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Philip Pullman is 79 years old, and he has finally wrapped up the story of Lyra Silvertongue that began in 1995 with the first book of the Northern Lights series, The Golden Compass, with his newest book, The Rose Field. The road to concluding Lyra's journey has been a "struggle" for the author, as he discussed in a recent interview with The Washington Post.

Unlike his previous novels, Pullman didn't write The Rose Field by hand. And this was a change necessitated by the effects that COVID has had on his body. Pullman said, "I’ve always written by hand, three pages a day — about a thousand words every day. But this book was more difficult because COVID came along, and it’s left its mark on me. I’m tired all the time. My hands hurt. In fact, my wrists hurt so much I can’t hold the pen very easily anymore. So I couldn’t write this one by hand as I had for the previous 50, 60 years. I had to type it all on the computer." 

Thankfully, Pullman was able to adapt to the changes in his body and use a laptop to write the book. In perfect Pullman fashion, he mentioned the gadget he placed on top of his laptop after writing each day: "On top of it I put like a paperweight, a heavy piece of glass and copper, which had been given to me by the scientists at the Rutherford [Appleton Laboratory]. This was a part from a machine that they used to detect dark matter — only the glass had broken a bit and it was cloudy and it didn’t work anymore. They were going to throw it away, and they gave it to me, which was very nice. So I now put that on top of the computer, so it can go on detecting dark matter while I’m away."

Maybe I should look into procuring part of a dark matter-detecting machine to keep by my work computer. 

The Rose Field is available now wherever books are sold. 

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