There's a Bloom County (1) cartoon sequence where Opus the penguin has written his autobiography, "A Penguin's Tale"(2). Having finished it he sets up for a local signing, making his elaborate preparations amidst stacks of copies of his book. His sole attendee is a cockroach (appropriately enough for my purposes) who charges in demanding "Does he sign body parts?"

It's one of the writer's nightmares, surely. My agent told me of an author he knew who got a signing spot at a convention… next to Terry Pratchett. Plenty, plenty of people queuing, just none of them for him. It's a terrible thing to sit there with a pen in your hand and literary tumbleweeds blowing past you on the barren desert air.

However, none of that, not yet. I'd like to thank everyone who turned up in Reading on the 7th, and here in Garforth on the 14th for the signings, which went extremely well. Certainly I think we cleared Reading of copies of Empire altogether.

For those who are of a more northerly persuasion, a reminder that I'll be at Travelling Man, the games stop in central Leeds, at 1.00pm on the 28th of February, all welcome.

(1) If you don't know Berke Breathed's Bloom County strip cartoon you should definitely make tracks to hunt some down. Absolutely top flight stuff.

(2) Later jazzed up and re-released by an entrepreneurial friend as "Naked Came I"