A Festive Season

Hail readers!

It is winter at last, and the weather here in Amsterdam has been... atrocious. It started out well: we had a beautiful day of sunshine on the 1st of December. The second day of December saw fog, albeit rather beautiful fog (as my photos, to be uploaded later, will attest to). Alas these past few days have degenerated into pouring rain—intermixed with hail—howling wind and cold. Alex is indeed rather miserable.

What adds to his misery is that he has altogether too much work to do: he has already done one exam and presentation today, with two more written exams and one oral left. On top of that, he has one more essay to write, and a statistics project to finish.

For these reasons, Alex has been unable to work much on Fallen Love. He is more than halfway through, but recent progress has stalled, and will only really take off again at the end of this month.

Still: there’s no point being grumpy. ’Tis a festive season, after all. This brief update will therefore finish with an excerpt from Fallen Love:

“You wanted to kill him, didn’t you?” I ask. “Not because you should, but because you could.”

“My dad was right about this much. It’s part of me, Conall: the desire to kill. It’s in my nature, like a cat catching mice.”

“But do cats ever become friends with mice?”

“That’s the million euro question, isn’t it?”

I embrace him, suddenly, unable to contain it any longer. His hair is soft against my hands; his body is still and statuesque.

“Make me a millionaire, Mark.”

“Oh, I think you already are, Conall.”