No, it’s not a Chanel advert. I’ve just completed the first draft of my fifth book, Mercurius 2 (it’ll get a proper title later, though I’ve had a working title throughout).

The next step is to put it aside for a week or so before I start editing. The difficulty with editing at once is that I can’t forget what’s coming, so I don’t read it in the same way as a reader coming fresh to it would. I might know, for example, that character X is actually secretly married to Y, or that A and B are half-brothers, but if I leave it a little while I can go back and read it as if it’s new to me.

I’m fortunate in having a couple of family members who will also read it and comment. There hasn’t been a time when those comments didn’t improve what I’d written.

That doesn’t mean all work stops, but writing takes a back seat for a few days to things like painting the dining room, packing up old books and talking to my wife.

Then it’s full steam ahead on Slonský 4!