ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Sooz, Pseudonym: Kat Black: Katherine Black: Jane doe: Sue Simpson.
Lizards Leap: Kat Black Keepers of the Quantum: Sue Simpson Better The Devil You Know: Sue Simpson People on the Edge: Sue Simpson Rat-a-tat-tat: Katherine Black Dark Around the Edges: Katherine BlackMy Name is Jane Doe: Jane Doe
All available on Amazonuk and in local bookshops.
Sooz 44, lives in Barrow-in-furness with one dog, ninteen mad reptiles, one man and one of two sons.
Haven't posted a journal entry in ages, thought I might start again this year. New year, new start and all that.
Just for explanation purposes, my journals are written in book format with all the names and places already changed so that my loving family can't sue the arse off me. So I appologise for any confusion, but it is still just my day, good and bad as it comes. Ta all.
Saturday 5th January 2008.
We begin this seventh Doe book a little late with none of the usual excitement or anticipation of what’s about to unfold over the next twelve months. You don’t know what will be within these pages and neither do I as each book is written in ramble mode from year’s beginning to year’s end and as old Doris said, (don’t worry if it’s before your time) whatever will be, will be.
I say that I begin this without the usual buzz, that’s because I don’t see it ever making it into book form or hitting the unsuspecting shelves of Tesco. Who knows, this book may be the Doe of Does. It may out doe all Does that have doed before it and be the one that lights the name of Jane Doe, diarist delirious, up in the headlines of the world … but I doubt it.
With my original book in this series, My name is Jane Doe, I created something different. We know that everything is old hat anything biographical is in Vogue and you only have to shit in a celebrity toilet to gain the notoriety and celebrity status to pen your autobiography. If you happen to sleep with a bloke who kicks a pig skin around for a living well …you’ve got it made. However my publisher, critics and the reading public said that the Doe’s were ‘different’, I am just a nobody who happened to be blogging before the common blog became a household combustible.
After Doe One there was a demand to know ‘what happened next’ so I continued to tell my tale. The one year, one book, format came about accidentally and worked well, and so amidst murder and mayhem, crisis and chaos, humour and havoc Doe’s One to Five evolved. I swore from the first that I would only publish each subsequent one if it hit the standard of the last and had something worthwhile to say.
Then, last year in two thousand and seven I penned Doe Six. As it stands at the moment unedited and not even read through, I think that it’s all gone horribly wrong. I had my doubts about that book from day one. I worried that I wouldn’t have enough content to fill it. These books are a running commentary on one inconsequential but strangely chaotic life and the happenings in a nondescript Northern town. But at the turn of two thousand and seven nothing much was happening. I had a settled home life, a two bit job, a good man, one child married off and living the dream and the other well and truly back on the rails after a tough couple of years.
I thought at the time, well here we go lass, life’s finally found its groove and there’s going to be little of interest to report …. But the book surprised me. We had the trauma and conflict of trying to cope with my boss going slowly mad as he sunk further into drug and gambling addiction. This culminated in the shop where I work being dramatically raided and Barry being carted off for a long term in prison after he was caught selling heroine and cocaine from behind our shop counter. I was made manager and the book went off in another direction as I worked hard to bring the ailing businesses round. We had a pleasant little travelogue recess when I had a holiday in Prague and gave my impressions of a gorgeous country….and then …
It went tits up.
Towards the back end of last year I lapsed into my own addiction. Mine was not drugs… but it has proved to be just as damned expensive. After a lifelong battle with this obsession I was in my fifth year of remission. Then out of the blue, Col, my darling eldest son decided that he wanted to buy a lizard for his son.
He asked my advice.
And we were off. My addiction to reptiles resurfaced. I bought one and then another and another. We ended the year owning fourteen lizards.
I had savings.
They have gone.
I had time to do other things. It has gone. My lizards are a huge part of my world.
And therein lies the problem with Doe Six. It began as a typical Doe. It morphed into a travelogue but then reverted back again…which I think was forgiveable and with the tension in previous and subsequent entries I think the gentle pace for a few entries worked well but then….
The final third of the book became a blow by blow guide to herpetology and lizard keeping husbandry. Personally, I think it’s fascinating and my best Doe to date. It had all the essential Doe ingredients and the recipe followed the time worn tramlines. We had a good mix of tragedy and humour, nights of worry and days of achievement… but it all centres around these fifteen little beings with scales. Reptiles are my great love. They are my passion. How many Doe readers are going to embrace my obsessions and feel my passion?
In due course I will sit down and look at Doe six in terms of a marketable book. Can it be salvaged? Maybe … maybe not.
And coming laboriously to the point of the entry. If Doe Six can not be saved… where does that leave Doe Seven?
Que sera sera.
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