Let’s get onto the real business: other people’s books (specifically the ones I have read this year). Mute me now.īut! This is not the point of this blog. 2023 (and 2024!) promise some more exciting career things that I can’t talk about yet, so if you’re sick of me now, I can only apologise for what the next few years are going to bring. The mini tour around the UK was the highlight of my year. I was semi-prepared for what a headfuck publication can be, and aside from a brief existential crisis after my pre-publication party and a slight emotional breakdown in a cottage in Wales in September (whose idea was it to go away alone to write, just before having a book out? Oh, that’s right: it was mine), I had a blast. I’m lucky enough to have a number of close friends who are writers, and lots of supportive friends who held me gently while not making a fuss about doing so, and thanks to them I made it through those whirlwind few months more or less in tact. Here, have a nice little banner of its promo graphics too, because I really do love that cover and that font! My debut novel came out in October this year with Gallic Books, and I am contractually obliged to say that it’s a “wild ride” and to provide a link for you to buy it.

So here we are.Ģ022 has been momentous personally for one major reason: Orpheus Builds a Girl. This is the way I would like to start the next year. Things like playing and taking photos and investing in my space and the things I already own and making use of what’s leftover of everything. I’m trying to discard the things that are draining me, and choose instead to enjoy things simply, and say no more often, and prioritise the things that feed me, like taking time with my food, going on adventures with friends and spending hours in the kitchen. I’m trying to be gentle, and thoughtful, and not wasteful as I go into 2023.

It’s the remnants of a traditional Italian Christmas biscuit recipe, mainly comprised of apricot jam, dates, pine nuts and pistachios, wrapped in a shortbread. It is December 31st, 2022, and here I sit with the Last Mince Pie and my last coffee of the year, cobbling together the scattered, mad pieces of a scattered, mad year.

The rum diary goodreads