Book Stuff, Arsenal

Not a huge amount happening round these parts. I've spent the greater part of my time on the couch watching football, and am pleased with Arsenal's excellent start to the season. Who'd have thought that Adebayor would score so many goals?

The Italian contracts arrived for Lonely Werewolf Girl, which will be the first foreign translation. So that's good. I haven't signed the contract for the American edition yet, but if all goes to plan, it should be published in the USA next April.

Meanwhile, you will hate yourself forever if you don't take advantage of the opportunity to buy a fine signed copy of Lonely Werewolf Girl from my own sales page at lonelywerewolfgirl.co.uk. Really, failure to do so will be a blunder from which you may never recover. I urge you to buy it, simply for your own good, before your life collapses in ruins.

The picture is a draft of the cover art for the new Tor edition of The Good Fairies of New York, coming out in America next June.

Surgical Television

My sore eye recovered, but I thought I'd better remain on the couch for a few days, watching TV, in case I had a dangerous relapse. While idly channel surfing, I came across a reality show about a cosmetic surgeon in California. It's not the sort of thing I'd normally watch, but at the exact moment I tuned in, a woman who was about to have breast enlargement was sitting with a group of friends, all of them Californian glamour models. And the models all removed their tops to demonstrate how good their own breast enlargements had been. So I thought I really should keep watching the programme for a while, for research purposes.

Unfortunately, the show moved swiftly on to the operation itself. I was surprised to see the surgeon making an incision in the woman's navel. Then he slid a tube from her belly button right up inside her abdomen and into her breasts, and inserting the silicon from there. Apparently this produces less scarring. It was however, rather grisly to watch. In fact by this time I was regretting watching it at all. The programme tricked me. One minute it was all 'Hey look at my breasts' and the next minute it was gruesome surgical procedures.

However, if a character in any of my books ever needs a boob job, I now have a lot of background detail to write about. Personally, I think an entry point underneath the arm seemed a less troublesome approach than going in through the navel.

* Says new breast-enlargement expert Dr Millar *

When Agrivex goes shopping with her Aunt Malveria in Camden Market, I think she'd take her new clothes home in this bag -

Eye Problems

I had a pleasant time on Wednesday, meeting my friends Tony, Robin, Les and Angus in a pub in Brixton, where we discussed the important issues of the day, namely music and football. The excursion caused me some problems, in terms of my agoraphobia, but generally was OK. So that was fine.

But this was followed by great misery on Thursday as my eye suddenly became sore. Realising it was undoubtedly a very serious condition, I rushed to the doctor, quite prepared to brush the receptionist aside if she gave me any nonsense about waiting for an appointment. Fortunately for all concerned, I was ushered in to see my doctor fairly quickly

Several minutes and a quick examination later, I was on my way to the chemist with a prescription for a small tube of anti-biotic cream. My so-called doctor claimed it was a mild infection which would clear up in a day or two.

I was unconvinced. I mean, can you trust these doctors? I trudged home, fully expecting to live out my few remaining weeks in agony before dying of some terrible eye disease.

OK, my eye is feeling better now. Possibly it wasn't terminal after all. But I still feel the doctor didn't take it seriously enough.

Have retreated to the couch with emergency duvet, stored in the living room for just such times of crisis, and will drink tea and watch Buffy till I recover.

Does anyone know anything about e-books?

I'm looking for advice.

If I was to put out an electronic version of Lonely Werewolf Girl, how would I do it? Is there a standard format? If not, what's the best format? Does it need to be available in more than one format? How do you make it? How do you sell it?

(And once you start selling downloadable versions, what's to stop people from just copying it and stealing it?)

I'd be grateful for help about these, and any other related questions. I would rather the e-book was my own, available for sale from my own website, than done through some third party service.

Over the past few years, several people have actually given me e-book advice. However, adhering to my normal policy of total incompetence, I've forgotten all their advice, and lost their emails.

So if anyone can help, either by answering here, or emailing me, I'd appreciate it.