When Miss Fletcher kindly asked me if I wanted to write a guest post for her charmingly exuberant blog – a post concerning the writing process behind my first published novel, which is also probably the seventh novel I've written, but keep that to yourself, OK? I want to keep hold of some dignity if possible... – the first thought that came to mind was: yes Penelope, Yes Miss Fletcher, I love writing guest posts! That would be excellent!
The second thought quickly put me right, however, and it was so loaded with sarcasm that I nearly fell out of my chair (except I could not, as the chair I was in wouldn't allow me to, which only compounded my embarrassment): Chris, you fool, you've never actually written one guest post!
And it was true; my inner voice – whatever you want to call it – wasn't being sarcastic without good reason. It never is.
So there I was, on virgin territory; not only that but I had to go back in time in my head, back a-year-and-a-half, and do some serious thinking. Which was tricky for two reasons: 1) when I started writing The Number 3 Mystery Book I was still recovering from a near fatal virus which I now try and avoid thinking about as much as possible, as you do, and 2) my memory isn't as good as it used to be. It was bad enough before I got sick, and after the illness, as is common, it was even worse. Somewhere along the way, I lost a part of myself, which was also a bit of a spanner-in-the-works. Having Dyscalculia also doesn't help much; the big D is a double whammy, you could say...I'm both bad with navigating space – either mentally or physically – and utterly useless when it comes to remembering numbers and dates.
Some people get all the luck, right?
