I'm hard at work towards Monday when a new book is due in. It's very enjoyable. The book is like nothing I've done before, actually it's like nothing I've seen before, it's most related to some vague memories of what I wanted books to be like as a child (except I would have wanted this book to be 1000 pages thick instead of 32).
My boyfriend took my favourite coat to be fixed, the long brown one that a tube escalator bit at the hem years ago and left it a bit ragged and oily. Now it's good again. Wearing that and a dress and hat knitted by my mother I feel like winter is welcome to come around. The rest of this year will be happy, most likely.
I have settled into the new flat, and the pattern of my days is nearly perfect.
In the mornings I read fantasy novels on the sofa, drinking instant coffee and cocoa mixed together until I'm awake enough to start working.
In the day I work and eat salads (salad is what I think of when I think of food, warm meals seem like an amusing distraction from tasty raw vegetables). Sometimes I go out, and central London is really rather close by now. A fifteen minute bus ride gets me to Tate Modern where I can refill my brain with art. Other sources of inspiration are nearby, too... yesterday I went to leaf through Stanley Kubrick's scrap books for "2001 - A Space Odyssey" and laughed at the little stick figure explorers he had doodled on the torn-out magazine photos. I want to go back soon and look at the hand-annotated pages of "The Shining".
There's a box of project notebooks - two picture book texts, one by me and one by Alexis. A pile of materials to build sets for another book. A notebook for a comic that I thought of a few weeks ago. Files of notes for science books. Two finished novel drafts, and a battered moleskine containing research for a third. I covered a whole wall with pinboards so I can keep an eye on the active projects - on one end is a bunch of odd jobs I am doing via the paint shop I sometimes work in, like custom wallpaper designs, some strange product adverts and portraits, next to it doodles for games designs.
The rest of the board is neat, every meter another book, lists of what needs doing next and printed out visual reference, colour schemes and such. If it doesn't fit on the wall, I don't have time for it right now.
Next month it's time to teach at university again, I'm looking forward to that - by now I have seen a few of my students get to exciting places, and I'm feeling like I helped them. That's pretty cool. I'll also help with the assessments for the first time this year. That's pretty scary.
Next year, my first graphic novel will go on sale, and a couple of other books I am proud of, one of them the strange one I am just finishing and the other one written by Alexis - he said it was the weirdest illustrations I have made yet. He might be right. The publisher pretty much left us alone concerning creative decisions, I think they just decided it was madness and should not be interfered with. You'll like it.
Right, that's my lunch break almost done, I'll have a bite of salad and get back to drawing.
