So Gemsigns is in. Not in my hot little hands, sadly – I am still camping out at a Premier Inn in Leeds, not really the place to have cases of books sent. But it’s in at the publisher’s, wherefrom copies are flying right back out again, into the hands of reviewers and bloggers. I’m nothing if not a realist, and excited though I am by this, I know that not all of them will love it. The chances are good that not all of them will even like it, or get it, or think that it’s about the things that I think it’s about. As a friend said to me last night, it isn’t just mine now, and it will have as many meanings as it has readers.

That’s fine. No, really. Gemsigns is about many things to me, and one of them is truth – more specifically the way truth differs depending on who you are and where you stand. And as in art, so in life.

So before any of them have had a chance to read and comment, to love or loathe or be lukewarm, I want to thank all of the reviewers. Thank you for entering the world of the ®Evolution. Thank you for getting to know its people. Thank you for taking the time to say what you think; thank you for your truth.