Where Would I Rather Be, Right This Minute?

Season of the Witch, my fourth novel, is to be published in April this year. It was a challenging book to write and I only finished the proofs in early December 2006. So I am feeling rather drained and at the back of my head I have the sense that I should now be allowed to take it easy - shoes off, tacky drinks with floating umbrellas, bubble baths, marshmallows, B-grade movies on TV.

Sadly, there is no rest for the wicked. My next book has a December 2007 deadline. So I need to work the keyboard!

It is always difficult to get started on a new book: you're not yet comfortable with your characters, the world you're building for them has gaps and the plot is wobbly. Most of the time I find myself thinking I'd rather be some place else than behind my desk facing my laptop. When I told this to a friend of mine who is also a writer, she and I ended up trading emails of where we'd rather be. This was my list.

I'd rather be:

1. in a Cirque de Soleil performance
2. in the dojo
3. in the reading room of the British Museum - but with no specific goal in mind and no pressing research to do.
4. having a meal in Rubens restaurant in Franschoek in the Cape Province
5. having a glass of champagne with the TWACUs in the salon upstairs from the Cheyne Walk Restaurant in Chelsea
6. in Namibia. It is my favourite place in the world and I try to visit as often as I can. Too bad it has now been discovered by every-one and his brother since Brad and Angelina's adventure.

More about Namibia: Long before it became fashionable, the hero in my third book, Windwalker, made his home in a deserted mining town in the Namibian desert. As a fugitive on the run, it was the perfect hide-out: a place where the ghosts walk even during the day...