In my last post about my book it was kinda fun to boil down a lot of what I’d been working on to bullet points – obviously they’re a lot more expanded in the book but I wanted to give a flavour of what you can expect.

So I thought it would be amusing to pick out some quotes, and leave them completely without context:

“Gritting my teeth, I told myself that I was supposed to be having an adventure, and I was damn well going to have one.”

“I have to say, pouring cocktails into my mouth from a shiny teapot was extremely fun, and I drank rather a lot.”

“As mum always said, “what goes up, must come down”, and I had visions of what coming down was going to look like.”

“So that’s how I found myself on stage in a Toronto hotel, miming the words to a Backstreet Boys song that I wasn’t even sure I’d ever heard before…”

“For dinner one evening I’d ordered pork chops. I got 4. Lamb chops? Seven.”

“If there’s one thing that my hangovers do not enjoy, it’s blazing sun and relentless heat.”

“It was loud, bright, colourful and utterly inexplicable. And it was fabulous.”

So, that’s what you’ve got to look forward to!

As I write this, I’ve just achieved 20,000 words completed!

It feels like a massive achievement, that’s a lot of words. I also have a long, long way to go yet. Research tells me that memoirs are usually in the region of 80-100,000 words long, so by that reckoning I’m either a quarter or a fifth of the way there. Which sounds a little less impressive to my ears.

But I still have plenty to write about – I’ve actually only finished the chapters for 5 or 6 countries (though I’ve started plenty of the others), so I don’t think I’ll be lacking content.

Of course this is only the first draft, and I know there will be a lot of work to do once I’ve finished it. And I still have at least 8 countries to visit before I can complete even this first draft. Did I mention that this is going to be a long-term project?!

If you’ve looked at the page about my project, you’ll know that I’m on a mission to visit at least one country beginning with every letter of the alphabet (and if you haven’t read that yet, go read it now… I’ll wait…)

All caught up? Great.

As you can see, it’s a fairly involved project. I’ve still got a fair few countries to visit before I’ll be able to finish the book, and unless I win the lottery (or meet a fabulous benefactor – any interest?), it’ll be a while before I get there.

So, to keep me motivated and on track to write up the countries I have already visited, and get as much of the book done as possible in the downtime between my trips, I’m keeping this website up to date with my progress. I’ll be sharing updates, excerpts, pictures, and anything else that might be of interest.

I hope you’ll join me for the ride!