I tell yer: assuming someone’s identity? It ain’t all gravy.

Apologies for lately bloglack, but last weekend I made a grisly discovery: turns out that, before (heh!) his life-plans were suddenly and fundamentally changed by yours truly [see ‘THE ENTHOVEN IS DEAD’, right], unbeknownst to me the Enthoven happened to be having a problem with, of all things, one of his /fangs/. Imagine my surprise on Saturday morning, when I found myself in a cab at six am on my way to a hospital for an appointment to have one of ‘is WISDOM TEETH REMOVED.

Got to say, you humans have got some grand surgical facilities on your planet. The staff at Homerton Hospital, Hackney, were a model of efficiency and solicitousness. So great was their efficiency, however, that by the time I thought to protest at what was going on I’d already been sedated and anaesthetized: I awoke on a trolley, with only a row of neat sutures to mark the spot where latterly had been one of the back-fangs I’d grown to mimic the Enthoven’s wonky jawline. I don’t know what they did with the tooth. I was worried fer a while: separated from the rest of me, it was only a matter of time before it stopped looking like a tooth and returned to its natural, undifferentiated, blancmange-like state. But, figuring more enquiries would only incriminate me, I quit the scene as soon as the nurse allowed me – and the last few days I’ve been stuck waiting for the stitches to grow out, the bruises to fade, the swelling to subside and (yeah) yer impressively powerful human /drugs/ to wear off.

On the plus side, bein’ under the weather gave me a chance to catch up on some quality human READING, this time in the shape of the quite gobsmackingly good THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU, by H. G. WELLS.

That Wells was a visionary, and one of the most far-sighted and innovative writers of imaginative literature the human race has ever produced… well, everyone says that, and it’s a bit of a cliche. What’s worth knowing about his stuff (and a lot of critics seem to underplay this) is that lots of his books are just REALLY GOOD FUN – and folks, THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU is a fine example. For a novel written more than a hundred and ten years ago it goes at a cracking pace: by just five pages in the characters are stranded at sea, starving and drawing lots over who’s going to be cannibalized – and, amazingly, the book never really lets up from there. It’s like a fever-dream of vivisection and mutants and horror, all filtered through a contagious atmosphere of shimmering jungle heat. The ideas are great, sure, but the real triumph, it seems to me, is in how sure-footedly punchy and unpretentious the writing is: it’s wild and mad and deliriously evocative, but in its understated way it’s also REAL, it’s fierce, and it’s all over-and-out in just a hair under two hundred pages, without ever having lost its initial intensity. It’s the second time I’ve read this now and – like malaria – I fully expect to face bouts of reading it again and again every so often for the rest of my life. All I can say is, lucky me. And if you haven’t read THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU yet, lucky /you/.

For further details of this and other d&mn fine books, check the Enthoven’s LibraryThing profile.

…Erm, not me! ;p As you may have read by now on the Waterstone’s site, their Children’s Book Award was won this year by Sally Nicholls, for her debut novel WAYS TO LIVE FOREVER. Here’s a pic of her making her prize acceptance speech…

…and here’s a link to an interview with her on the website Write Away. Congratulations, Sally!

Honestly I feel no ‘sour grapes’ about this at all. On the contrary, the book sounds like an incredibly ambitious piece of writing, and one that must have taken an enormous amount of talent – not to mention courage – to pull off. [Check out this review by Mal Peet]

I’ll admit, however, that when the first letters to come out of the judge’s mouth were ‘SA…’ I did get a bit of a jolt. Fact is, the Enthoven’s agent Penny had just taken me out for a rather powerful spicy dinner in London’s Chinatown. If I’d ‘ad to make a speech, there might have been some unintended extra sound effects: URP! (‘scuse me) ;p

All the authors who’d been shortlisted were invited up on stage and given bottles of champagne (see? I ain’t complaining!) And while the cameras flashed at us, the current UK Children’s Laureate, the inspirational Michael Rosen, kept us grinning with an impromptu song, the words of which appeared to be… ‘Weeeeeeeeeee’re top of the league, top of the league, top of the league; Weeeeeeeeeeee’re top of the league, top of the league.” -So, while he might accidentally look half-asleep in the photo above, I can assure you he most certainly was not. HEE HEE HEE HEE! 🙂

