New year new book: it has been emotional

If I had any fingernails left, I’d be chomping on them. If I hadn’t sworn off all my vices for the New Year, I’d be swimming in them. If I hadn’t set January 26 as the launch date of my new romance, THE DOUBLE, I’d be baking a cake, walking a dog, or at least taking a breather now and then.

But this is it. This is the witching hour. The words are on the page. The years are in between the lines. The story is crouched in the birth canal. The midwives are hovering. At least with Kindle I can go Caesarean. I don’t have to lie there screamin’ and kickin’, pantin’ and writhin’. I can hit the button, and out it will pop: THE DOUBLE, bless its little cotton socks.

Congratulations honey…it’s a book. In the immortalised words of Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) in the 1998 classic, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, “it’s been emotional”. It has taken years. Books do. You live with them, you live in them, and you live for them.

It’s hard to believe that in the short space of what actually seems like a lifetime ago I have ambled my way round a sizeable proportion of the 1,025,109.8 words that make up the English language and picked out those that seem to coincide with exactly what needed to be said about my characters, their struggles, their journey and the message they have to deliver.

How personal a process this is.

Now, before its even had time to cut its teeth I’m about to kick it out and leave it to find its own way in this cruel world. The poor little thing will be bumped from pillar to post, tousled and jostled, occasionally scan-read by passing nomads, sometimes harshly judged for wrong reasons, praised for right reasons, embraced, ignored, hated, loved and – my one hope for the little mite in this rash impetuous world – downloaded.

I hope you enjoy THE DOUBLE.