wiping off cobwebs

[smellingbottle]

It's been a thousand years since I posted, I know. Where to start

Comments

[sheenaghpugh]

Which country? I happen to know writers in both Dubai and Oman at present!

[smellingbottle]

Dubai. Do you really know writers here? Or, failing that, anyone whose primary interest isn't manicures?

[helixaspersa]

Goodness, how interesting; I vaguely remember that you were going to take some unpaid leave, but if I ever knew, I had completely forgotten that you were going to the Middle East. Please post more and tell us about it!

[smellingbottle]

Yes, I dithered for a long time, but circmstances conspired etc etc. And I was so exhausted by finishing the book I couldn't face returning to teaching immediately. Plus, as one academic to another, my cash-strapped institution was almost insultingly eager to save a year of my salary ...

[helixaspersa]

Excellent that you got the book finished. When is it coming out? I spent Christmas doing the final-final proofs for my book which is imminent - I had thought that making the index was high on the boredom-quotient-scale, but it paled in comparison to minutely checking every entry in said index when I got the proofs . . .

Do you have the whole year off? Does I. know how long he'll be there?

[smellingbottle]

I don't have a date, and to be honest (in a cowardly poltroonish manner), I dread the further faffing, proofing, index-related horrors so much I'm not pushing as much as I should. I think the issue is I feel at the moment I'm not actually an academic at all. I'd thought I'd pick up some part-time teaching out here to keep my hand in, but nothing at all transpired, and I've had to turn down some requests for book essays and papers, as I have no proper library access here - I'm making an income from the sillier kind of freelance journalism and writing for the arts pages of a local paper, which is quite fun in some ways. Yes, I took a full year out - I. is hoping to have a better sense of where his business is going within the next couple of months, so we're trying (not entirely successfully) not to look further ahead than March or April.

[smellingbottle]

Thank you! I will say more in the future about what people coyly refer to as the Sand Pit.

[lollardfish]

I am thrilled to hear that you are writing a novel. I shall be even more thrilled if you will allow us the chance to read it when the time comes.

[smellingbottle]

Honestly, I was so committed to the other novel that I came out here to write originally, before this new one jumped the queue, that I still have a guilt complex, as though I'm engaging in some papery form of adultery... But thanks, and have been enjoying your posts on your family.

[bopeepsheep]

Best Childhood Friend unexpectedly moved to Qatar a few months ago, with three under-sixes. (She apparently spends her days running French conversation classes, rescuing Iggle Piggle from camels, and half-wishing she was back in Kent so the kids wouldn't complain about the heat so much.)

I think it sounds like a wildly exciting thing to do! I'd like to hear more about the novel.

[smellingbottle]

That sounds about right, though I don't know Qatar at all - one feels woefully under-accessorised without any under-sixes at all! I will post more about the novel.