It was a fine do all round, with lots of people saying kind and lovely things about TIM (aw, shucks). But a particular highlight was when the indispensible LAURA H. (of whom I’ve already written, see below) managed to sneak me up to the booksellers’ staff room balcony on one of the highest floors of the Waterstone’s Piccadilly building, there to take some spooky photos of the foggy London night. Check out this one, of Nelson’s Column…

…and this one, of The London Eye:

As some of you may know, over the course of the story of TIM, DEFENDER OF THE EARTH not just one but BOTH these iconic London landmarks are ignominiously and utterly destroyed. I’m therefore trying to take as many pics of them as I can, partly to help people really visualize those bits of the book, and partly for a possible future competition, to be held on these pages. [Can’t tell you about that now, but watch this space… ;)]

Meanwhile, as if all the excitement of being up for this year’s Waterstone’s Children’s Book Award wasn’t enough, this morning I ‘eard that the Enthoven’s ‘orrible first book, THE BLACK TATTOO, has just made the shortlist for another, namely the Leicester Book of the Year Award for Teenage Fiction! Over the next few months everyone who attends a Leicester City secondary school will get to vote on which is their favourite out of the following:

BEING, by Kevin Brooks

THE BLACK TATTOO – feh, you know the fool wrote that one ;p

THE ANGEL COLLECTOR, by Bali Rai

JUST LISTEN, by Sarah Dessen, and-

BERSERK, by Ally Kennen

Here’s a link to the award’s blog.

…I’m tense! I’m filled with tension! It’s a TENSION CONVENTION! URP (‘scuse me) Ahhh, thass better… 😉

Sorry for lack of bloggage these last few days. The reason is that I’m rapidly becoming a total basket-case…

Back in October ’07 I received an astonishing piece of news, namely that TIM, DEFENDER OF THE EARTH was to be shortlisted for the 2008 Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize. For those who don’t know, Waterstone’s is currently the biggest chain bookstore in the UK. For the last month, every book on the shortlist (including TIM) has been out on special display in every branch in the country – a pretty awesome start for a young book’s life, I think you’ll agree!

Well, over the last couple of months Waterstone’s booksellers have been voting on which of the shortlisted titles is their favourite. And TONIGHT, at a special party at their biggest branch, in London’s Piccadilly Circus, the overall winner is going to be announced.

Here’s the full shortlist, together with their UK publishers:

Tumtum and Nutmeg by Emily Bearn (Egmont)
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine (HarperCollins)
Stone Goblins by David Melling (Hodder Children’s Books)
Blue Sky Freedom by Gabrielle Halberstam (Macmillan)
Between Two Seas by Marie-Louise Jensen (OUP)
Shadow Forest by Matt Haig (RHCB)
Ancient Appetites by Oisín McGann (RHCB)
Tim, Defender of the Earth by Sam Enthoven (RHCB)
Ways to Live Forever by Sally Nicholls (Scholastic)

Oisin McGann is a terrific writer and Ancient Appetites is tremendous. But if I was a betting man and I had to pick one, I have to say my money would be on Matt Haig’s Shadow Forest. It’s for slightly younger readers than Oisin’s and my stories here, but it’s wonderfully twisted and subversive and funny, with a proper old-school Roald Dahl flavour. However, that’s only taking account of my fellow authors published by RHCB!

As you can see, there’s an extraordinarily wide variety of writing on the list – all sorts of different types of stories. This in itself is a fine indication of the rude health that publishing for young people is currently in (HURRAH!) Plus, in a sense – if it’s not too corny to say it – we’ve all of us won already by having our work highlighted like this, held up for all to see. So, you know what? I’m actually not bothered if I don’t win…

…YEAH, RIGHT! ;p That might be what I’m telling myself. But there’s going to be a lot of people at the awards tonight. And right now folks, I tell you, I’m a nervous fool.

I’ll try to take lots of pics and report back in the next day or so. Wish me luck,

-JagmAHEM: I mean, ‘Sam’ 😉

Q&A time again, and this Guestbook question comes from Louise at Ashington High School, who asks:

“Do you base your evil characters on things you don’t stand for or dislike?”

