Many thanks to Kevin and the rest at Forbidden Planet for having me there signing books, and for helping clean up my bag, camera case and so forth. I turned up there slightly hung-over and in need of a coke, and before entering the store, took a few gulps from a bottle before returning it to my bag. The cap wasn’t on properly. Result: bag full of coke, three discount copies of Prador Moon sold in the pub afterwards, numerous soaked bookmarks and one defunct digital camera. Suffice to say it wasn’t particularly profitable trip for me.

Nice to meet (in the bookshop and in The Angel) Peter Haydies and Saba, Mark Croucher, Neil Mullins, Scott Hume and Jools Enticknap – who gave up on getting me to sign his second name when he saw I couldn’t even get the first one right! Thanks for an excellent evening, and I hope you enjoyed yourselves. You’ve learnt now that the SF writer is just as capable of talking complete bollocks after a few pints as any other mortal. In fact, I think that’s par for the course.

12 thoughts on “

  1. Neal,

    Stick to the beer mate, those Class A drugs will ruin your health as well as your camera…

    /quote Result: bag full of coke, three discount copies of Prador Moon sold in the pub afterwards, numerous soaked bookmarks and one defunct digital camera.

    Lucky you didn't pass any sniffer dogs

  2. Glad to see with the help of a querty keyboard my name is correctly spelt !!

    Not sure how many authors have put a 'my bad' on the front page before 🙂 Or had original signed, coke stained book into the bargin. My partner found it very amusing.

    It was indeed an excelent evening, with some truely interesting people. And for once my trip out of London was trouble free, and the trains were on time (yes, shock horror) and despite leaving at 8:45 I was home by 10. Result.

    Oh, and the book isn't bad either ! Love arac already. I've always wanted to see a 3 foot aracnoid drone to a 'tippity' dance.

    Already looking forward to the next one !

    –Jools

  3. Ah, someone had to say it, Bob. I would have prefered it to be a white powder rather than a sugary sticky liquid, really.

    Jools, the next one is just a few days away from being submitted to Macmillan.

  4. I took it slowly on Friday, 60 pages only. I never touched it at the weekend, But still I have finished it due to not paying attention and reading too much last night. Bollocks! As an AI might say!

    F*kin excellent, won't say anymore till everyone else has finished it.

  5. As for the camera, open it open and clean it with 100% alcohol – should evaporate with no residue left – just be really careful to damage the lense / sensor and you should be okay.

    Always works for me on laptops.

    /David.

  6. Thanks, David, I'll give that a go. It's definitely not working right now (and I've ordered another camera) so whatever happens with it will be no loss.

    Where would I be able to buy 100% alcohol?

  7. Look guys, I've got the roll-ups and the normal booze and that's quite enough for me. If I acquire any more bad habits I'll be dead before Christmas.

    Anon, Polity Agent has been doing very nicely on Amazon (by the rankings). A week and a half ago its ranking was in the sixties, it was number one on the bestseller list for pre-orders and remained there until it actually did go on sale. It also went as high as number six on the overall bestseller list for SFF. No, not to shabby for an expensive hard back.

  8. Hey, glad it all went reasonably well! (apart from the coke incident, of course – I did something similar when I was at school but only a few school books got ruined, no loss there…)

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