My wonderful friend Roisin gave me the most generous gift for my recent birthday - she brought Hatch City to life with her artistic skills! Her drawing perfectly represents the city in my imagination: dark, drowning and dangerous ... and everything under the shadow of the looming Watchbreakers' Tower. It's really exciting for me to have somebody else make the effort to step into a world that previously only existed in my head, and to bring back proof that they really were there!

Hatch City has been very alive in my imagination lately also. I've been working hard on the book over the last few weeks, drawing up huge flowcharts of the fabula and contemplating the syuzhet. It feels both like I've come a long way and also like I'm just starting. Tiny notes from a year ago make sense all of a sudden, and I'm having plenty of "Aha!" moments. I'd better enjoy the flow while it lasts!