This is an excellent question, and the subject of baddies is one I find especially fascinating: HUR HUR HUR! 😉

When planning a story with a baddie in it, it’s certainly tempting to make the baddie as unsympathetic as possible, as this (of course) will supposedly make your ‘good’ characters seem all the more good. But in fact I reckon this is a mistake. The problem is, it tends to lead to very simplistic storytelling, with a very skewed ‘black and white’ sort of view of the world. OK: I write fantasy stories – they’re escapism, they’re fun. But I try to keep at the heart of my stories a truthful reflection of some kind of daily reality, as I think that makes them more believable, and therefore more enjoyable. And this business of baddies is a prime example.

In real life, acts of cruelty, horror, callousness, brutality, greed, sadism and so forth are not generally carried out by your classic moustache-twirling ‘BWAH-HA-HA I WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!’ type of baddie. In real life, acts of unspeakable evil are actually carried out by… us.

We all of us, every one of us, have the potential inside us to do terrible things. We all get tempted. We’ve all experienced the moment of madness, the beckoning abyss, the curiosity. And I’m not putting across a pessimistic view of the world by saying this: on the contrary, considering the potential for darkness and insanity inside every single human being, it’s amazing and incredible and brilliant that the majority of us are as positive as we are. But people do bad things. And as humans – let alone writers – we have to try to understand why.

My favourite baddies, therefore, tend to be ones who have a bit of depth to them. I don’t believe that people can be classified forever as ‘evil’, so I don’t think characters in stories – even fantasy stories – should be, either. So, when I’m thinking about a baddie for a story – someone who is going to get a story started and bring it to its climax; somebody who has to be fought or stopped – the big question I ask myself is, WHY?

If they’re obsessed with power, /why/ are they obsessed with power? [Perhaps it’s a sign of weakness and powerlessness in some important other part of their life?] If, as in the Scourge’s case in Black Tat, they want to destroy the universe, /why/ do they want to destroy the universe? [The Scourge makes a lot of noise about ‘the purity of the Void’, but in fact it behaves as it does because it was /created/ that way: it’s like a machine, a ‘self-destruct button’ for the universe, set up that way for experimental purposes by a higher power. But over the course of the story, it discovers that it has feelings…]

In TIM, DEFENDER OF THE EARTH, the ‘baddie’ is Professor Mallahide. He’s discovered something, something tremendous and incredible, with enormous potential for good. But where he crosses the line into being a threat to the world, is the fact that he can’t understand why everyone else can’t see his invention the same way he does. He inflicts his will on other people, thinking he knows best. And that’s a mistake that any one of us can make.

The best and most exciting baddies in stories, it seems to me, are the ones who are closest to ourselves. Rather than starting out trying to make a baddie as unsympathetic as possible, therefore, the best way to get thinking about them (I reckon) is to take something from ourselves – something we’ve seen ourselves do, something we’re not proud of – and just… push it a little. And you know what? It doesn’t even have to take much. After all, as The Joker tells Batman in Alan Moore‘s /awesome/ THE KILLING JOKE: “There’s no difference between me and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day.”

OK, enough talking about baddies: instead, here’s a SONG! It’s by the fabulous JONATHAN COULTON. It’s about one of my favourite types of baddie, ZOMBIES. And it’s sung – here’s the crucial bit – from the zombie’s point of view. [“I’m not a monster, Tom. Well, technically I am…”] To hear it, click on this link, click on ‘Re: Your Brains’ – and enjoy!

That was an excellent question, Louise. Thank you! More next week.

Anyone reading this with a long memory (so not me, then: I have to write everything down!) might conceivably remember that the Enthoven mentioned back in September on ‘is Black Tat News page that he’d been invited to an event to do with a brand new book prize – the Lewisham Book Award. Today was the day. As the Enthoven found out when I wreaked my grisly pink vengeance upon him, I always keep a promise – so off to the London Borough of Lewisham I went.

The reason for the invitation was that – much to my astonishment – the Enthoven’s ‘orrible first book, The Black Tattoo, has made the shortlist for the Award. But it’s up against some serious competition. Take a look:

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS, by JOHN BOYNE

THE WAVE RUNNERS, by KAI MEYER

THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING, by GUUS KUIJER

THE OUTLAW VARJAK PAW, by S F SAID

and

HYBRIDS, by DAVID THORPE

…An extremely impressive set of contenders, I think you’ll agree.

