geekrock84-deactivated20191230 asked: Let me start out by saying that I'm big fans of both you and your wife. Lately, I've noticed her commenting about being a single mother, I believe it was on a Facebook or Instagram post of her's, I dont recall. Anyway, how do you feel about her claims of being a single mother and life being hard because she works a lot. As a single mother I felt slightly offended because she is in fact not a single mother but has a husband who is well off and a part of their child's life.

I do understand why you are offended. I think what Amanda is saying is that she feels very much like a single mother right now. She’s in the US, with Ash. She dresses him and walks him to nursery school, picks him up, walks him home and looks after him until bed, and tries to get work done in the cracks, when he’s at school and after he’s asleep.

I’m in the UK right now, working 7 days a week 13-16 hours a day in order to get Good Omens over the finish line. I went home to the US for Thanksgiving, and at Xmas, but in the last 3 months I’ve been home for about 8 days altogether. And yes, I call home, and yes, I’m financially fine should Amanda not work (although Amanda makes her own money and does her own work, and has for much longer than I have known her, and is not stopping her album release schedule or touring plans because she has a child). But she’s being, in effect, a single mother right now, and one dealing with a small boy determined to go to London and see his dadda.



I go home on Saturday, if nothing untoward happens to keep me here, after working on Good Omens away from home full time in the UK and South Africa for 18 months. I cannot wait.

And then we will change roles.

It would not surprise me if, at times in the next 18 months, with Amanda on a world tour to support her upcoming album (It’s called There Will Be No Intermission) I wind up feeling a bit like a single father. (I won’t be. She will come back. But you can feel very lonely if you are looking after a child alone for a week or so, let alone for 3 months.)

(And yes, we are both privileged as hell and aware of that. She’s a songwriter and performer, and she’s successful, has a Patreon that supports her now better than an old-style record label ever would have done. I’m a bestselling author. We can afford food, places to live, and help, and we can afford babysitting and all the other things that make life as a parent less difficult. And we are grateful.)