I’ve been threatening to do this for a while. Pile up all the unread books I’ve got and take a photograph of them, just for giggles. So I did, and slightly scared myself. Clearly, I get far too much pocket money.

Here is Ellie’s to-be-read pile, in no kind of order, just how they came off the shelves. That’s over six feet four inches of books. Yes, I have just measured it; no, I do not think that is remotely sad.

This mountain of words does include some books I was given as presents Quite Some Time Ago, and a couple of them I’ve started and put down for whatever reason (Tad Williams’ River of Blue Fire, I’m looking at you here – and Trudi Canavan’s Magician’s Guild, don’t think you can hide at the back).

What it does not include is all the books I will have to re-read before I attempt to conclude various series, like the Dresden Files, and The Wheel of Time. What can I say, I have a terrible thing for completeness.

Whimper.

Still, they do say that the first step in overcoming addiction is admitting you have a problem.

…for I have sinned.

I’ve never read George RR Martin.

Don’t ask me why, because I really couldn’t say.  I adore the title of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.  I’ve just never found myself motivated to pick up one of his books.  Actually, tell a lie, I did pick up a copy of  “A Game of Thrones” in Waterstone’s once but put it down again before I got to the till.

Before the fantasy establishment mob besieges Cooper Towers with pitchforks and blazing torches, ready to burn the heretic,  let me just say that I am remedying this right this instant.  Since HBO has green-lighted a mini-series based on A Game of Thrones, starring the scrummy Sean Bean, no less, my interest has been piqued.

Piqued enough to go and buy the book.  Gawd knows when I’ll find time to read it, since I’m supposed to be writing one of my own here, but I’ll try.  Really I will.  Now put those pitchforks down before someone gets hurt.

…I entered a short story competition organised to celebrate the author Douglas Reeman‘s 25 years in print.  Somehow, I won, with a rousing Napoleonic War frigate action in the Med.  This was 1984, and I was a whole 15 years old.

I got to meet Douglas for lunch in Mayfair and was thoroughly charmed by the man.  We corresponded for some time afterwards, and he was unstinting in his encouragement of me as a writer.  We lost touch, as school and exams got in the way and I shelved my wilder writerly ambitions for a time.

Recently mum and dad had a clear-out of their bookshelves and I reacquired a sizeable collection of Douglas’ books, including his Alexander Kent “Bolitho” series on which I had gorged myself as a teenager and which inspired me to write my prize-winning story.  Curious, I Googled and found Douglas’ website, which had an email address.

I wasn’t expecting him to remember me but I sent him a short note yesterday to say hello and congratulate him on what is now 50 years as a published author (that’s quite something, in anybody’s reckoning, and boo! hiss! to his publishers for not marking it).

Today I got a reply.  He does remember me, still has photos of the day we met at the Navy Club, and is every bit as charming, gentlemanly and encouraging as I remember.

This has made my day.  I am completely, utterly, and quite ridiculously, made up.

It’s done.

The final edit on Songs, that is.  I should be relieved, elated, but I’m not.  It feels like an anticlimax (there’s that word again).  I was expecting some great rush of triumph as I hit the final full stop and clicked “Save”.  Instead all I got was “Jeez, is that the time?”

So what am I going to do with my evenings and weekends now?  I have been living and breathing this book for the last year; my husband looks up when I enter the room and asks “Who are you again?”

But that’s me.  When I’m writing, I am totally immersed in it, saturated by it.  I think about it on the loo, in the bath, on the train, in the five minutes between phone calls at work when I really should be digesting the latest epistle from HMRC.  Now that it’s done, I find myself vaguely bereft.

My reading has been sadly neglected.  Richard K Morgan and Joe Abercrombie stare reproachfully at me from the shelves where their new books have been sitting, unopened, since I bought them the day they came out.  Unread books in this house are an Abomination, and I have two dozen Abominations in the study.  I’m afraid to go in there.

So I’ve started querying agents.  I’ve been writing stories since I could write, pretty much.  Started aiming at novel-length fiction when I was a teenager.  I read once that the first million words is just practice and if that’s the case, I’ve served my apprenticeship and then some.  Let’s see if we can’t make all this hard work worthwhile.