A short note. An apology for a prolonged absence from the web. I’ve been stuffing transparencies into my new Nikon slide scanner and waiting 15 minutes while the computer transforms them into something I can use in the book. I still need to write about Collapse, by Jared Diamond, the visit to the farm by France-based US food writer and teacher Patricia Wells, the beginnings of the truffle season, and other things. I may manage some soon. With luck.

The Cook Islands were wet. We had rain on most days, but only one whole day and a couple of afternoons were completely washed out. We sunbathed during the bright bits and snorkelled in the rain. The latter (the swimming, not the rain), at the tiny atoll of Aitutaki, was outstanding – giant clams, big fish, clear water. There was music too – a fabulous little acoustic band called The Sunrays.

The Sunrays in full flow…

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Fourteen chapters of The Truffle Book were emailed to my editor, the very excellent NZ literary heavyweight Mike Bradstock, this afternoon. He will no doubt dissect it and tell me that large chunks are tripe and need to be re-written, and I will meekly do as he says. Well, perhaps not meekly.

For a few weeks I shall cease to be a writer. My magical transformation into designer, scanner operator and production manager is about to begin – but a little later than I had envisaged. My scanner of choice, the Nikon LS 5000, is out of stock in NZ, and I won’t get one until the end of April. Irritating, but unavoidable, and not disastrous, given that two weeks in April are being given up to holidays: the Cook Islands. In the meantime there’s the NZ Truffle Association conference to get organised, and a book to design.

A deep sigh of relief has been heaved. Now what shall I write next?

The word count for The Truffle Book has been ratcheting up steadily over the last five weeks, and I’m well within sight of my 40,000 word target. Today, however, I took a step backwards. I cut a huge chunk out of one chapter because I’m in severe danger of overshooting that target. I cut 2,500 words, but then wrote 1,000 so the net loss wasn’t too dramatic. It was mainly undigested notes pasted in, so not a great loss.

My style is hardly terse, in fact it’s rather discursive (but not flowery, heaven forbid), so my editor will be able to trim some fat, but if I go too far over the top the page count of the book will go up, costs will rise, and that’ll either put pressure on my margins or the finished price of the paper book. Not a problem for the pdf version, except perhaps for bandwidth issues. Quality words only from here on in.

I’m two weeks over my original schedule for finishing the text, so hitting my early May target for publication is now unlikely, but I don’t care (much). It’s such a relief to be making significant progress, and I have a feeling that some of the stuff is not too bad. Makes me smile, anyway.

I’m beginning to think about pictures and illustrations. I’m planning to buy a 35mm slide scanner to handle all my slides (there are quite a few from all over Europe and NZ, and buying a scanner is near enough the same price as having the scans done professionally), but I still need to source others. Another bridge to cross (in due course).