A finished novel and an empty notebook

So, a few days ago I finished the novel I've been writing for the past 18 months. This is brilliant and scary in equal measures as now I have to send it off into the world and find out whether it's crap, brilliant or (more likely) any one of a million things in between. That's partly what it's about though, how we generally live in the between, so it makes sense.

On the very good advice of a mate (Phil Earle, whose brilliant debut novel Being Billyis published in January by Puffin) I'm sticking the manuscript of book #1 in a drawer for a couple of weeks and giving it a final read before it goes out. Seeing as the Frankfurt Book Fair is almost upon us there's a fair chance nobody would read it til the end of October anyway.

In the meantime I've bought a new notebook (just a cheap Ryman's thing, I think the quality of my writing would be likely to be inversely proportional to the fanciness of any notebook I was to buy) and am cracking on with the research and note taking for book #2.

I'll fill you in on any feedback I get once it's out there.