For the last six months, to my absolute delight, students at schools all across Lewisham have been reading every book on the shortlist, and then casting votes as to which is their ultimate favourite. The overall winner won’t be announced until this March. But today a select team from each of the participating schools was invited to Lewisham’s excellent Central Library – there to put presentations together designed to convince the world of why their title should win. The Enthoven’s – heh! – I mean, MY job (;p) …was to judge the presentations. Here are some pics to give you a flavour of how it all went.

The presentations took place in the afternoon, so since I was going to be in the area, the LRC Manager at one of the participating schools invited me to do a talk there in the morning. My gleeful and grateful thanks to Ms Moulding and everyone I met at Sydenham School for what was an absolutely brilliant session! Talking to an audience who were so familiar with every aspect of The Black Tattoo was a joy in itself, but the depth and quality of the questions were phenomenal.

But next came the event itself. Each team picked a title from the shortlist at random out of an envelope, and then set to work putting their presentations together using PowerPoint on the library computers and – of course – their own ingenuity. Especially considering the (as it seemed to me!) knuckle-whiteningly short time in which they had to prepare, the results were tremendous. My task was to play the part of a buyer, waiting to be sufficiently convinced of the merit of a particular title to stock it in my bookshop. The sensation of having not just one team but two suggesting their own jacket art, blurbs and selling points for Black Tat was quite peculiar, I can tell you!

Each team put their case across with great aplomb, speaking with huge and heart-warming passion and enthusiasm. But in the end there could only be one winner, and it was Team Three, combining technical panache and evangelical conviction for their presentation of David Thorpe’s HYBRIDS.

Here they are – the winners! And here (below) is a pic of me shaking hands with Lewisham’s Young Mayor, Justin Cole.

What an absolute pleasure and privilege it was for me to be involved in this wonderful event. My thanks to Jo Moulton for inviting me, and my very best wishes to everyone who took part.

I’ve just returned from an excellent session with the Chatterbooks reading group of CLR James Library, in Hackney’s Dalston Lane. What a great group – and so full of fantastic questions! I spoke for about forty-five minutes but the time flew past so quickly that I only had time for one reading! My thanks to Kerryn and everyone else I met at CLR James for what was a lovely warm welcome. I hope you got something out of listening to me – I certainly enjoyed speaking to you. 🙂

Speaking of questions, it’s high time I tackled at least a couple of last week’s ones from the Guestbooks. Here we go…

From the Black Tat site, Robert and Adam from Newcastle ask ‘How many books do u plan to write?‘ That’s an easy one so let’s begin with that. I’m just starting out on this ‘being published’ caper, and I have a whole slew of story ideas bubbling and fermenting in the depths of my slurry-like brain. I can’t tell you them here, as I haven’t written them yet! But they’re all for young people, they’re all (if I can pull them off) pretty flippin’ exciting (if I may say so!), and I’m looking forward to having the chance to write each and every one of them. -So, the short answer about how many books I plan to write is… ‘As many as I can get away with!‘

Again on a Black Tat tip, Sean from Cramlington asked a question that the WebSphinx and I had to xxx out, as it contained a potential SPOILER, revealing one of the secrets of the book (sorry, Sean! Hope you understand!) It’s a straight question, however, and deserves a straight answer, so if you, reading this, haven’t read Black Tat yet and don’t want to know one of the story’s key secrets, SCROLL DOWN NOW!

SPOILER WARNING! — SPOILER WARNING! — SPOILER WARNING! — SPOILER WARNING!

Sean asks, ‘Why did you make Esme the Scourge’s daughter?’ -The main reason, Sean, was to do with SUSPENSE. Esme is a very powerful character: she’s strong, she’s tough, she’s independent, she’s quick-witted and (oh yeah!) she’s got superpowers. In most situations she’s nigh-on unstoppable. So in order to bring the story to a climax that would put her in real danger, I (or, heh! /the Enthoven/-!) had to come up with something a bit more sophisticated and involved than just another face-off with a demon. Having Esme’s strength, her speed and her flying all come from the Scourge seemed to me to be the best possible answer. The source of her power is the very thing she’s trained her whole life to fight! However strong or fast she is, the Scourge will always be faster! If she is to beat her nemesis Esme will have to find another way, one she can only find in herself. And that, to me, seemed like a proper test for her – one that most people can relate to, I hope.

