Just before Christmas, I realised that I’d got to the end of a first draft of a story that, since I have no better title at present, I’ll call Dust.

Note that I didn’t say “completed”… because it isn’t. I’d simply reached a point where I could think of nothing else to do except hunt around my hard disk for a last chapter that I’d actually written months ago; paste it on to the end of the text; type “The End” at the very bottom then delete it coz it’s naff; and get up, wander downstairs, make myself a cup of tea and treat myself to a Kit-Kat Chunky.

Of course it’s never that simple. Twelve hours later, in the middle of the night, I realised that, in my final dash for the tape, I’d overlooked a penultimate chapter that I’d never even thought about… but that, inescapably, had to exist. So next day I went in and added that to the text.

This time, I didn’t type “The End” on the bottom. And I was out of Kit-Kat Chunkies.

I’m under no illusions. This thing is a catastrophe, a shambles, an utter calamity. I really struggled to find my line through the story. The characters’ names, ages and physical attributes change. Buildings move around the city. The time scale is utterly incoherent. There are a few reasonably continuous sequences; but there are also huge gaps, jarring sideways jumps and disconcerting back-somersaults.

But I can fix that.

OK: I think I can fix it.

I printed it out…

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…and read it through, and now that I’ve finalised the Americanised copy for A Dangerous Magic (that’s the US edition of my first book, Gifted, due out next September), I can settle down with Dust…

I know I’ll need all the moral fibre I can muster, because Dust is a catastrophe, a shambles, etc.

But it’s the first draft. What the fuck do you expect?