Encouraged by the fact that a week has elapsed since I publicly outed myself as a “writer” at the goggles shop, but  – to the best of my knowledge – the sky has not yet fallen in and the mocking laughter ringing in my ears is no longer interfering with my everyday functioning, I have actually buckled down and done some actual, real-life writing, on more than one occasion, this week. This was part of (oh okay, the sum total of) my radical, ‘New Year – New, Even More Improved Me’ shake-up.

Whoops, I just broke my ‘Guaranteed Resolution-Free Zone’ promise for this site. I don’t think anyone noticed.

So my novel, Blues, is once again truly in progress. Now, all I’ve got to do is prod it with a stick or wave a carrot cake in front of its nose every now and again, to keep it rolling, or – given my ongoing digital (hand, not computer-related) incapacity – at least juddering towards its destination.

I am compensating for my physical shortcomings by devoting extra psychological energy to eradicating sticky patches from the fabric of my narrative, as well as conducting stringent research into the Siege of Sarajevo and Disney’s Jungle Book. These topics, of course, are inextricably linked, for reasons which I could not possibly go into here, for fear of spoiling the eventual surprise (surprise for the reader, not me: hopefully, I have a vague idea of where I am going with this or that would be worryingly random, even by my standards).

I am also sorting through numerous, extremely assorted notebooks and marking all entries relevant to Blues with fetching, arrow-shaped, bright orange sticky notes, to be digitally (in both senses) transcribed, upon my recovery. For your information, since you enquire so politely, the fluorescent pink strips denote musings which may develop into deep ditties and the tasteful luminous yellow Post-Its cling determinedly on to pages where I have stumbled upon scribblings which may – just may- form the seeds of future stories- short, medium or long. Oh, the writerly possibilities….

But for now, orange is the only colour. My writing room may look like EasyJet’s head office,  and I may even have been mistaken for Stelios slightly more frequently than usual,  but I am gathering my loose ends to create a tangerine tapestry of themes, images and characters (flat, round, hexagonal and slightly squished).

Ladies and gentlemen, at the risk of being deafened by (probably mostly self-generated) hoots of scornful derision from the cockpit and tempting Fate to plunge me from the heavens and fracture every knuckle in my body,  I  would like to welcome you aboard. I have conducted my final checks and I am ready for take-off.