Postscript

Special thanks to Armando Ianucci, Peter Capaldi, Rebecca Front and the rest of the fantastic cast of The Thick of It. The characters in Reshuffle were all of Ianucci's making with the exception of a host of original supporting characters such as Doctor Ravi Raman, Julia Tucker, Philip Peel, Andrew Roth. Those were straight out of my imagination.

The original premise of this story was "What if Malcolm's sweary gruffness was all an act and he was really a kind person underneath? What would cause him to put on such a harsh persona? What would it take to make him set it aside?"

I had no idea how big a project this was going to become, and am both pleased and horrified to reach the end. If you have ever aspired to write fiction, fan fiction or otherwise, I encourage you to dive right in. You've got nothing at all to lose and everything to gain. The writing I've done here has made me more confident elsewhere. Every review I received meant the absolute world to me. Thank you so much for those who took the time to leave a comment; you kept me going and made this story happen.

In the course of writing this story, I learned just enough to be dangerous on an array of topics spanning from chronic lung disease to the National Health Care System to the UK election process. I had a great time researching Scotland, Glasgow, and historic artifacts such as the names of the gaols and where they were located back in the early 1970's. It was also fascinating to research the composition of The Met and the CID, and the history of Police Strathclyde. This is another plug for potential authors: you get to learn a ton about your subject matter.

I also learned that my version of Microsoft Word really insists on changing British spelling back to American spelling, even when I changed the default settings. It was probably the most frustrating thing about writing this story. The up side is that I had to manually review and edit each chapter, and got a much firmer grasp on British spelling. My British clients thank you, and my American ones wonder what I have against the letter "Z."

I'm sure I got a million things wrong, and really wish someone would point them out so I can do better if I choose to write another story set in the UK again. That said, you can still do that, either through commenting on the individual chapters, or PMing me. If there was something that you thought worked particularly well, of course I would love to know about that, too.

The Guardian, The Mirror and The Daily Mail are all real newspapers. The Tattler and Glasgow Daily are not, at least not that I am aware of.

I borrowed copiously from the original series. For example, you might have recognized George Alagia, a BBC news personality in the original show. Any of the really good profanity you saw in this story probably came straight from the show. I rarely swear in real life and knew I couldn't pull it off in print without help.

When I first started this project, I had no intention of going so deep into Malcolm's past or the child abuse angle. That theme just emerged on its own, and once it was out there I couldn't sweep it under the rug. For those readers who were annoyed or put off with that, sorry it went there and thanks for sticking with it anyway.