I get asked a lot about how I manage to write books alongside a full-time legal career, family life, and everything else that insists on existing simultaneously. Often the people asking are my colleagues, which leads to a moment of terrifying panic that I am about to become very much able to fit everything into a day that involves a lot less lawyering. Thankfully, they are all very understanding, and I’m still allowed to function as both a lawyer and a writer. Although sometimes function is putting it a bit generously.

There are days when the to-do list feels insurmountable, and evenings when I’m too exhausted to face a troublesome chapter. But face it I do, because writing has never been about finding the perfect conditions; it’s an incurable need to keep going. 

Modern Magic was written in the margins: early mornings, late nights, train journeys. It came alive in the half-formed stories I told myself before I fell asleep, which I then attempted to piece together the next morning, baffled as to why my ideas seemed distinctly less brilliant in the slanting light of day.

And perhaps that feeling of scrabbling for scribblings is fitting. Modern Magic was always about persevering even when the odds (and the paperwork) seemed impossible. The Tower of Jackdaw and Spittlelick runs on that potent solution of exhaustion and determination, mixed with a stubborn sort of hope.

Book 2 is now deep in the editing trenches: futures are being woven, ready to go up for sale. There are also some exciting developments for Modern Magic itself - let’s just say that it may soon be finding a whole new voice.

So yes, life remains busy. But the good kind of busy. The kind where you look at that to-do list, grasp for the half-remembered stories, see the expectant eyes of something magical before you, and think: all right then. Let’s get back to work.