In practice, hints are dropped about Esme’s parentage throughout the book – almost from the first page in fact! And having one’s father be the villain has always been a classic story element (even before Star Wars!) The revelation, when it comes, is supposed to be one you’ve pretty much guessed already, so I don’t think anyone who reads this post accidentally is going to have the story ruined for them or anything. But I thought in answering this question that I’d better be a bit careful. Hope you’re ok with that, Sean!

SPOILER WARNING! — SPOILER WARNING! — SPOILER WARNING! — SPOILER WARNING!

…Okay, all clear! 😉

There’s quite a stack of questions in the TIM Guestbook right now. My apologies for not getting to those today, time’s a bit short, but I’ll try to tackle ’em later in the week – I promise! 😉

In other news, yesterday (4th Feb) was the birthday of one of my very favourite authors, namely the awesome RUSSELL HOBAN. Here’s a link to The Head of Orpheus, a tremendous fan-site dedicated to the man and his works. Such is the devotion he inspires in his readers that some of them celebrate his birthday by picking out quotations from his books and leaving them in special places for people to find and (hopefully) discover about him. This now happens not just in London, where many of his books are set, but all over the world! [You can read all about that here.] And if you haven’t read anything by Russell Hoban yet, then I can hardly recommend him highly enough. His books are full of wit, warmth, wisdom and weirdness – the kind of stories you keep by you and treasure always. -Mr H., in case you’re reading this, I raise a tentacle in your general direction. You’re an inspiration! A very Happy Birthday to you!

FLOOF. Well, ‘ere I am back again in the Enthoven’s North London crash-pad, making myself at home and leaving nasty pink stains on ‘is sofa, HUR HUR HUR. But I have to tell you, my first visit to Liverpool was AWESOME.

First event of the day was a forty-five-minute session at Range High School, Formby.

This was absolutely terrific: the students were full of all sorts of excellent questions, and talking to them made me feel really excited and inspired. Then I was whisked away to the spectacular library of Merchant Taylors’ Boys’ School…

…for two quick (half-hour) sessions there, both of which were tremendous fun too. My grateful thanks to everyone I met today, for being so warm and welcoming. But I’d particularly like to thank samurai bookseller Tony, of Pritchards, for being — as well as an enthusiastic champion of young people’s literature — an absolute gent in looking after me; supplying stock; driving me about, and giving me some excellent book recommendations. Thank you, Tony!

So now the first official UK tour for TIM has come to an end. I can’t let the opportunity go past without mentioning the amazing LAURA H., who has been keeping me on the straight and narrow this week with no small measure of style and aplomb. That night in Newcastle I ‘ave to confess I may have given the game away a little: at dinner in the hotel restaurant, when our steaks arrived, I momentarily forgot myself. Dissolving from the Enthoven’s crude form into my natural blancmange-like state, I flowed forward over the plate and digested the rare meat (plus chips and salad) with my external juices, like normal, rather than bothering with that tiresome knife-and-fork business you humans seem so fond of. (Well, I was hungry!) Of course, as soon as my feeding frenzy abated I realised I’d made something of a ‘faux pas’, and as – with a dainty belch – I coalesced back into the Enthoven-shape, I noticed that our waiter was looking somewhat perturbed.

Laura, of course, didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, with calm authority: ‘he’s just an author.’

I’ve got plenty more events lined up – keep checking in here for details. And there have been some FANTASTIC questions coming in to the Black Tat and Tim Guestbooks over the last day or so: don’t fret folks, I plan to answer those early next week! But for now this is me signing off.

Stay slimy. Yr pal,

-JagmAHEM! I mean, /Sam/ 😉

Favourite human words of the day: GAZUMPING, UNDERVOLT

Currently reading: BROKEN SKY Act 1, THE TWILIGHT WAR, by Chris Wooding.

Newcastle is a friendly place. Everyone seems dead welcoming and easy-going – no matter how weird you are. 😉

Two more excellent events today, the first at Ashington High School…

…and the second at Cramlington High School…

…where, to my astonishment, they had created a poster almost as big as the Enthoven himself!

At both events I met and had fine chats with some splendid and fascinating human beings. I tell yer, I could get used to this!

Tonight I’m in Liverpool, fer the last day of the tour. Three sessions tomorrow, an’ this demon needs ‘is beauty sleep. Zzzzzzzzgurglegurglegurgle….

