A long way fromWiegenlied

Getting up at 6.25 am (to write Blest Redeemer) leaves a hole in the middle of the day; reveals exactly the nature of a “postprandial” state. Six hundred millilitres of self-brewed coffee slide down my throat and very quickly I’m gone, flittering about on that uneasy boundary between dozing and deep sleeping. To the accompaniment today of Shostakovitch’s Leningrad symphony. 

Believe me it ain’t music to doze by. One non-intellectual on BBC3 Radio described the most memorable movement as “tanks crossing the steppes”. As I drifted into and out of mental silliness I reflected on why Dimitri’s regularly repeated mini-theme turns into perfectly legitimate and absorbing music while Ravel’s equally repetitive Bolero is merely a bore. There are at least half a dozen reasons but I’m still rubbing the silliness out of my eye-corners and a coherent explanation must wait for a period of greater alertness.

I NEVER asked Mrs LdP to read either of my two finished novels; I felt she might be irritated when she recognised the shared roots of certain events, characters and snatches of dialogue. Abruptly she asked me to download them on to her Kindle, which I did. Time passed. A week or two later she said several kind things about Gorgon Times. More time passed.

A Kindle prevents the outside observer from knowing what’s being read. So I was quite surprised when Mrs LdP said, à propos nothing, “By the way I’ve just read Risen on Wings. She (that’s Jana) should have stuck with Dirk. He’s more fun.”

I was inordinately pleased. It meant that RoW was finally out of my hands and into those of a reader. Readers are entitled to have whatever opinion they wish about a novel. The writer no longer matters. Not that I agreed, you understand.

NOTE: Gorgon Times is now available. The download to Kindle (dead cheap at £1.53) arrives in minutes; if you want the paperback (still cheap at £7.95) please be patient, it is printed on demand.