It's been a strange month, a life changing one. I went to America for a week. Never flown before, never been outside the UK, so it was quite some adventure.

There had never been a compelling enough reason, before, to make me want to spend that long travelling, to go that far, leave my native soil and my son behind for a while.

Many of the people who follow things Copperage were startled to realise that Tom Brown and I had not met in person. Quite a few mutual friends who only know us through the internet assumed we were in close contact. Four years of collaberating, and it had been entirely internet based - email, and more recently being able to talk through skype.

Getting to meet Tom was the reason that sent me across the Atlantic. We spent a week together, walking, cooking, plotting, painting... the most amazing and inspiring week. The happiest week of my life. Now we're back to being on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and relying on the internet. It is not easy. There will be changes... there have to be. It would be fair to say that we work together even better in person, that the inspiration flows in the most wonderful ways, taking us in new directions. it's easier to focus on the work side of things, but then, for both of us, the making of 'stuff' is central to who we are, how we are. The sharing of creativity, in all forms and ways is the most joyful thing imaginable.

Tom inspires me. I do my best writing when I am making things up for him. Over the summer, I wrote him a fantasy novella - Servant of the Forest, the first estraguil thing I've written in years. Hopefully I'll be able to share that soon, and the Copper Age stuff I've been doing. He has changed me, very much for the better, and everything else changes as a consequence.