My blog went a bit viral...!

The past week has been a bit strange... what with that last blog post of mine, the story about Bowie and the autistic boy suddenly going viral. It was retweeted by all kinds of people - by Iman and Duncan Jones themselves, and then Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman... and thousands upon thousands of readers all over the world. And as of this afternoon it's had just about 160 thousand readers just on this blog alone. That's not counting, of course, all the tumblrs and other sites that shared it. 

160 thousand readers...!  Like my friend Simon said - imagine if all those readers paid a quid!

Which reminds me... I *do* have a Patreon page, where I publish new short stories and pieces weekly, and where you're invited to help support an impoverished writer to keep on going!  It's right here!

I think the piece I published here last week strikes a chord. I love the comments from people with autism, and parents with autistic children. I love the way people are talking and thinking about shyness and masks and the particular kind of magic that David did in that moment with the magic mask. I also love the fact that people have said that the story feels a bit like having David Bowie with us again, for just a few moments. I love it when people say they can hear him actually saying those words. 

Since last week I've been working and writing and channelling and fictionalising the real life material into a fully-fledged short story. It’s become a story set at Christmas, filled with magic and frost and flickering movies… and music, too. I’m calling it ‘Stardust and Snow’, and I’m hoping to publish it. I always wanted to publish a short Christmas book... a perfect Christmas story - like Truman Capote's 'A Christmas Memory', maybe. 

While I was in Scotland I sat in cafes writing and drawing – in both Glasgow and Perth. Here are some drawings from those damp, sunny October days, of people drinking coffee and eating cakes and working on laptops, just as I was, working on my story...