There I was, sitting down to relax after a hard day’s editing, interspersed with cooking and eating dinner, plus the daily treat that is Pointless, when I suddenly thought: What day is it? Oh No! It can’t be Monday already! It only seems like yesterday that I set up last week’s blog post. And yet here we are again: another Monday, another blog post due.

And as you can probably tell – I’m not ready. I should be posting the next instalment of Meet the Family, where I introduce some of my main characters and tease you with a bit of their back story. Maybe this time it would be Victor, Mayor of Nikolevsky and Gorgito’s Nemesis. Or Francine Matheson, MP, Parliamentary Undersecretary and Suzanne Jones’ old school friend. Or maybe Sasha, Gorgito’s brother-in-law who leads Maria on a long and terrifying journey. But frankly, we’ll never know! Because I failed!

In my defense, I’ve been unwell for the past week. The bug that had been around since December came back with a vengeance and landed on my chest. Trips to the gym, choir rehearsals, even Wassailing to wake up the apple trees at local orchards, have all been cancelled in favour of morning lay-ins and evenings spent in the warm, swigging Lemsip. I’ve barely been outside the front door for more than a week.

But…

I have got LOADS of editing done! I’ve analysed all my chapters, colour coding them in terms of the theme they cover and from whose POV. I’ve sorted out the order of the chapters – I tend to write episodically and sort it out later – especially when I’m doing NaNoWriMo. I’ve more or less finalised the structure. And I’m two thirds of the way through a major rewrite. So I’m feeling rather pleased with myself. Oh, and I’ve finally stopped coughing – most of the time.

So I hope you will excuse the lack of introductions this time. I will try harder next time, I promise.