Today marks the one-year anniversary of the publication of The Perpetual Now. At almost 450 pages, it was a pretty ambitious undertaking for a first attempt. It was also an intensely personal endeavour, one that required me to not only open doors that had been closed for a long, long time, but then to put a bright light on them for everyone to see. Not the easiest thing for an introvert, but somehow cathartic nevertheless.
The response thus far has been extremely gratifying, and I thank all of you who took the time to read it for your gracious support. When the novel came out I had already missed most of the submission deadlines for literary contests, though I did chalk up a nomination for Best Cross-Genre Fiction with the International Book Awards. In the coming weeks and months I’ll be hearing from close to a dozen such contests, and with a little luck, I just might find myself with a couple more stickers to put on the cover.
Meanwhile, I continue to plow ahead with the follow-up novel. It’s not a sequel, but it definitely lives in the same universe. The one positive thing to come out of the pandemic for me is that it’s given me time to write: progress has been encouraging, and now that I know what I’m doing I hope to finish the first draft by mid-year. Fingers crossed!My thanks again to my readers, to Tellwell Talent Ltd. for putting The Perpetual Now out there, to my brilliant editor, and to everyone who contributed – in great ways and small – to the process of making my novel a reality. If you haven’t yet read it, I encourage you to check out the reviews on chapters.indigo.ca (https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/…/9780228822820-item…); and if you have read it and have questions or comments, feel free to message me.
So I wrote this novel... 