Has it been over a year?

Yes, yes it has.


Oops.


Well, there have been a couple of updates since then, but really the big one is that I FINISHED MY BOOK. Hurray! *pops champagne bottle*

It's about magicians and archaeology and a semi-sentient chateau with questionable motives. It's got romance and dead bodies (not related), abandoned theatres and underwater ballrooms. Three young people who can't seem to shake off the weight of the past.

And secrets. Lots and lots of secrets. Think Howl's Moving Castle with We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

It's weird to finally label this as done when I've been working on it for so long, and though the slog of finding an agent is underway - a wrestle of unending anxiety and time - part of me still wants to shake it up and re-examine every word yet again. Does this fit here? How many angles can I take in this scene? How much is being said through what the characters don't say?

Blah, blah, repeat. But for now, at least, I'm moving away from it. To a new book! To a new (actually really old, have been working at this forever) book.

I don't know what it's called yet, but it's going to be awesome. If The Assistant is ultimately a domestic drama, then this is the opposite. Large scale, heavy world-changing stakes. Questions of allegiance to kings, guardsmen, old friends. Wanted princes and forgotten kingdoms. Children of the gods. And of course, my favourite reluctant protagonist.

It was the first NaNoWriMo novel I ever wrote, and it's this year's do over. Of course what I'm writing now is in a... peculiar shape, shall we say, but that's to be expected. Bones, then muscle, then all the delights that skin has to offer. Muscle before skin. Brush strokes before detail. (insert favourite writing cliche here).

Onwards and upwards!

A job!

A JOB!

WOOOOOOO EMPLOYMENT!

Ahem.

Now that's out the way, I'm sure you can guess that I am employed. Yup. Me. Full time job and everything as a bookseller at the big W. It's hectic and I'm usually exhausted by the end of the day, but I love it. Genuinely, it's everything that I thought it'd be, and more. I love the way that the company's run, and my new co-workers (colleagues? fellow book-people?) are incredibly kind and patient. God knows I've needed that. I didn't think it was possible to be clumsier than I am, but it turns out I was wrong.

So very, very wrong.

A lot of the fears and questions I've expressed over the past year or so have largely been assuaged, though the job's come with new and surprising ones. Like:

Have I peaked in life? Is this it?

and:

How crap am I at this job? Why can't I find anything? Why don't I know anything?

and on a less fearsome note:

When's lunch?

On the writing side of things, I've been... well, absent. Again. Part of it has been the sheer exhaustion of this job; bookselling is hard. It's insane how much you move, and how emotionally and mentally there you have to be, if that makes sense.

But I'm two and a half months in, and that excuse is wearing thin. All of my other hobbies are getting some well-deserved attention. I'm getting better at piano, and I got new brushes the other day (!) and gouache (!!!) paints, which I have no idea how to use. I've even pulled out the good old embroidery and made some work on it.

On the one hand, it's been wonderful to have both the time and funds to use on things like sheet music and new paint. All without the guilt of "but I should be learning", by which I mean, the academic pressures are no longer there. I don't care if I spend three hours a day painting or learning music BECAUSE I CAN DO IT YEAHHH.

And then again, on the other hand, I'm not really using that time to write, though I certainly continue to think about it all day. TA is at a snail's pace, and though I'm writing the ending (!) there are still large chunks in the middle that have yet to materialise as words. It's moving, though. I've sketched out the overall plot, including all those pesky middle bits, and I've certainly written some of them down somewhere.

Plus, you know, NaNoWriMo and Inktober are coming, and I plan to be present and active for both. So to the stars I go!