Two years. Two months. Catherine Johnson

The great thing about writers’ blogs is that you understand, whatever way we do it, in caffs, in huts, in sheds or on the kitchen table, we are all pretty much the same. We all have ups and downs.

We all think everyone elses books are selling in twice the amounts of ones own (although this is true for me). That everyone else wins bucket loads of prizes, gets invited to every festival going, and lives on nothing but red wine and chocolate while churning out five thousand words a day wearing couture and nice shoes.

Meanwhile we sit at home in our writing pyjamas eating chocolate frogs and looking out of the window, wondering how the hell to get character A doing what we want with character B.

What we all want is to be so gripped by a story, a set of characters, a situation, that we might as well be wearing Alexander McQueen and eating chocolate frogs hand rolled by virgin chocolatiers (of either or both sex depending on your preference).

So, back to my title, and since I expect you’re wondering what the illustration is, back to that too.

I last blogged about a story I had laid to rest quietly at the beginning of March.

That same week I went on a day out in town with my grown up son. He’s been having a difficult time and we went for a walk and lunch and round a museum neither of us had ever been to.

Two months later I have finished a first draft of something new, and if not prize winning, then at least (I hope) publishable. The picture is a present from my daughter who read it as I went along and helped with plot holes. The characters are Ezra McAdam, surgeons’ apprentice and Loveday Finch, ex magicians’ assistant. She is using a stick on account of hurting her leg in a thrilling escape through Smithfield market being pursued by a gang of resurrection men.

I hope in a year or so someone else gets to read about them too, in the meantime happy writing. Catherine Johnson