Work has begun on the next novel, which will be finished by August. I've never released a book in Summer before, so it will be a novel experience sending a creative work off into the sunshine and blue skies, rather than the drizzle and dreich of winter. If I'm swift you might even be able to read it on a beach with a nice rummy something. It's almost certainly not the sort of book that would make a great beach read, but let's ignore that and power through.

One of the great things about writing is that I get to be nosey and blame it all on the fact that I'm researching a book. If you tell people you're writing a book it's incredible the amount of time and energy they'll put into helping you. It's actually a very heartwarming experience.

I'm still in the middle of a 30 day experiment of publishing the Starter for 10 exercises that I normally write in the critical seclusion of my office. It's been a painful process, because not all of them have been good and it's taken a lot to post something when it clearly is either nonsense, or has the seed of something good in it, but needs a number of seasons of cultivation.

The process of sharing these is so that I can get less precious about publishing - it's also so that I can start to get more au fait with other platforms like Mirror, Instagram and TikTok. I'm going to be reading one of the Starter for 10 stories on TikTok at some point today, so if you fancy a three minute, weird short story to listen to then give me a follow.

Oh, and last thing - I've finally sorted out a Stripe page, so if you want to buy signed copies of Before and After or Flesh and Blood then you can from here.