Publicate me, baby...

Publicate me like I've never been publicated before! Today is something fo a first for me - never before have I had two books out in the same year. And it's kinda cool... OK, so it's not exactly a feeling I'm going to get used to, given how bloody slow I seem to be writing at the moment, but for this year and next I'm going to be a bifurcated write-ist. Not in any physical sense you understand, just a metaphorical one. After all, we've all seen things we'd rather not on the interweb, and I really don't want to go there.

Anyhow, yesterday was the day that SAWBONES officially hit the bookshelves, but I only got my copies this morning. And they're very cool - especially the cover. The only weird thing is the thickness. From the front they look like a regular book, but from the side they've been on a diet. Having been prone to producing doorstopperish 150,000 word monsters, the sight of a scant 18,300 is pretty damn freaky.

It'll be interesting to see the reaction to it start coming in (as of today it's sitting at #49 in Amazon's Mystery chart), but no one's posted a hatchet-job review yet, so that could well change. It's a bit like taking delivery of a brand new car, and waiting for some sock-sucking cock-wad to scratch the paintwork, or bash into it with their shopping trolley, or ding the wing as they open the door of the rusty piece of crap they're long past caring about. You know the sort of people I mean.

Maybe I should just log into Amazon and post a stinker myself? Get the waiting over and done with?

Or maybe I should just knuckle down and get some bloody work done on the second draft of Book Number The Fifth? So far I seem to have been doing everything possible to avoid it.

Finger out, Stuart. Finger out.

Anyway, while my finger is still well and truly entrenched, I shall point one of my other digits to the calender and say, "See that day there? ... No, not that one, I'm pointing at Saturday the 2nd of August. ... Yes, there, now you've got it. Well, I'm going to be at the Union Bridge branch of Waterstones signing copies of SAWBONES... What? ... Oh, yeah, I'll probably be signing other things too. I'm not proud. ... Boobies? Well I don't know about that, but I dare say I could try. ... No, my pen isn't normally that cold. ... Yeah, well, anyway, like I was saying: Watersones, Union Bridge, Aberdeen Saturday the 2nd at 12:30. Be there, or be somewhere else! Like in the pub."

Right, back to work!