SF writer Gary Gibson

Just over a week since I finished the book, and I feel like I'm finally starting to recover. I spent about six or seven days flopping about, getting inexplicably tired at various times, and waking up at really odd hours. Things have stabilised in the past day or two, though, and I'm getting up and going to bed at (for me) normal times.

Outside of that, I think the universe is telling me it's really, really time I got another day job.

Let's have a look at the list of cataclysms so far: my laptop died, and I bought a mac mini to replace it. Cost, about three hundred quid. Then there's the new sofa from Ikea - cost, about the same. Okay, it wasn't an essential, but I got it several weeks before everything else went haywire. A giant bill from the electricity company (long story) doesn't help either. Then my boiler died the other day. Cost of fixing or replacing: don't even ask, because I'm not sure I want to know. I have someone I've been recommended coming around next week. And now my mortgage is going up. Hoo-fucking-ray.

I'm not penniless - yet. But given I'm walking home from the West End a lot these days, I think I might be more or less fixed. More or less, because I still get some pain, but probably not any more than a lot of people have to deal with in the course of their normal working day.

What I do, normally, is graphic design on the lower end of the scale - meaning, I don't usually originate illustrations, and the majority of what I wind up doing is by the standards of the trade relatively simple, using software like Quark Xpress, Illustrator, Photoshop and so forth. I could probably get full time work, but that would severely cut into the writing. So I figure come the New Year, if nothing else has shown up by then, I'll get a job in some small shop somewhere for a couple of days a week. That, plus the money I get from a lodger, should just about keep me afloat.