Another email, another publishing assistant. I realise how long this book has been in gestation by the number of contacts I have had at the publishers. I’m not sure whether dealing with new authors is part of the junior roles, but they seem to be moving on quite rapidly. I hope they are moving onwards and upwards, because from what I recall from publishing mums, they were to a one, all ex-publishing mums. From a purely unscientific poll, it seems publishing does not like women who get pregnant, unless it’s spicing up the plot in one of their authors’ books. So the silence is punctuated by a ‘let’s see how things are going’ email reminder from me and a ‘checking on progress’ reply from them. It’s a long game. Did I mention they had uniformly been female?