Apolo­gies for my silence over the last cou­ple of weeks – the cause was a bad dose of the House Mov­ing Blues. But now that my inter­net provider has kind­ly decid­ed to recon­nect me to cyber-space…I’m back!  The expe­ri­ence of mov­ing home is every bit as trau­mat­ic as peo­ple tell you – and I don’t just mean that awful moment when you arrive at your new home to find that the toi­let is bro­ken, the sinks leak and the cen­tral heat­ing does­n’t work. (Yes, it was that bad.) 

No, for me what is worse is hav­ing your books and notes shut away in card­board-box lim­bo for weeks. For some­one who could locate any text on his shelves – despite the decep­tive appear­ance of chaos – after a momen­t’s thought, that real­ly is hell. It remind­ed me of a sto­ry about John Bet­je­man. A new assis­tant took it upon him­self to reor­gan­ise the poet­’s library while he was away. Bet­je­man returned to find his delight­ful­ly dis­or­dered shelves trans­formed into pris­tine alpha­bet­i­cal order. He was utter­ly appalled; noth­ing was where he expect­ed it to be. I don’t think the assis­tant stayed in his job very long. 

Still, at least Bet­je­man could see his books. But as one of my new neigh­bours remind­ed me, there is life after card­board box­es.  For the last few days I have been more pre­oc­cu­pied with DIY than Dooms­day Men – although plumb­ing cer­tain­ly has its apoc­a­lyp­tic moments. But the good news is that my book now has an Amer­i­can pub­lish­er – St Mar­t­in’s Press. So my Amer­i­can friends won’t have to make do with import­ed edi­tions!  Here in the UK, Dooms­day Men now has a cov­er, or at least a draft ver­sion of one. I saw it for the first time on Fri­day – an excit­ing although slight­ly fraught moment. After all, despite what peo­ple say, peo­ple do judge a book by the cov­er. But I think it’s great; it has a 50s, pulp fic­tion feel to it and giv­en the hours I spent read­ing old SF pulps and sto­ries that’s high­ly appro­pri­ate. I’ll share it with you soon. Watch this space…. 

I have to say, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing see­ing some­thing you’ve been work­ing on for the best part of three years grad­u­al­ly being trans­formed into an actu­al book, with a beau­ti­ful­ly designed cov­er and a com­pelling blurb. Final­ly, after all those hours in the library and late nights in front of the com­put­er, the dream has become real­i­ty. Now I just hope there will be some­one out there who wants to read it…

[orig­i­nal­ly on MySpace]