Evenin’ all. (said in a gruff policeman voice, and finished off with a slight tug on my trouser waistband to hoik them up slightly)
Just a quick blog post to keep you up to date with my book for SANDS (regular readers will be familiar with what I’m working on at the moment, but I’ve gone ahead and turned this whole sentence into a link so you can click on it and get a bit of background info).
Out of the seventeen sets of parents I set out to interview (a reference to SANDS’ ‘Why 17?’ campaign), I have finished and written up fourteen of them. For those of you who are pretty darn good at maths, that means I have just three interviews left to conduct and write up before the book is finally complete, and I can set about meeting up with the guys at SANDS again and talking about the ‘P’ word which gets writers all excited and clammy. (Publishing, for those who didn’t twig.)
What have I learned so far? A few things. Firstly, that I had no idea when taking this project on how demanding and challenging it would be; but I’ve loved every minute of it. A macabre thing to say, perhaps, considering the subject matter, but (secondly) I have discovered that I love to interview people. I love sitting down with them over a cup of coffee and having a good old chinwag about anything under the sun, allowing them to tell me their story in their own words, gathering information and quotes which go in my ears, filter through my brain and out through my fingertips onto my computer screen. Realising that I love to interview people has given me direction in my freelance writing ‘career’ when previously I had no idea which way to turn; hence the recent interview with Reginald D. Hunter for Asylum and (hopefully) a series of interviews coming up for a rather well-known magazine (more details nearer the time).
Writing the book has taken its time, for sure, but I hope to have it all finished by the end of the year. I will , of course, let you know once it is complete, so you can all buy a copy and raise some money for SANDS. I just figured I’d give you an update in case you thought I’d not done anything on it. Out of all the books I’ve written, this will be by far the most important, so start putting your pennies aside now. Thank you, sincerely, to everyone who has contributed or helped in any way so far, especially to those who have re-opened old wounds and allowed me to see the incredible resilience of the human spirit in the face of the most awful tragedy any parent can possibly experience.
In the meantime, here’s a completely unrelated video to keep you entertained.
