Exciting announcement! (I hope)

[cosmolinguist]

I realized the other day, as you do on a bus when you aren't thinking of anything much, that it's almost exactly a year from now that my U.S. passport, the one I got soon after I moved here, expires. For years I'd been hoping that, by the time I had to replace that one, I'd have a British one to go along with it.

For various logistical and personal reasons, it'll make my life substantially better if I can get British citizenship by about this time next year.

I was and remain immensely grateful for and touched by all my friends' offers of setting up and contributing to a crowdfunding thing to pay my fees for applying for British citizenship, even though I had to turn them down because Andrew wasn't comfortable taking money from our friends.

But he came up with a solution that sounds like fun. He'd feel much better about my getting the money from people if I sing for my supper, and suggests I write a book about being an immigrant and all that kind of thing. Which I'm happy to do anyway, because I'm still faced with a lot of surprise that I didn't automatically become a citizen when I married a British person and similar huge misconceptions about how the UK treats non-EU immigrants.

I've already written a lot of stuff about this of course, and I'm going to look into what of that I can re-purpose for a book, as well as adding in other stuff I never wrote about and whatever else needs to be part of the story, like some of Andrew's incandescent responses to immigration rhetoric, and other immigrants from outside the EU if they'd like to share a bit of their stories too: this is about a lot more than my story and I'm aware that compared to many I've had a very easy time of it despite feeling mentally, emotionally and financially hollowed out by the whole process. Which of course is not over yet.

Andrew's done a Kickstarter for one of his own books, and has kindly agreed to sort out all that side of it out for me, and I will let interested people know more about this as soon as I can.

In the meantime, he says he's happy to start setting that up today, but he needs "a title and a picture" first. Not necessarily a title for the book, he says, but for the project. "Like, 'Holly's Immigration Adventure,' or 'My Struggle.' " Neither of those seems quite right to me (too jolly, too fascist) but my own best idea so far is 'Baroness of the Moon' which I don't think is very good, either.

So, feel free to help crowdsource the title too!

Comments

[magister]

That's that sorted then... My work here is done.

[cosmolinguist]

You're so helpful. :)