Not mountains. Instead, London winter beaches at their best.

Okay, October, you were pretty good.

I’ve recently started spending writing time in the foyer of the National Theatre. It’s not mountains, obviously, but somehow the textures, solidity, lines, height offer something akin.

My very wonderful mother-in-law periodically sends me newspaper cuttings she thinks I might like. Here’s the most recent, and frankly gorgeous, selection, with Jannu East taking centre stage.

Insufficient space here to say it in detail - BUT - the high level is that I’ve just signed a book deal: My memoir of ‘grief, collapse, recovery and big mountains’ will be published by Chatto & Windus (part of PRH) in Jan/Feb 2027. I’m ecstatic. (Here’s one of the mountains.)

Exciting day out today at the prize giving for the @bridportprize Memoir Award where I won runner up back in March. Lesson for life: always prepare a mini-speech for this type of event, or you’ll get caught on the hop, be over-caffeinated, be fazed by the stage lighting, and will gabble.

I wasn’t in the Lakes to walk the Coast to Coast, but I did find myself on a section of it for a couple of miles. That got me remembering the brilliant ‘You Are Here’ - and then I ended up in the bookshop in Grasmere. (There’s more to the Literary Lake District than merely Wordsworth.)

A couple of days ago I took a walk above the clouds.

Definitely the best picture I’ve ever taken from a moving bus. (Yes, it’s in colour. Yes, I’ve escaped for a few days to hills.)

Out last night to hear @darren_mcgarvey (brilliantly interviewed by Nicola Sturgeon) talking about his new book Trauma Industrial Complex - about trauma stories, how we consume them, and how those of us telling our stories can more responsibly look after ourselves. More of this, please.

Walking through London earlier, I realised I was thinking of mountains - this one in particular: Ama Dablam, in the Nepalese Himalaya. I was there in 2010. Fifteen years is a long time for a particular piece of rock and ice to get under your skin. This one, it seems, is still very much under mine.

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

For a long time now it’s been a paradox in my life, the activities I’ve been able to do whilst also being quite (sometimes extremely) unwell. I often wonder how that looks from the outside. ‘She says that she has a chronic illness and yet there she is on a mountain’ etc. So I wrote about it:

And the anniversary itself. Six full years since my darling Matthew died. It’s so much easier now than the first years were. Nonetheless, I needed space, so I’ve been on a long walk in the Surrey Hills. Grief softens. I’ve also grown around the scar. The scar remains. And onwards.

It’s the anticipation of the grief anniversaries that’s the hardest. Tomorrow will be 6 years since Matthew died. Yesterday felt brutal - I was swamped by all I’ve lost.‘I’m going to get bigger from this not smaller,’ I vowed 6 years ago. I have done. I’m proud of myself. But there’s so much loss.

Well - last night I did a sort-of speaker event, talking about many of the hard events of my past fifteen years and what it takes me to handle them. ‘You’re an emanator of light,’ I was told at the end, and then the follow up: ‘Have you thought of writing a book?’ (I may be doing just that.)

This was a big one to write:

Mountains last weekend. Scottish this time.

Well, in all the time I’ve been talking about The Book, the words I’ve used have been these: ‘if I can finish writing it’; and ‘if it gets an agent’; and ‘if it gets a publisher’; and ‘if people want to buy and read it’. This week I reached a milestone: I signed with a fabulous agent. On we go!

London also blue today.

London this morning. Full-on ‘green thought in a green shade’ vibes.

Well, I have weekend plans that involve train tickets to Fort William, a big rucksack, a tent, and the company of a very good friend. Forecast is a bit iffy, but I’m backing us for an excellent time.

Where was I this time last week?

My wedding anniversary today - and I’m sitting reading poetry, and remembering, and feeling sad and also remarkably grateful, because Matthew and I had a lot, and I’m starting despite everything to do okay without him. (And this picture - of which I am very fond - is from my brother’s wedding.)

