“I am doing a great work and I cannot come down”

(Nehemiah 6:3)

Its me! I’m back.  I am not even going to begin to apologise for the year’s silence here, but lets just say I got called away and needed some time to regroup.

After the success of “Road to Damascus” I wasn’t sure what to do next. I couldn’t continue to write meandering blogs for the rest of my life and I didn’t have a firm idea for another book.  Well I did.  That was the problem, I had too many ideas.  In such situations my default position tends to kick in – when I don’t know where to start, I don’t start at all. But as a wise friend once said to me, “Everybody ends up somewhere in life, so you might as well end up somewhere on purpose.”

I have a destiny to fulfill. And in my head I have multifaceted mental picture of my preferred future in relation to that destiny.  However, visioneering requires patience, investigation, and planning.  Unfortunately all three have been in short supply this past year when it came to realising my vision of becoming an accomplished writer and generally brilliant intellectual (you need to have seen ITV’s “The Durrels” to get that one).  Ok I’m getting carried away, but you can see where I’m going with this.

So here’s the thing: Make the blog about the book. Not a new idea I know. Julia Powell’s hit “Julia & Julia” started out as a blog.  So if she can do it by serialising how to make the perfect Beef Bourguignon, I can serialise the journey to becoming a brilliant Writer – albeit open ended as it is likely to be a blog that will go on for decades.

Sounds corny.  Implausible even.  But I figure it’s the only way I am going to get a head start (or to be accurate, a behind start) on a book I should have started two years ago and develop a readership along the way.  Well that’s the theory anyway. And make no mistake I do have a readership, all 20 of you and I promise to be hopelessly faithful to each and everyone of you.

So what am I calling this new book? Take a wild guess. It starts in the ear-splitting city of Istanbul and will hopefully provide some answers to the many, many times I have been asked, “So what’s happened to Suzan?”

I don’t promise that this will be a weekly blog as before.  To do so, alongside getting started on a book while in near-full-time employment, would be a challenge too far for this work-shy fop.  However, my intention is to test the research, testimonies and story line with you in real-time and see where it leads.  So please be interactive and send in comments and ideas. (I can always delete them if I don’t like them before they go live).

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