A heartfelt goodbye

Along with a mention by Nicholas Clee over on Bookbrunch, this week has seen me trying to 'keep it together' with a guest post on the blog of popular crime writer Sam Hayes, as well as waxing predictive over on Beat, a cultural magazine for Windsor. (Thanks to editor Melanie Gow for inviting me to write for her.)

In rather sad news, the dedicatee of The New Goodbye, Never, the Samoyed I've shared my life with for the past eleven and a half years, was put to sleep peacefully in the garden last Friday. Hopefully the dedication of the novel stands as testament to the important part she played in my life. Life is proving strange without her.

The New Goodbye - what do you mean you haven't downloaded it yet?

So we have an app. I'm a little late in mentioning it, here of all places, but fortunately lots of other people have been doing so.

Thanks to everyone who’s tweeted about the book so far. A special shout out to Patrick Hussey at Arts & Business, who went out of his way to help. There have also been tweets from Amelia’s Magazine, Design Week, Making Hay, Art at Heart and PD Smith, plus plenty others. Adele Mitchell pointed me at Surrey Life after downloading the app, so fingers crossed and plenty of gratitude from me for that.

Plus there’s been some more general web action. The first piece was my guest blog on Catherine Hawley’s Juxtabook. Then Aliya kindly pointed all the MNW-ers in my general direction. This was followed by a piece on Web Designer magazine’s blog, then cameThe Literary Platform’s Showcase and another guest spot, this time on design agency Mat Dolphin’s site. Last week fantasy maestro Mark Chadbourn flagged up The New Goodbye on his blog and yesterday also saw me take up some prime space on Me & My Big Mouth, the blog belonging to Scott Pack, publisher for The Friday Project.

Monday will see a post about the app on the Creative Review blog, and hopefully next week will bring some more coverage too. I also have a guest post to write for Sam Hayes when I get a spare moment or two. Something around the letter K.

Meanwhile I'm off work for a week and celebrating my daughter's second birthday.