Calling Bell and Fletcher

I am short for a word[1]. The word I need is required to bring together both a recent event and a twenty-five year project. This word has a lot of past tense in it, though it is really about what happens next.

What has happened recently is I have felt my work life move me away from things I do outside of work. In relation to what happens next, I felt further away from the project. For lots of reasons I found myself putting my head in the sand and not taking it out until I was well free of work (usually just as I woke up the next day for work). The project requires dedication, not out and out, but enough to know when it is falling off the rails and into the mines under the Temple of Doom. So, once some work things had been sorted, I turned my attention to the project, but before I introduce the project, let's talk about the twenty-five year thing.

What happens next has not taken twenty-five years. At the most, four years[2], though bulk of the work was done in 2013 and 2014. I keep lots of notes with dates on them, and the plot for the project was written 2013, with the first draft (up to Scarborough, if one reads this at a later date and "Scarborough" makes sense) in the second half of 2014. But all drafts, ideas, narration, plots and stuff, all born out of a decision when I was about thirteen, fueled by the Beatles, lured by Terry Pratchett novels, I wanted to be a paperback writer.

I am unlikely to be a paperback writer. My audience is small (thank you for reading) and this is a sideline, not my main job. I will start posting each chapter as I complete them, but there's going to be holidays and other things competing for my time.

Let me introduce my alternative Leeds of 1963, and my private investigators, Bellamy 'Bell' Hesketh and Jacques Fletcher[3]. I like them a lot, and know you're going to get on just fine.

1- Given how frustrated words, letters, and numbers can make me and confuse me, it often occurs to me that it might be odd I enjoy words and reading. That I should then use words regularly *for my own purpose* might just tip me over the edge one day.
2- I can be quite sure of this because I remember thinking about tea poisoning in 2011.
3- I am not sure where Bell or Bellamy came from, though Hesketh is the name of a street near where I live. Jacques Fletcher is a homage to one of my most favourite TV detectives.