This month’s blog doesn’t come from me but from Greg McQueen, the brain behind the 100 Stories for Haiti project mentioned on our news page.

Greg’s Story: The title of the project comes to me as I research some facts about the earthquake online. ‘100 Stories for Haiti’. I type some notes. A few strung-together facts from the news reports I’ve seen about the earthquake in Haiti. I print them and switch on my webcam. I glance at the notes but I’m not really reading them. The words come out because they are already there.

‘Dear Twitterverse,’ I hear myself say. ‘On January 12th 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck near Haiti’s capital…’

When I am finished I post the video on YouTube, and embed it on my website. I post it on Facebook and Twitter for good measure, and then wander downstairs and stick the kettle on. As I am making tea, my mobile phone chimes. It’s an e-mail. Someone commenting on my YouTube video. Blimey, I only just posted it. I read the comment. Then I read it again. What the heck have I done?

I hear the front door open, and my wife comes in. She smiles, peels off her coat, and dumps it on a chair before joining me in the kitchen. She slips her arm across my shoulders and kisses my cheek. Then she frowns, because she’s seen the look on my face.

‘You okay?’

‘I don’t know. I think I might have just made a total arse of myself.’ Her frown deepens.

‘I just posted a video online, asking writers to send me their stories. I’m going to publish a book and donate all the money to…I don’t know. Maybe the Red Cross.’

She’s still frowning.

‘What about your novel?’ she asks. ‘I thought you needed to finish it?’

‘I do. But…’ I shrug. Don’t know what else to say.

‘You haven’t thought this through, have you?’ she says.

I shake my head, as though I am a ten year-old confessing to breaking a window.

‘I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ she says. Smiling now.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’ll help you make the cover if you like.’

‘Cover?’

‘Books need a cover, don’t they?’

‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘Books need a cover…’

Shit, she’s right. I haven’t thought this through at all.

’...and it needs quite a lot of other stuff, too.’

Starting the project was a rush. I admit it. I started the project thinking that I’d scrape together 100 stories. 400 within a week really was a fantastic surprise.

Two weeks into the project the whole thing nearly collapsed. The first paperback publisher pulled out for totally understandable reasons. Other things were going on. People in the project were telling me to stop. That was a real low point.

As I’m writing this … the new paperback publisher is typesetting the manuscript, and today, they sent through the ISBN number. We’re setting up to take pre-orders in anticipation of the official publication date, March 4th, 2010.

One highlight that hasn’t happened yet … the moment I hold an 80,000 word book in my hand. A book that me and a bunch of other writers banded together to make. I’ll probably stare at it for an hour, cry for a bit, and then climb into bed and sleep for a week.