Yes, I’m still unemployed.  I have never sweated so much over a book proposal. On bad days I feel my confidence dripping away and if there’s one thing a novelist needs in buckets it is self-belief. How else could you work completely solo for a year?  Other days I remind myself that vastly better writers than I have struggled to make a living.  Meanwhile I’m trying to keep myself occupied even if not gainfully. My kitchen floor has never been so clean.

On to cheerier things. Today, as you will know if you subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac, is the birthday of E C Bentley whose Trent’s Last Case is sitting, funnily enough, in my Amazon basket. Bentley is perhaps best known for his invention of the clerihew, so what more fitting way to honour his memory than to compose one myself. My very first clerihew.

Erika L James
Who writes about erotic games
Has proved that sex can pay.
Give me Fifty Sheds any day.

Okay, so I probably shouldn’t give up the day job. Oh, but wait. I don’t have a day job.