Trailers, Tension and Tranquility

An author in the run-up to publication

First things first: I could not wait to share this! It’s worth watching on something with speakers, because it feels cinematic. I am a very happy writer and a very fortunate writer - huge thanks to all involved in making this happen.

Next: an author in this moment, happy and fortunate nor not - and I don’t care how experienced you are, either - is a mess of nerves, emotional sine waves and poor decision-making. It should be in the user’s manual: do not allow the writer in your life to operate heavy machinery, buy property or do anything else during this time. At all. We’re unsafe at any speed. I’ve locked myself out twice this week, and one of those times was in the garden and there’s no way to lock the door from the outside, yet I managed it.

I realised as I climbed back in through the kitchen window that I haven’t really sat still since 2020. I used to make a point of stopping and geeking out every so often so I could read, play games, bake… do those things that are superficially empty but actually refill you. I don’t think I’ve done that since the first lockdown. Instead I’ve been running at maximum revolutions per minute, everything being done for a necessary reason. Yesterday, finally, I just stopped. I know it’s not an option that’s there for everyone but if you can, in any way, shape or form… Well. Yesterday morning I would have said “I don’t have time.” But I did, and it was great. For the first time in a long while I feel like this:

In consequence of that thoughtful moment, I realised something else: this is the first book I’m releasing in the UK since losing my parents - which may well be part of my frantic sense of haste - and it’s the first time I haven’t been able to show them something I’ve written. I know how they would have responded: my mother would have read it immediately and come back with praise, comments and suggestions, and my dad would have been achingly careful and hands-off in case he gave the impression of being overbearing, but he would have confessed, eventually, that he might have dipped into it, just for a moment, perhaps a bit longer, but not long enough to have strong opinions, just - “Not bad, Nick. Not bad.” And you have to hear those words full of an impossible warmth.

Back in the actual 2023, I’m looking forward to everyone reading the book. I’m also terrified of everyone reading the book - because: writer.

But mostly I’m looking forward to everyone reading the book.

And then I’m going to write another one. Because: writer.

Gotta love it.