Jessica Townsend feels for George RR Martin. The author of the bestselling middle-grade fantasy series Nevermoor has just released the fourth instalment, Silverborn, two-and-a-half years after it was supposed to come out in October 2022. Readers who were nine when the third book, Hollowpox, was released in 2020 had become full-blown teenagers by the time Silverborn hit bookshops in April. Townsend is now wryly mortified to be “One those authors where people are just tapping their watches and being like, ‘Excuse me!’
“I had to turn off social media for a period,” she admits over Zoom from her home on the Sunshine Coast, where she lives with her two spaniels Vyvyan and Rik. “I was getting so many well-meaning nudges of ‘Where’s the book?’ I’m not having a fun time, guys. I’m not on a cruise. I promise you I’m in agony.”