Yesterday I found myself in John Hampden Grammar School. And folks: either everybody there was very friendly, or I’m starting to get used to being suddenly confronted with, say, sixty-plus keen fresh-faced young humans expecting me to tell them what it’s like being an author. 😉

Actually I’m thinking it was BOTH. Two excellent sessions of about forty-five mins apiece passed without incident (or casualties!) And in each case I only had to get my new-grown human tongue around the Enthoven’s prose for just TWO readings from TIM, due to a constant flurry of pertinent and penetrating questions from the audience. There /was/, I admit, just one sticky moment, when a young gentleman in the front row of session 2 mentioned that he’d read something on the internet about the Enthoven having “a stalker.” I naturally told him I didn’t know what he was talking about – and I definitely didn’t threaten him with swift, moist, tentacular violence /at all/, no matter what anybody says. ;p

A MONSTROUS thank-you to Barbara; Mimi; ninja bookseller Becky (visible left, above) and, indeed, everyone else I met at JHGS, for a truly terrific visit.

To answer two follow-up questions from the Guestbook:

James: The straight answer is probably ‘no’. It’s one of the less pleasant facts about novel-writing that one can only really learn it by doing it – writing stories as best you can at the time, and if you fail, well, you hope next time you’re going to get better. Each one of the three books I wrote before Black Tat took up a minimum of a year of my life, and I put my heart into them. But I was learning my stuff (still am!), the books were ropey, and the agents and publishers I sent them to were right to reject them. Some of the concepts in the stories /might/ be worth taking on, I suppose – if only in the fond hope that one day I learn to be able to express them properly! But characters? Nah. Better to start from scratch.

Jack: I try to plan a story as much as I can before I start writing it. There are lots of reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that if I know where the story’s ending is going to be, then I know it’s possible that I can finish it! That said, I find there’s always a point in the planning process at which one has to accept that certain answers are just not going to come, not until the writing’s underway and you’re in there working with what you’ve got. As with anything important, there’s always a time when you have to leap into the dark and hope for the best.

I seem to be typing this in a hotel in Newcastle. It’s great here. Hope I don’t have to eat anybody, but I’ll let you know. 😉

Wotcher, humans.

You know what? I’m starting to wonder whether eating the Enthoven on Friday was really such a good idea. Turns out my timing might have been better: today was the first day of a WEEK-LONG UK AUTHOR TOUR. If I hadn’t had the weekend to have a good nose ’round his files – on top of those months on the case since I first got to this planet of yours – I’m sure someone today would have rumbled me!

The first event of the day – a shortish session with thirty students at Ravenscroft School in Barnet – went like a charm. I’d got a couple of funny looks from Laura, the Random House Children’s Books publicist who was lookin’ after me, but that was normal fer the Enthoven anyway – he got funny looks even when he was alive! Certainly nobody else seemed to suspect the grisly truth. In fact, I was starting to feel pretty positive that I might get away with this…

But then in the afternoon came the second session of the day, speaking to around sixty students from Dame Alice Owen’s School, in Potters Bar. Folks, this was a close one. When one young gentleman in the audience stuck his hand up and asked what the Enthoven’s very first book was about – not his ‘orrible The Black Tattoo, mind, but the very first book he wrote, long before ‘e got published – for a moment things looked like they’d ‘ave to turn drastic. I didn’t /want/ to have to sprout tentacles and eat everybody in the room to make sure there were no witnesses. But I couldn’t let my plan turn blancmange-shaped on day one, neither. Lucky for me I’ve got a good memory, eh? And lucky for everyone else there, too, believe you me. ;p

I’ve been practisin’ his signature fer months, so that was a doddle (his handwriting looks like he’s used to holding a pen with tentacles not fingers, just like mine) And like the Ravenscroft School session in the morning, the Dame Alice Owen students were a pleasure to talk to. But, heh, here’s hoping they never find out ‘ow close they came to following the Enthoven to a SQUIDGEY DEMISE. 😉

My thanks to Lyn at Waterstone’s, The Spires, and to everyone else I met today: you gave me a lovely warm welcome and you’ve made this demon very happy.

Tentacles crossed I won’t ‘ave to eat anybody the rest of this week…;)

-Jagmat

Favourite word of the day: DISCOMBOBULATED. Currently reading: KAI-RO by Graham Marks