December 19, 2016

Best Laid Plans

Deciding to write a book is one thing. It’s the easy bit. The reality was discovering things don’t always go smoothly, or according to plan. And so it was with this grand idea. Towards the end of 2013 we decided it was time to finally wind up the flower growing business, and downsize, so in January 2014 our house was on the market, and we were preparing to pack up and move to the one we’d bought. Unsurprisingly therefore there wasn’t a lot of time devoted to book planning in the first six months of that year other than the planning that went on inside my head.

We’d no sooner moved in to our new property, and got more or less settled, when the rapidly failing health of my mum required me to drop everything and go to the UK to be with her and my family. Much of 2015 was taken up with dealing with the practicalities resulting from the death of a parent, and the book project stalled once again.
By this time though I knew where it was going. Previously rather hazy and unformed ideas had firmed up and crystalised, and I’d already made the initial approach to those people I’d come to know during the campaign, nearly all of whom I was unlikely to ever have crossed paths with otherwise. So by the time the latter part of 2015 arrived I was ready, and keen to finally start doing interviews.

There was no going back now. I was on my way.

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