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Hey Reader,

You know those people who believe in alien abductions and possessions and things? I used to think they were delusional BUT LISTEN.

I was at gymnastics on Tuesday and I swear something took over my body because I’ve been practising my front somersaults along the tumble track and into the foam pit for months now.

They’re getting pretty good.

But doing them on the floor? NOPE.

It’s a sprung gymnastics floor so it’s not tiles or anything, but still: NOPE.

There’s a big difference between bouncing bigly on the very sprung tumble track and onto a mat sitting on top of a huge foam pit, and bouncing much less bigly on the sprung floor and onto a slim squishy mat at the same height.

It’s scary. Especially when you have knees like mine, which don’t need much encouragement to explode.

(I regret leaping from that speeding horse when I was 20 tbh.)

So on Tuesday, the mat came out onto the floor and I was like absolutely not but I’ll practice my run-up and jump as bigly as I can onto the mat. Just a normal jump, ya know.

Did a couple of those.

Then what I can only describe as a presence entered my body, shut down my brain, and flipped me into a somersault.

Nobody was as surprised as I was.

Then I did it again six times under my own steam.

My mission in life is now to discover what happened and harness it so I can apply it to everything else I want to do but for reasons known only to my brain am not doing.

Then perhaps I’ll bro up and offer it for sale at $97 for people who desperately want to write their book or start their creative project but aren’t.

Watch this space.

OR, in the absence of magic, aliens, or ghostly possession, you could drop me an email and claim one of the two remaining Book Breakthrough: Unlocked sessions on offer this November.

Get your book started and walk away confident that you have the tools, skills, and plan to write it.

No funny business necessary.

Fun guaranteed.

Okay, time for today’s Friday Goodie Bag. These are my gifts to you:

Komorebi on canvases

Last week I mentioned komorebi and Julia — amazing fine artist and long-ago designer of my book cover — replied and told me all about her current obsession with “sunlight filtering through trees” although the meaning of komorebi is so much deeper than that. She’s making beautiful pictures and when my house renovations are done I’ll be hanging at least one of them on my walls.

James Blunt promoting his new album

I’ve long been a fan of how bloody funny James Blunt is. He’s one of the OG clap-backers on Twitter-that-was. Then he appeared on Celebrity Traitors and seems to be a lovely man too. Anyway, he’s still very funny and he’s promoting his new album Airplane Mode and it’s making me laugh so much.

How things are made

I love a behind the scenes and I love gymnastics and I love seeing people do ridiculous things so when Daniel Labelle teamed up with gymnast Frederick Richard and did a photoshoot I watched this reel about 10 times in a row. This is how you get mad photos.

This Writing Battle

Saw someone on LinkedIn talking about how they wrote a bunch of short stories and was intrigued because my novel is going nowhere fast, and turns out they’re doing Writing Battles.

Having your doctorate and eating it too

Inspired by the gloriously ridiculous and creative “Dance Your PhD” competition, did you know there’s also a Bake Your Doctorate event? Yes — a bunch of beautiful nerds create a cake or cakes based on their doctoral research and I couldn’t love it more. Also I now want cake. (Psst you should watch it because one of the cakes contains genitals haha.)

What I’m reading

I’ve never read any Salman Rushdie, then I saw The Moor’s Last Sigh in the library. I am enjoying it but I’m struggling to spend chunks of time reading it (and it’s a verrrry long book) so I might have to come back to it around Christmas and return to brain candy for a while. Some books really need you to dedicate an hour or two at a time at minimum, and right now I’m either doing all the things or falling asleep within 20 minutes of getting into bed. Le sigh.

What I’m writing

Well. I accidentally entered a comedy competition that is occurring on December 4 in Evesham. I have a set but it’s too long, so I need to work on that. So that is what I’m doing. It must contain one Christmas joke which honestly is the thing that is freaking me out the most.

Word of the week

cockamamie

Love this word because honestly it describes quite a lot of my life: something that is ridiculous, silly, or incredible.

Quote of the week

RIP Sir Patrick Stewart. I was absolutely gutted when he died. Would it be wonderful if everyone watched Star Trek: The Next Generation and tried to live up to those ideals?

Happy Friday. I’m off to deliver a VIP Day for a remarkable client. I have one spot available in December, then I’m done for the year.

TTFN,

Vicky 🫡

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