Meetings and more press

It's been a pretty busy week, though for once not all of it has been book related. After an unexpected trip abroad we flew home on Saturday, and then on Sunday went to dinner with Clare and Michael, who is my Australian publisher. It was wonderful to meet him, despite the excesses of the Frankfurt book fair that he was in the middle of returning home from he was funny, fun and charming, and his enthusiasm for my book was wonderful to witness. He advised me to think carefully about my decision to write Nine Lives in the third person ('Because I want to see if I can...') and when I said I intended to start the actual writing the next morning asked me if I was sure I was ready to put pen to paper ('I think so...'). I think he's going to be a wonderful ally...

I spent Monday working on the plot of Nine Lives (it turns out I wasn't ready to put pen to paper after all) and then yesterday plunged back into the world of Before I Go to Sleep. I had a meeting to discuss the jacket design, one that I went to with no small amount of anxiety. What if I didn't like it? Would I be able to sit there, next to the designer who had worked so hard, and say 'No! I hate it!' (or even, 'Well...er... it's sort of kind of... ok... I suppose... maybe?'). No, of course I wouldn't. But in the end I needn't have worried. Though it's still in its early stages (far too early for me to post a picture here) I can report that the cover design is going to be stunning and I'm very happy indeed.

And now, today, I find that the local newspaper in the town where I grew up, is running with the 'Midlands Medic/Hollywood' story. You can read it here. It's weird, seeing these newspapers run with what is essentially the same story, all with slightly different quotes and emphases. The Express and Star has me as coming from Amblecote (not strictly true, and certainly not something I said to Dalya when she interviewed me a couple of weeks ago) and it seems I'm now a definitely a medic, which to me implies a doctor, which I'm not. (In fact I'm a Clinical Scientist - a profession which includes microbiologists, biochemists, toxicologists and so on - people who are often sitting in a laboratory with petri dishes and samples, though in my case (Audiology) I spent my time working directly with patients in a sound proofed room). I won't get upset, though. As errors go, these things are reassuringly trivial....