The Voss Papers

For various reasons - none of them, sadly, being hordes of desperate producers fighting for the exclusive right to turn  The Honourable Boytoy   into a prestige miniseries starring Andrew Scott as Jimmy Easterly (I will take no further questions; he would knock the 'tragic desperation to believe in his duty' side of Jimmy clean out of the  park  Prater) - this last month has been rather busier than I would have liked.  However - hell and/or high water notwithstanding, I like to keep my promises, and I am pleased to say that my latest novel,  Her Ascendant Intern  is out now: the story of Hannah Wilson - a high-achiever desperate for recognition - who joins a mysterious and exclusive internal promotion scheme run by her company, Velvet Helix. All it takes is agreeing to test an experimental behaviour-modification chip... and demonstrating just how well she can take orders from the CEO's secretary, Beverley Sinclair - a woman whose authority and approval...

In the year 4626, if Man is still alive (if eBooks can survive), they will find... ...What, exactly? Heck, even if my hard-copy paperbacks survive , I suspect that they won't be in mint condition (because, of course, they'll be incredibly well-read!). Assuming my books make it at all, either in paperback or in an eReader format that hasn't evolved into something too incomprehensible, I can't imagine they will be complete. Short of an incredibly dedicated reader deciding they're going to translate all of my works through the principles of Nuclear Semiotics -  " This is not a book of orgasm . Something by Anna Voss is here. It was hot to us. It is still hot to you now,"  perhaps? - then the most probable way my work will make it over 2,600 years into the future is in... well, fragments.  Oh, I trust the British Library will do their best, and I'm grateful to the 1911 Copyright Act for establishing my right to legal deposit - but for practical conservat...

I never meant to have a pattern to my book chapters. But it made logical sense for the first chapter of my first book, On Chestnut Tree Lane to begin with 'Chapter 1: Arrival,' since it deals with Scott's arrival at Whitmore House. And - as  Anna Voss Writes The Classics might suggest - I do like to give myself the odd formal constraint or challenge when I write, so it took no time at all to decide I should see if I could start every chapter with a word beginning with A.  And, obviously, I could; it wasn't, by itself, a very interesting challenge. But if I took it further...  Well. Who doesn't enjoy a few extra restraints?  So it was that when I started writing Sense of Submission , I started it with 'Chapter 1: Beginning',  and gave it 'B' for its chapter headings. Then, because I was learning that I often like to write two drafts at once, I started  Mantamer using chapters starting with a C. Which was all lovely and tidy, right up until it wasn...