The Well-Tempered Clavier

Britain’s best-loved writer, Katie Price, was up in Scotland yesterday for a signing session of her latest blockbuster "Pushed to the Limit".
 
And seeing as that Katie and I go way, way back to her days as a Sun Page Three girl, I was at the front of the queue.
 
Well not really at the front of […]

A signing session in Waterstone’s, Edinburgh, on Saturday - and along for the ride, I had one Big Issue seller, Sean, and one fourth-year university student, Ellie.
 
We sold, I guess, about 40-odd books.
 
But what I was more interested in was the evolving chemistry between Ellie and Sean.
 
There had been some debate earlier in this […]

Still not bought a signed copy of The Well-Tempered Clavier yet for your granny?
 
Maybe your baby-sitter might like one too.
 
And I hear that the book is also going down pretty well with the kids; teenage lads especially.
 
Well, it’s still not too late to get yourself down to Waterstone’s this morning - Saturday, 11am until […]

Great news for all you book lovers out there - finally, after more than 13 years apart, two of Britain’s most respected authors are to be reunited on Monday.
It was in 1995 that they met for the first - and last - time. That fateful meeting place was at Heathrow Airport, Terminal One, followed by an all […]

Some very slight embarrassment.
 
I find that not only have I not visited the world’s largest pineapple - which is, apparently, in South Africa - but …
 
I failed to attend a talk that I was supposed to give.
 
CRINGE-OLA!
 
Now I’m sure this sort of thing happens all the time to Idle Tom the publisher. He probably couldn’t […]

For the first time I’ve received some feedback - official feedback - from one of the events that I’ve attended.
 
The organisers of last week’s Kensal Library panel got the 32-strong audience to fill out some appraisal forms: Four said it was excellent; 14 rated it very good; and one said it was "Ok".
 
Not too […]

By a bizarre quirk, I visited a place at the weekend which is shaped exactly like the hairstyle of Idle Tom the publisher.
 
That could, as it happens, have been any number of things from a hedge (dragged through backwards), to a Carmen Miranda.
 
But actually, I was staying in a Pineapple. In fact, not just "a" […]

Kensal Library, Thursday night: The biggest audience that I’d ever faced as a published author.
 
Maybe 30 or so people there, all of them eager, eager to learn about what it takes to get published. A number of them with note-pads and pens poised, the better to scribble down every pearl as it fell from my […]