Back in 2018 my world fell off a cliff when my mum died suddenly. She was in ITU for a week between collapsing at home alone and the doctors withdrawing life support. Throw in a close family estrangement just days later and, I'm not ashamed to say, I came apart at the seams.
If you've read Ethereal, you'll know that in the depths of her grief, Storm teeters on the edge, saved only by the watchful presence of her animals and the realisation that they needed her. In my own dark night of the soul, I realised that the anchors keeping my feet albeit loosely bound to the ground were five heartbeats and an unfinished first book. I finished Ethereal in 2019 and published it in 2020, two years and a month after my mum passed. Needless to say, she never got to read it.
Three of those heartbeats are no longer with us 'this side of the veil' and if I've learned anything it's that not even the greatest love can keep a heart beating once it's decided to stop.
Life should be celebrated, lived, enjoyed, savoured - always, but never taken for granted.
That's why there always needs to be another book. So long as there is a story to tell, scribbling to be done, I have a purpose and that is no small thing.