Working on the final edit today. Very exciting. It’s really strange when you have read something time and time again, so much so that your brain no longer sees typos.
Bring in ‘Super Mum’. Yes, my Mum, Jean, is officer in charge of proof reading. Even if Frances (Super Editor) and I have gone over the manuscript time and time again, there are still going to be a few mistakes. So Mum is going to use her years of experience as secretary to a variety of Chief Execs, to make sure all has been covered.
Having said all of that, there will be human error. Even Harper Collins have typos!
Anyway, I have been thinking about Author's bios today and whether or not to have one in Beyond Fragile Boundaries. I have a very dear friend (and web developer – not his fault!) called Maurice Byford who knows me well. I put him to the task of writing about my life story and I think the below has summed me up pretty well…..
Biography of Jill Tipping
By Maurice Byford (with bits cribed from Wikipedia - not to be taken too seriously!)
Jill Tipping was born at an early age. From the age of 4 she could play the Tuba and had a regular place within the London Philharmonic Orchestra touring the country and playing at austere venues such as the DeMontfort Hall in Leicester, the Albert Hall in London and the Winter Gardens in Margate.
At the age of 6 Jill was asked to represent Great Britain at the International Sports Federation annual tournament of Professional Jenga. She came away with a silver wreath, a cup and two hotel towels.
By 8 She was, of course, firmly ensconced in her studies at Cambridge University, Kings College where she graduated with honours the following year in her studies of Astrophysics finishing her dissertation with a presentation of Universal Harmonics as demonstrated using the medium of mime.
In 1982 she was asked to join an all female pop group but was asked to leave when arguments broke out over the choosing of the name Applerama. The other girls went on to form another group with a similar fruit based name.
Jill found fame again in 1991 when she invented the worlds first particle accelerator using just a tube of toothpaste, a Sony Walkman, a water Pistol and a Slinky. The same core design principles were later included in the Cern's now famous Hadron Collider. Due to insufficient postage, unfortunately, Jill's patent claims were rejected.
Disenchanted with the direction that scientific research was taking, in 1992 Jill joined the Police Force.
By 1995 she was Chief Superintendent Commissioner of all Police In England and Wales. By 1996 all crime had ceased and all criminals were safely locked up in jail.
The then Prime Minister John Major found himself in an awkward position without any crime statistics to report during PMQ's, simply, the opposition refused to believe such a thing and his own tenure at Number 10 was in danger and so he had little choice but to recommend early redundancy for Jill.
Since then crime levels have returned to normal scary levels.
After the birth of the Internet and the post natal depression of the Laptop, Jill started to play with online technology discovering a range of online applications that she could use to improve her working day. Jill worked out that by using the back arrow on the online Google calendar she could in fact travel back in time. At first it was days and then Months and Years. She realised that if she went going she could, in fact, travel back and back and back further.
In 1876 back in Victorian London, Jill met with her current husband John Tipping.
She met John as he was working on the building of new Work Houses for the Westminster area of London. During this time the London area was suffering from a severe influx of deranged individuals who were afflicted with a megalomania and were so self enthused that they were unable to stop talking about themselves. With his French work colleague Architect Francoise Duboise, John helped to generate the necessary funds to create the new asylums for speech afflicted egomaniacs. The buildings still stand today and were named by Francoise as the Parley Mental Buildings.
While helping John in his exploits she was pleased to discover that he too was there by virtue of the Google Calendar time machine oddity. As the Internet hadn't been invented yet they soon realised that were stuck in the 19th Century.
It was while She and John were enjoying a quiet stroll in Soho, throwing bread at the peasants, that John chanced upon the solution. Now rich beyond their dreams he was able to use his money to pay a number of printers to create an enormous flip book with advancing days, dates and numbers printed in the bottom right corner. Then as he got his servants to manhandle the book, he was, with the aid of a specially commissioned finger, able to flip the dates forward quickly and so travel forward in time.
Jill used the last of their Groats and Crowns to buy her own finger and so was able to join him forward to 1999.
Needless to say, they were surprised on arriving back in 1999 that the moon was in fact still in place and Martin Landau remained on Earth a mere actor.
Now penniless, they tried to use their time travel experience to sue Google for including dangerous technology in their online applications. Sadly, Google had already used their own technology to travel back in time and remove the app that caused time to flow backwards. Thus preventing any further law suits.
In 2001 Jill discovered her gift for writing. By placing an ink propelling stick onto paper she noticed that when she moved her hand, lines and patterns would form. After some experimenting she realised that she was able to convert these into recognisable symbols and words.
The more words she created, the more there was to read. Until eventually the first book was produced.
Mostly the first book was simply gibberish and unintelligible swirls. But as Jill carried on, she got more and more creative. In 2003 she created the Character 'Henry Porter' who was a speckly child with no friends and no social skills. The launch of her first book 'Henry Porter and the Brick of Inconsequence' proved to be a major disappointment and she was forced to let her secretarial assistant, Miss Rowling, go.
Still Jill persevered and her next book starring Dick Golightly the DNA Detective was a minor success with over 10 people buying a copy. It was the second book in the series that was honoured by David Bowie who immortalised the work with his song 'Gene Genie'.
However, the writing bug stuck and couldn't be removed with even the strongest disinfectant. In 2012 she wrote her first upbeat comedic Novel celebrating the Synod and its sexual deviancy.
It can be expected that many more epic novella may very well be forced onto an uninterested public in the years to come. We wait with baited breath and halitosis for the next adventure to be penned.
