Chapter Thirteen is live.
January, exams, a tutoring room that keeps growing, and two people who tell James the same thing in the same week without ever meeting each other.
A word about the rest of it. I started this to see whether I could write at all. Thirteen chapters in, I am still learning something with every one of them: how to let a scene end early, how much of a character can live in one gesture, when to stop explaining. The comments have taught me more than anything I have read about writing. Half the things I now do on purpose, I first did by accident and only noticed because one of you pointed at it.
It began as a bit of fun. It is turning into something I care about quite a lot, and that is down to you reading and saying so.
Book 2 is already being drafted alongside Book 1, so there will be no long silence when this one ends.
About the other story
Some of you have found Available Light. For those who have not: it is a different animal. No second life, no knowing what is coming, no building to buy. It is one man in the present tense, a former medical researcher who now photographs weddings for a living, standing in a hotel room in Prague rewriting the same sentence for the ninth time. Where The Long Way Back is about a man rebuilding an entire life with an unfair advantage, Available Light is about a man who is very good at looking at other people and has no idea what to do when someone looks back. Quieter, smaller, closer to the bone.