A lot has happened since the summer when I received an email from my chosen publisher wanting to publish my book. Since then, too many countries in The First World have implemented medical apartheid, including Germany and Austria, and some of them even have detention camps for the unvaccinated and those testing positive for Covid-19. They are threatening to turn Never Again into a vacuous cry.
What goes on in my life seems futile in comparison but life does go on. What the people who have been censored by the powers that be have to say, occupies a fair bit of my day. During the rest of the time there’s editing and decision making.
I have decided to go on a book tour this summer. I imagine myself with a boot full of paperbacks driving around the country visiting independent bookshops and trying to engage people in the story of Song for Ria. I made a deal with myself after my husband died in 2009 that I would no longer have any expectations for the future. So, at the moment, my book tour is just a nice thought that may or may not happen.
Other decisions are less reliant on the political weather and equally positive, like choosing the cover for my book, for example - something that hasn’t happened quite yet. And like going along to the London Writer’s Café social the other evening, held in the Stoke Newington Bookshop. I haven’t been to a book critiquing group for a while now. At some point, Song for Ria wanted to be fully written before any more editing was done. So, I’m a bit starved of writerly company and I don’t know about you, but I’m craving to be amongst people I have something in common with right now.
I hadn’t seen Lisa, the founder of LWC, for around ten years. Could it really be that long? She was exactly the same as I remember her to be; passionate about her subject, looking great and she hasn’t aged one bit. It was wonderful to see her again. There was also around twenty other budding authors there and it was lovely to chat to them. I learnt about genres I didn’t know existed, and listened to stories they wanted to tell: transhumanism from an objective point of view, a speculative fairer world for the homeless, a not very nice guy whose partner disappears. Interesting themes for our interesting times. Whatever dark happenings take over our world in the new year, for readers and writers alike, our human stories will prevail.