What luxury! I had my first book reading today, in Nottingham, and after my tour in which I have driven myself over 8500 miles it was utterly wonderful to have someone else doing the driving. I actually fell asleep on the way up, something which would have been disastrous on tour, but which also pointed up just how stressful touring must have been. Here I was, after my most restful week all year, falling asleep two hours into a car journey and yet I managed to criss-cross the country for three months and stay awake.
It made me very happy that I had elected to have a tour manager on next year's gig marathon. I think I have earned the right to relax a little in between shows and it should only make the performances better. I caught myself actually looking forward to being back on tour. What a fucking idiot!
The reading went fine, although I felt a little unprepared - luckily whenever I was flagging a bit I could just read another bit from the book. Over a hundred people turned up, which is a good sign. A couple of the Talking Cock readings got canceled and I recall mainly reading to ten or so people at the ones that went ahead (though the London one had been better). It was clear that tonight's audience were nearly all fans of the podcasts and/or blog and any in-jokey reference to cumpkins or Collings went down very well. And most people seemed to buy the book so that's a few more sales on the board. The print run is 12,283 which seems an oddly specific number, like the people at Ebury have calculated to the exact last copy how many people will buy it. "Shall we print 12,284?"
"Don't be ridiculous, we'll never sell that many. 12,283 books and no more."
I worry I may have thrown the whole thing out of kilter by buying my own copy. One lazy nerd who leaves it to the last minute will end up disappointed.
And I know it's a cliche that all authors continually check
their Amazon sales ranking, but I am not sure anyone is more obsessive about this than me. Having an iPhone means I can look at my ranking every two or three minutes. And I was excited to see, on the long drive home, that the book was briefly as high as 92 in all books, which isn't bad considering it's not even supposed to be out yet.
And look -
my polling card problems have made the (local) news. I am still a bit worried that I may have been accidentally disenfranchised though. My girlfriend got a letter from the Labour candidate today addressed to her, but there was no letter for me. I am going to be very annoyed if I don't vote in this election. Even though I still haven't completely made up my mind about who is getting my vote. Maybe by not getting a vote I have kind of voted for everyone. But it would be a shame not to be a part of one of the most interesting elections of my voting life. Please make sure you vote folks. Apparently the turn out should be something like 75% which is awesome. But it could be better! And if I can't vote then you have to vote for me. I am excited to find out what happens when I get into the polling booth. It's a shame I don't have the moustache still, because if they try to take away my suffrage then I will make quite a fuss I can tell you.
And the Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle will be hearing all about it!
Though it is possibly my own fault for filling the form in wrong.
