Resolution

It's been a frustrating year. My interactive reworking of Frankenstein was published to critical acclaim and won a Kirkus star, and I have now prepared Epub3 and Kindle editions for release next year. My company Fabled Lands LLP entered a joint venture with a major international publisher to reissue a back catalogue of over thirty gamebook classics by me, Jamie Thomson, Oliver Johnson and Mark Smith, in both print and digital formats. And Dark Lord: The Early Years, created by me and Jamie Thomson and brilliantly written by Jamie, won the 2012 Roald Dahl humour prize.

So why the frustration? Because what matters most to me is Mirabilis. The other things are great too, but Jack's and Estelle's story is what is dearest to my heart. And nothing has been achieved on Mirabilis since June last year. I have all of Book 3 written (the first half of Spring), a bunch of standalone stories set in the Year of Wonders, and the outline for a one-special featuring a famous fantasy personality coping with the onslaught of the unreal in 1901. But those stories all need an artist, and both Martin and Leo are now far too busy on other projects (Martin's charming picture book The Gift and Leo's Pollock Theatre style Playrama cutouts for kids).

Eighteen months is quite long enough to let things slide. Too long. A little while back, Jason Arnopp (author of A Sincere Warning About The Entity in Your Home and Beast in the Basement - both brilliant, scary works of genius; go and buy them now, then come back and read on) tweeted that you should write as though you had twelve months to live. Wow. Some advice hits you like the word of God. What if 2013 was my last year? I need to get Mirabilis moving again and it's time to start recruiting the team and raising the money to do that. I've put up the provisional opening episode for Spring, "Long Time With Wadwoes", on Freado and I'll probably put it on DriveThru too. Now I'm looking at ways to get the whole thing restarted so that 2013 can be a true year of the comet!