Lynne Stringer – Author & Editor

I think most of us hoped that 2021 would be an improvement on 2020 with its COVID craziness and all the problems associated with living in a pandemic. It didn’t help that 2020 was also a hard year for our family personally, so I was looking forward to a better 2021.

Unfortunately, 2021 decided not to be cooperative in a major way in my life, as in the first half of the year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I’m happy to say that I’ve had surgery and they managed to remove all the cancer cells, so it’s likely I will be around for many years yet, but it was difficult to deal with this news and I struggled to see past the diagnosis. It’s still hard, even now, to acknowledge that I’ve had cancer, and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m writing this. It seems weird to say, as I never felt unwell; the problem was found in a routine check so it’s not like I felt sick or sore or anything like that. Confronting the fact that I am now a breast cancer survivor has been almost as difficult as the diagnosis itself.

Happily though, I should be through the worst of it, although there will be a lot of checks over the next few years, and I’m glad to say that I’ve also been busy as an author this year. I’m writing a new book at the moment, tentatively titled Keeper of the Archives. My publisher has agreed to publish The Verindon Conspiracy, which should be out in April 2022, and I’ve had a number of events so far this year, even while going in and out of lockdowns, and I still have another two to come – Brisbane Supanova in November and Brisbane Comic-Con in December.

So things are looking up. I’ll try and keep my thoughts in that direction, rather than looking back.

With Jeanette O’Hagan at the Logan Writers Festival, September 2021

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