It’s been a while since I wrote a blog for my own website. My staggeringly successful creation, top lifestyle blogger and mumfluencer Isabella M Smugge would be horrified and her recently Botoxed agent Mimi Stanhope would be apoplectic with rage. I hope you, dear readers, will overlook this silence as I have been rather busy getting Issy’s continued adventures down on paper.
Sitting here, bathed in September sunlight and surrounded by tottering piles of books waiting to go to the Post Office, it still feels like a bit of a roller coaster, but one I’ve ridden before. Back in January this year, when my first book, the diary of Isabella M Smugge arrived, I was sleep-deprived, anxious, jittery from too much coffee and was learning very rapidly on the job. This time round, it’s been a lot more fun and I haven’t been waking up at 3 every morning running through to do lists in my crazed mind.
I left book one on a massive cliff-hanger
As you’ll know if you’re an Issy fan, I left book one on a massive cliff-hanger. Would Claire the vicar’s wife live or die? Who was the village snitch, drip-feeding poison to vile Lavinia Harcourt, the bitterest woman in Fleet Street? How would our heroine cope with a new baby and hardly any help (she doesn’t count her housekeeper, gardener, manicurist and agent). All these questions and more are answered but this being a novel, I had to keep driving the narrative along to make the readers turn the page. I can exclusively reveal that there is a fight in a nightclub toilet, a major character has a catastrophic health issue and Issy is forced to create a Spotify playlist featuring such rock giants as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Deep Purple.
In January, anxious and fretful from lack of sleep, I paced around the house on Delivery Day, gazing at the packaging, merch and labels on the dining room table and wondering when the books would arrive. At 10.20, it all got too much for the Distribution and Logistics Manager (aka Mr Leigh) who suggested that I went down to the village to run a few errands and get out of the house. This I duly did, only to return to the sight of two out of the three men in my life waving frantically at me and shouting, “They’re here!” [1]
This time round, I awoke early, showered, cleansed, toned and moisturised and was about to apply make-up when the sound of a large vehicle reversing drifted from the lane across to the house. Now I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that my heroine and I are alike. I do apply make-up sometimes, and I chisel it off again on a fairly regular basis, but I wouldn’t say it’s a Skincare Routine or anything like that. No, this time round, as well as Mr Leigh on packaging and delivery, I had Lovely Jason, aka Social Shapes, who has been applying his impressive knowledge to my very basic social media strategy and increasing my reach. So greeting him in my pjs with bad hair wasn’t an option, particularly as he was planning on filming an unboxing video (see below).
Anyway. All three children were on their way to a day of education, so it was just me and a young man in shorts on the drive. I invited him to back in, but the sheer size of his vehicle and the narrowness of our lane made this very difficult. As did the sudden appearance of several people heading for the farm. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, we decided he should probably stay put and he dropped his tailgate (that’s a technical term) to reveal a pallet buckling under the weight of 11 boxes of books.
At this point, understandably excited by the sight of my second novel, I squeaked, “Do you mind if I film you?” The minute the words left my mouth I realised that I sounded borderline creepy and my explanation that the boxes contained my new book and that I would love to have some shots of the delivery to kick off my unboxing video didn’t really make me sound any less so.
For a while, it was just him with his Arsenal tattoo and me with my wet, yet lustrous hair and shiny face as he tried to lower the enormous pallet to the ground. It was a struggle but eventually he was off, with me trotting along behind him videoing the process on my phone. Was it my imagination or did he put his foot down really hard as he sped away down the lane?
It’s been quite a week. We’ve packaged up nearly 200 copies and delivered them all over East Suffolk. Many more have winged their way to various parts of the UK, France, Norway, the USA and Australia. Issy’s back and this time around, I’m letting myself enjoy the rollercoaster.
And thank you for joining me on the ride. I couldn’t do it without you #soblessed #shinyface #lotsofbooks
[1] The second one being our middle child, impressed in spite of himself at the sight of a delivery driver puffing up the path hefting 7 huge boxes and enquiring, “What’s in all of these, mate?”