Spinning and slashing

The slashing is going really well. My Nepal memoir which started out with a wordcount of 141,000 is now down below 130k. We did, sadly, decide to cut out an entire trek which seemed harsh, especially as it means removing staring roles by close friends, but much of the cutting has been through trimming unnecessary verbiage and over-writing. The great thing about having slimmed the book down is that I've managed to sneak in a little new material and even a splendid waxed moustache, owned by a retired Gurkha Regimental Sergeant-major.

There is an unconventional forward, we'll print some of the many reviews and there will be colour photographs too. I'm also pleased that we'll have Nepali translations of the chapter titles in the attractive Devanagari script. So we're getting closer to sending the whole thing off to the printers. The latest big big challenge is the blurb to go on the back cover - something you might imagine your could dash off in two minutes. But how to condense the essence of hundreds of thousands of words, several life events, six years in two continents... into a mere 100 words. Yes indeed how? We have been batting ideas and many versions around and are still not happy with the result.

A slightly tidier-than-usual desk and playing with Nepali lettering