Big Apples & Paella

Today is my half-birthday. Happy Half Birthday to Me! Woo HOO. I can practically hear Kool and the Gang, inviting me to celebrate and asking what my pleasure is.

Another half a year older. Let us celebrate and observe this important occasion immediately. See you in the pub in 20 minutes? (Actually, by the time I get this published, it was probably yesterday. So we’ll rain-check on the pub idea).

I’m sure you’re all thinking ‘What? Is she completely barmy? Who the hell even knows when their half birthday is?’ Permission to approach the bench and defend myself.

The only reason I know that today is my half-birthday is because today also happens to be my best University friend’s actual birthday. Even more coincidentally, today is also my best Canadian friend’s three-quarter birthday. Which in my head is a fascinating situation completely worth of note. See, simple.

Anyway, back to my blog. So it’s my half-birthday. Making me 31 and a half precisely. Which, in true Carrie Bradshaw-style, got me to thinking…

I was having dinner a few weeks ago, and people started asking some classic dinner-party questions. You know the kind of thing…If you could have dinner with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be? If you had to have sex with an animal, which one would you choose?All pretty standard.

Then someone asked, Where will you be when you’re 40? And my answer was both immediate and instinctive. Oh, I said airily, I’ll be a writer and I’ll be living in New York. And then we all agreed to celebrate my 40th birthday in my amazing Brooklyn Heights loft apartment when I will make an excellent paella. (Making excellent paella being one of the other goals I will have achieved by the time I’m 40).

Super. Life plan all in order. I’ll start sourcing saffron and arborio rice immediately.

But this morning it occurred to me that it’s not the paella thing that I should be focusing on. It’s the writer thing. You see, I’ve always just assumed that the writer thing will come through at some point. I just need to let it emerge chrysalis-like, as and when it’s ready. But with only 8.5 years to go, it might be time to artificially inseminate some cheetah DNA into the caterpillar, and get this bad boy off the starting-blocks asap.

Because other than this blog, there’s not a great deal of my writing that has met the gaze of the public. I have numerous apps and notebooks to record inspiration as it hits, and a multitude of folders on my laptop with research and the beginnings of chapters. But nothing concrete. Nothing published. Nothing finished.

So here it is. I figure if I commit details of a few projects to the blogosphere, it will encourage me to find the wherewithal and follow-through to finish the damn things. And once they’re all complete, fingers crossed I’ll be across the pond, attempting to find the best saffron and chorizo suppliers that the East Village has to offer.

Without further ado, here is a list of my current novelistic projects, to be wrapped up and completed by 2021. Eek.

NB: The following descriptions may seem a bit cryptic; this is purely to ensure no-one steals or rips off my amazing and innovative ideas.

1. The one about the Victorian circus.

2. The one about the wine-expert amateur detective. Also featuring monks and charlatan physicians.

3. The one about the car-wash attendant in Bradford.

4. The one about Woodstock. And an old woman with no teeth.

To be featured in Bestseller listings 8.5 years hence. Watch this space.