This year in review post comes to you a little late as it contains reflections on the TOP SECRET BOOK DEAL that I wasn’t allowed to talk publicly about till now.

2016 was a funny old year. Mostly made up of Cats, sickness and writing dreams coming true.

After 9 months in Florida, USA, we moved to Mauritius for various reasons including but not restricted to

1. the fact that my husbands and I are wanton nomads.

2. My body collapsed into a health freak-out and I seemed to be rapidly turning into an invalid.

On a personal note it was very sad leaving our amazing friends in Florida behind, and the rescue cat that we adopted, but she went to a loving home and we only cried for a few months every time we thought of her… . She was the most epic of any cat I’ve ever had. She would wait for us to get home and then climb onto our shoulders, draping herself there like a pirate’s parrot and let us carry her around the house. She slept between us on the bed. She was our first fluffy baby as a married couple…

My mysterious ailments which had been getting more and more frequent culminated in a full body breakdown leaving me bedridden and too weak to walk or even stand up. There was a lot of hilarious sitting on the floor that happened, and a complete revamp in diet since the doctors could only diagnose me with what looked like an auto-immune for which there is no treatment or cure.

We moved to Mauritius where my parents live and dog-cat-house-sat for a close family friend. I was able to literally relax and eat myself to better health. We lost the dog (to a sudden heartbreaking sickness)…

my #pitchwars writing buddy. Kept me company & heard me read the entire book out loud lost him 4 weeks ago.

…and gained an extra cat when my husband went to work one day and discovered a kitten had invaded his office. Said kitten clambered onto his shoulders and miaowed loudly, he took this as a sign and brought her home as a 3-day-early birthday present to me, we named her Kublai after the grandson of the great Ghengis Kahn. She now runs the household, as a Kato-esque combat partner to the current cat (who wasn’t aware he needed to be attacked at every opportunity) and they both sleep with us in the bed turning our hearts to mush whenever we look at them.

Reunited with these two Blackguards

Whilst stuck to a arm-chair-convalescing I wrote a book, entered a writing competition (Pitch Wars), got an agent and book deals for the trilogy in several territories:  A COURT OF MIRACLES officially sold on December 12th in a pre-empt to HarperVoyager UK (more on that tomorrow) December 15th to Knopf, Random House, December 16th to Hachette France, December 29th and to Penguin Random House Spain.

I think everything happens for a reason, and though being so sick you can’t walk can seem like a curse, one of the many great fruits of it is that I finally was pinned to one spot and was thus able to ‘allow myself’ to take my writing seriously enough to spend the time needed to make my career dreams happen. A lot of writers big breaks are about luck, and a lot of hard work. I feel like I did the hard work and I was pretty blessed for the rest of it. I’ve wanted to be a published author since I was 6 years old. I believe I’ve always had the ability to sit down and finish a book, but it took 32 years and a debilitating sickness to finally force me into checking my role in that equation off the list. So in many ways, I am grateful for my ill-health.

Health-wise, following a strict GAPS diet has seen me get stronger and stronger, I am now functioning as a normal adult, albeit one who has to take frequent naps and sometimes feels physically awful. But I’ve been medication free since May and am excited to be able to get back to normal life. But now I have the full-time job of my dreams, I can work from home, from anywhere in the world, life-goals achieved!

My goals and aims for 2017 are simple enough.

1. STICK TO A WRITING ROUTINE

I wrote ACOM last year in a few weeks to extremely short deadlines, this was possible because I was stuck at home and unable to move much. As I am getting better, I’d like to focus on treating my writing as a day-job, with fixed working hours and saving evenings and weekends for family and personal time. As someone who naturally avoids all sort of discipline and tends to work best under last minute deadlines, I’d like to break this cycle and its accompanying psychological stress.

My family have very full social and personal lives which I consider necessary to balance out the extreme isolation of an authors career. I want to honour this and put what is the most important in its rightful place rather than scrambling along, and having to work late and skip things because I failed to use my allotted writing time wisely.

2. ADD EXERCISE TO MY WRITING SCHEDULE

It is essential to my recovering health that I integrate exercise into my writing routine. As someone who has been immobile for several months I know the importance and the benefit of putting exercise into my routine now, before I become set in my ways. This is going to be a tough battle as I hate exercising in the heat and where I live it is VERY HOT all the time.

I’d like to experiment with writing spurts, and see whether 60 minute or 90 minute spurts are best for my productivity

I’d like to integrate stretching or walking into the breaks between writing spurts.

I’d like to also include major exercise into my daily routine; be it walks, runs when I am better, or swimming.

A doctor advised me to create a standing desk – I want to look into how I might create one (since I live far away from countries where they can be purchased)

I want to focus stretching and maintenance on areas that need personal work: my posture, and my arms/wrists – which have been left very sore after the 8-10 hour long writing spurts of Pitch Wars.

3. READ

I’ve spoken about my reading challenge for 2017 here which is born of the concept that I should be reading widely outside of my own genre. Reading is one of those things I consider a luxury and tend to put off. But since my job is now that of a writer, I cannot afford to put off my reading. I plan to schedule reading time into my daily schedule. This will be a challenge because I am a binge reader who reads a book in one sitting and cannot stand putting down a good story. But needs must and I’d like 2017 to be the year where I allow myself to do the things that are necessary to benefit my career the most.