For as long as I can remember I’ve devoured books of almost all genres. I still easily read three a week, taking every chance I get to immerse myself in someone else’s thoughts and imagination.
Recently, through writing my own first book ‘Paralian’ I’ve redoubled my efforts and have even caught myself reading whilst walking home from the bus stop. If it’s a good read, something resounding deeply within, I seem to be incapable to set those precious pages aside – and be it just for a few minutes. Even more so, I love those days when I can do nothing else but wiggle into the large cushions of our comfy couch, book in hand, Nacho and Pushka, our fluffy fur balls, purring on either side of me.
One writer who has managed to charm me more than most is Matt Haig. I love his fine sense of humour, his compassion, and sensitive celebration of life. In all he has been through I recognise a kindred spirit. Living through tremendous pain and struggle heightens our sense of how magical and meaningful our brief, meaningless existence really is. Storytelling in all forms and shapes, listening to others’ and sharing our own, being an essential part of this magic…

“I loved external narratives for the hope they offered. Films. TV dramas. And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself. But each map was incomplete, and I would only locate the treasure if I read all the books, and so the process of finding my best self was an endless quest…”
(From Matt Haig’s new book ‘Reasons To Stay Alive’)

How beautiful, and how profoundly true. Thinking ahead to the months and years to come, I dream my books will add to the magic. ‘Paralian’ is a beginning. I hope it carries the inner strength to, at some point in time, be a treasure map for someone out there as well…