Spring - and how very desperate I have been this year for it to arrive.

Delighted to say that I won Runner Up in the Bridport Prize Memoir Award. Five years of work and counting, but the book is coming along. (Also some excellent high skiing this week.)

The beautiful London Library offers emerging writers one year’s free membership including masterclasses, networking opportunities, peer support, access to all the Library’s resources and publication in an anthology. Details below. Please share :) www.londonlibrary.co.uk/about-us/ll-...

'Grief, I want to shout, Dr. Vidonne, is not a process we go through. Grief drives through us with churning blades. It forces its way through our bodies as though we are the earth and grief is the plough.' From my new novel, The Orange Notebooks, out with @ofmooseandmen.bsky.social in May 2025!

Matthew’s birthday today, and in the years since he died I’ve always posted a picture of him on this date. And so: Happy birthday, my love. Here you are lounging proprietorially on a Lake District peak back in 2006. Today you would have been 54.

Everest goes sci-fi. No, it’s not the first of April, and, no, I’m not interested. Climbing’s about the full experience, and not primarily about the summit.

Sometimes I say interesting things:

Not mountains, but London has its moments as well.

Helvellyn, including Striding Edge and Catstye Cam, in perfect winter light, from Fairfield, 2nd Jan 2025.

Happy New Year from the Lake District, where the clouds and high winds did eventually clear - and this - THIS - was what was behind them. (Few things are as good as a clear winter day on the Fairfield Horseshoe.)

All best festive greetings, everyone - and for us all the hope of sunlight on the other side of the dark woods.

Happy Winter Solstice to all in the northern hemisphere. The turn of the year's tide, a pivot-point, a day of hope—when the dark stops rising & after which the Sun begins its slow climb back. A day I celebrate more than Christmas or New Year. Fiat lux! 📷 by @annieworsley.bsky.social

Good piece on how Fay Manners escaped Chaukamba after losing her gear. Strong woman! www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...

London was beautiful in the cold today, but not quite up to the standards of a week ago as I was coming off the Fairfield Horseshoe.

The brilliant @stuhennigan.bsky.social interviewed me about 'Home Is Where We Start', (Penguin) for 3:AM Magazine. We chatted about my utopian childhood, writing memoir as a silent witness, Greek theatre, memoir, masks & Microhistory, being a Kid God & more... 3ammagazine.com/3am/we-were-...

Lake District evening last week. I was due in Kendal for the mountain festival, and the forecast was good, and so I got on the train a day early and was treated to this:

Back on the book. It's hard. It's not getting easier. Etc. Etc. (A reality of writing life.) But - as partial explication of that reality: this book is so hard because it's the biggest thing I've ever done. Bigger than writing a doctorate. Certainly bigger than any project in my previous career...

Okay. Second triumph of the day: a short rehab jog after straining my back at the gym 9 days ago. I’ve had a rough month - emergency hospital stay; that strained back; unable to make writing progress; blah, blah. This evening, however (though dark) may be indicative of a corner turned.

Good writing session here this morning. No obvious progress in the text, but some internal shifts happening as I looked at and scraped at and screamed at what I had - and from that, in due course, textual improvement should also come.

So - to introduce myself: I’m a writer (literary novel from 2016, memoir-in-progress); I live in London; my heart is in the mountains (any mountains); I run, lift things, go to climbing walls; I read, a lot; I think, a lot; I do, as much as I can. Lovely to meet you. Let’s be friends.

I’m fairly sure that penguins are no more Biblical than are pale skin and rosy cheeks typical in the Middle East - but nonetheless they (and I) wish you the very best Christmas that is possible for you this year, and send love for the Twelve Days to come.

I've spent the afternoon drafting tomorrow's Substack, and am sufficiently pleased with the result that I'm trailing it in advance. Klaxon: it will appear in subscribers' inboxes and feature a photo taken two hours after this one. You can, if you wish to, sign up here: katejarmstrong.substack.com