2012
Happy New Year! It is 2012, the Year of the Dragon, the year of the Aztec apocalypse, the year of (dare I say it?) The Rook! The book is coming out in about ten days, and I have already received extremely exciting e-mails from various friends, advising that they have received e-mails from various quality-book purveyors, and that their copies are already on the way. So, copies of The Rook are actually in transit at this very moment, gliding their way through the system. They are out in the world. And soon they will be in people’s hands.
I, however, won’t at that point be seeing them in people’s hands, because on the fateful day, I shall be in Japan, attending a friend’s wedding and then touring about the country. And I have to admit, I very nearly wasn’t going to be. Two days ago, one week before I mount the silver bird, I realized that my passport was actually expired.
A few brisk nervous breakdowns ensued.
As one of my friends brightly remarked, “At least there’s no weekends or public holidays between now and th — Oh. Oh dear.” Once I’d been resuscitated, I was on the phone to the Passport Office (twenty minutes before they shut for a long weekend), making some frantic arrangements and apologizing profusely. Tuesday, I go in for my passport interview and pay the (idiot’s) fee for the expedited processing. I will pick up the renewed passport on either Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. Friday evening, provided the gods of travel are looking upon me kindly, I shall be off to Japan.
Now, will I be posting blog entries from Japan? That rather depends on Japan, because I am one of the most computer-incompetent people you will ever encounter, and getting on the internet may prove too much for me. It may be completely simple. It may be impossible. But I shall do my darnedest. And I am leaving behind sufficient tweets to take the @RookFiles twitter feed up to the fateful day of the eleventh, and a trusted representative will be posting them.