On the 21st of December Michael Wombat lost his battle with cancer and I lost someone I had been writing alongside for more than a decade. I wanted to mark his passing by sharing how our friendship came about and developed.
I met Michael Wombat (Wombie) online, on Twitter, in 2011, and first met up with him in 2013 at a writers meet up I organised in Nottingham (top middle, and middle middle). And then the last couple of years, since his diagnosis, I have travelled over to the UK to visit him.
The last two years I have also been working on a Steampunk Dark Fantasy trilogy (we had no idea how long it would be until we wrote it), he had asked me, Victoria Pearson and Lisa Shambrook to join him in writing. We love it (cover of first one bottom left). We all have a different character and part of the map - which Wombie created, along with many more. And created excel sheets about how we would weave it together. Fortunately we finished the first draft in October, which was when he let us know he was too ill to get to his computer. I spend a frustrating couple of weeks putting all three books together into a special edition, and getting it printed and into his hands before it was too late (middle bottom picture). It's something I'll always be grateful I was able to do.
I was lucky enough to star on the covers of a couple of his books (middle left) All his books are middle right- yes I have them all, he's a brilliant writer.
And he also provided some stories in a collection of Weird, Dark, & Sci-fi fiction, I published called Slipping Through (bottom right).
He was my editor (he had superb understanding of grammar and caught everything), and he was who I turned to about my cover design. Losing him in my life will leave a big hole. He was gentle, funny, flirtatious and loved to gather people into communities, through running funny weekly online events, like Sausage League & Pie Cricket (both games guessing how many sausages/pies were on display in his takeway, creating a points system & winner each season), and Twanta (Twitter Secret Santa). To say he will be missed is a huge understatement. He touched many people's lives and souls.
My thoughts are of him today and his lovely wife Mary, and their two daughters, Ellie & Kit. All of our hearts are broken just a little bit on their behalf.💔
