This morning I wrote the last line to my book and I am going to share it right here with you, because it’s not my own last line at all, but a quote:
‘As we grow older it’s eternity that is our boon’.
I didn’t think this would ever happen, but I felt a frisson of excitement mixed with sadness, sadness especially. Writing this book has not been painful as some writers often say of their own endeavours and neither has the route to publication been fraught with danger or heart-ache. Heck, I didn’t know this stuff fit for publication back in September; it’s like it happened out of the blue, as I was pursuing agents over another endeavour (yes, adding insult to injury). Well now this work is done and I feel orphaned.
After this I will drag myself to the lounge, the room that, together with Starbee in Wilmslow, saw most of the recent work getting done, books and comics strewn all over, with evil little post-it tongues sticking out of every other page. Au revoir Leatherface, Jason, Michael, Freddy, Spider-man, Batman, Joker, Jorge, William, Adso, Lestat, Blade companions of many days spent squeezing my brains trying to conjure up something intelligent to write in order to celebrate these characters as righteous representative of popular culture, not at all inferior but in fact on a par with Mona Lisa, Stan Lee as relevant to our culture as Leonardo himself (Da Vinci, not Di Caprio).
Au revoir Dark Knight script, Spider-man The Icon, Marvel Vault, The Killing Joke, The Name of the Rose; au revoir mountain of splatter DVDs, hurrah! I am now going to celebrate with Bridget Jones and won’t think about any of this ever again. Or maybe not until The Dark Knight DVD comes out. It’s only two weeks to go, isn’t it? I can't wait already...
