A recent YouGov poll found that 40% of British adults haven’t read a single book (including audiobooks) in the last year. It was published on World Book Day – as my kids went to school dressed as Harry Potter, Monkey (from Bunny vs Monkey) and Bear (from Rabbit and Bear).

Watching the marvellous mix of costumes arriving at the school gate, I wondered how we lose the reading habit so quickly. Well, actually I wondered why one kid was dressed as a massive inflatable duck. But I also wondered about the reading thing.

I won’t express shock or horror about the lack of reading. I won’t even blame Netflix. I think people are often busy and stressed, and to be honest I might never have started reading if I’d had access to today’s selection of TV and computer games when I was a kid.

All this might seem worrying to a little-known author trying to make his way in the world. But let’s focus on the positive: 60% of people had read a book in the last year, and 4% had read 50 or more.

In fact, only 3% of people said they had read just one book – so, once people start reading, they rarely stop at one. The most common bracket was 6-10 books. I take comfort from that, both as a writer and as someone who thinks books are important (especially as the book-banning types seem to be running large parts of the world just now).

As I mentioned last month, I plan to publish my first novel this year. I’m now doing the final edit, and thinking about fun stuff like getting a cover designed. You’ll be the first to hear about the publication date. If you know a British person who hasn’t read a book in the last year, please get them a copy once it’s out – and we can get the non-reading percentage down to 39.9.

Comfort Fiction

This month’s Comfort Fiction comes from Susanna Clarke’s weird and wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. The following is a nice line for aspiring authors – but it also applies to all of us in almost everything we do. And it’s a reminder to savour any successes that come our way: “There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure. It is, after all, what everybody does all the time.”

Dicing with Death

This month we released the finale of our four-part Mothership adventure. It was created and run brilliantly by Charlie. I particularly loved the sinister Dark Star corporation and its chirpy (but relentlessly corporate) AI voice, Halia. If you haven’t listened, all episodes are available wherever you listen to podcasts: https://dicecompany.podbean.com/

We’re now fully engaged in recording new chapters of our main D&D story, Small Embers. Carefully avoiding spoilers, some of you will know that… stuff happened to my character, Augustus, before our winter break. So I’m excited to pick up the story after what feels like a long time away.