Oh my God, that's awesome! Wow, well done :D And thank you SO MUCH for posting to tell me, because it really is inspiring to hear that it *can* be done (as you can probably tell, my above post was very heavy on the sarcasm). I finished the first draft a couple of years ago, got fairly 'meh' responses from agents etc. - although one agent did request the full MSS which I gather is a Good Sign - and I also shelled out for some professional manuscript critique which has been really useful. So I've started the rewrite, and I feel okay about it, but real life is just so goddamn busy.

It probably doesn't help that I've finally strayed into writing fanfic. Total procrastination, but it's fun, dammit XD

Retraining: want to dodge out of traditional IT/programming into web design. I've got a bit of hands-on experience and a few decent contacts so I'm hoping to gradually build up some bits of freelance work. Again, fitting it all into the Day Job and so forth is quite the challenge.

Thanks again for the encouraging reply :D