On Friday I returned home from a trip to the park to see the now familiar brown jiffy bag at my front door from my publisher.  I ushered the kids inside then tore it open to find the latest hard copy of my manuscript, and the bound proof of Fractured! This is the first chance I’ve had to see it as an actual book rather than a computer file or a pile of A4 paper, and it brought tears to my eyes. I can now picture it on the shelves, or in someone’s hands and it’s really emphasised that Fractured is almost a real book! I love the front cover, it’s very striking and now I can’t imagine it looking any other way.

I started to flick through the pages and am amazed at how different it seems in a book format compared to the A4 manuscript. Not just physically – although seeing the chapters and scenes laid out looks fantastic – but there’s something different about reading a ‘book’. It must be a similar process to that of reading on screen versus on paper: I write on the computer, but do print out the work to edit it. For some reason, I pick up issues on paper far more easily than I do on screen. It’ll be interesting to see if there are similar differences when I read through this bound version of Fractured, when I’ll see it more as a reader will.

This copy is still to be proof read – my next task – but it’s the version that goes out soon to booksellers and media. That is both incredible exciting and scary!