Come January I’m not allowed to read fiction. Two months to wallow.

It isn’t that I’m not allowed, but I’ve had a year off – quite unintentional; publishing proved a fatal interruption/disruption to my hermit-writer’s existence, close-closeted with the book. I haven’t written since January, but I’ve shovelled into the abyss that is my life without the book, a record amount of fiction. Because I can’t read fiction while I write. While I write, the whole goal is never to exit the world of my novel; other fictional worlds are too violent a yank. I didn’t read fiction for years. It’s an unfortunate side-effect and one of the prices you pay, happily. Maybe I won’t go back to that extreme closetedness (now I’m online…) and if I can keep up a feed of fiction, I want to. But I have a fixed date when I have to take up work again, no matter what state my head’s in: no excuses from January 19, a year after I published.

In short, I’ve started to think, two months, what novels can I cram in, which can be left out?