am an actual simp for zaddy Mandalorian)? We do Zoom parties. We text more than ever. We go on socially distanced walks with our doggos. How do I fit a new world into an old one? How to I link the two differences? How do I make it believable for myself and a reader to reach into a place that hasn't existed before? And let me Carrie Bradshaw for a minute and realise something (another relic coming back from the televisual grave). Isn't that what investigative podcasts do? Do that reach for us? From the future into the past to explain what we wish we'd known? And that, my dear reader, allowed me to write again.
So here we are, with sorry to say a pretty dark story. It's just where I am at the moment. I'm sure I can get back to the light eventually, but me and my bottles of Sancerre say after after.
The wonderful Garrett of Black Jazz Books designed this cover for me and I thought you deserved to see what I'm working on. Finally. At damn last! Blurb and excerpt will come later. Like I said, it's dark and when I say dark, yeah... (Marge hiding her face gif).
