Ten days to paperback - snot trails, untimely weeing and sudden remembrance of trouser.

In ten days, How I Wonder is a paperback. 

Although, I'm sure it is actually a paperback already, hunched in a warehouse somewhere, flexing its talons and poised to be unleashed, I mean, it doesn't become 7th of May and suddenly machines somewhere are rattling like my house doors when the wind is in the west - it must already exist in its paperback form. Out there. Somewhere.

This is my book, right now

So. How I Wonder What You Are is rousing itself, fluffing up its feathers and preparing to fly.  Well timed, actually, because it's mostly set around this time of year, when spring is beginning to spring and yet has a nasty tendency to uncoil itself and poke you through the mattress of life with a harsh bout of winter again. This is particularly noticeable when you are somewhere like the North York Moors (coincidentally, where I live and where How I Wonder is set...

On Thursday I was wearing a t shirt - yes, it's all right, I had pants on and everything, I checked. Twice, just to make sure.  Today I am wearing a t shirt, a fleece and a bodywarmer. And..oh, whoops, hang on a minute...there, that's better...fleecy lined walking trousers. One day it feels like the middle of summer, only with less wasps, and the next my fingers have gone blue and I am cuddled up to the radiator with my paw over my face. Or that could be the cat, but the principle is the same.

So, bits of How I Wonder are very true to life, like the cold and the snow broken by days when it's all birdsong and gorse, and although Molly rides her horse, Stan, over the moors, I did edit out some of the more..umm, earthy things, like the fact that when you canter over the moors in a cold wind, you leave a trail of snot behind you that could, on a foggy day, be used to track you.  Because no one wants to read that kind of thing, do they?  I know I write realism, but there's realism and there's trying to find somewhere with enough cover to do a wee behind, crouching behind a bush, and realising that, on the other side, is a main road...

It's very pretty. And guaranteed wee-free...