Phew, that’s another signing over with. I arrived late because of road works in Chester I hadn’t expected, but soon established two sets of my books on the table set up for me near the book. Location advantage: everyone coming into the shop saw me; disadvantae: With the air temperature outside at 6C I soon developed hypothermia. Shivering within a few minutes of setting up, i set off for the Starbucks within the store for a hot Americano. The queue there made me think there was another road works at the counter but eventually I had a bucket of coffee, Starbucks call regular.  On my way back to the refridgerated table my daughter met me and said there was a crowd at the table and to hurry up!

There was a crowd too. Thanks so much to Silky (John Silkstone) who’d driven since yesterday to attend my signing. Also there was Gladys Hobson and her charming husband, Ralph, who’d  journeyed from Cumbria for the weekend. Then there was my daughter, son-in-law, and a mystery woman lurking nearby. I was so busy signing, my pen ran out of ink – or it was protesting because I never made it write more than one signature an hour before. Expecting a slow session I’d brought my Sony Vaio with the intention of writing another chapter of Xaghra’s Revenge, but I was pleased beyond expectations at these internet friends coming to see me. Gladys and Silky are both with me in the Beyond Hill yahoo group: a group of former clients of the defrocked Hill & Hill Literary Agency. Ironically Gladys is also a member, though inactive, of a great ideas4writers website and forum. So is Brian Lux, I mentioned yesterday, who was signing his books in the childrens section of Borders.

Geoff Nelder at Borders

My daughter took this snapshot. Note my laptop on which I did manage to write about 500 words in between signing 18 books – 16 copies of Exit, Pursued by a Bee and 2 of Escaping Reality.

Maria Ayres at our Escape Velocity Mag forum suggested I wear brightly coloured clothes and smiled a lot. Hah. I found this red shirt so I hope that’s OK. I also put out white chocolate Maltesers because they were the only sweets (candies for Americans) that could represent the metallic spheres featured in Exit.

The mystery lady in the crowd was Eleanor Crampton, a former pupil at Queen’s Park High School. It is so rewarding nattering to former pupils and seeing how they’ve developed careers and their lives.

I could have sold my laptop at least three times, and one chap nearly bought Exit, Pursued by a Bee because he thought it was about bees! Hello too, to Jenna of Whitchurch, and Jim of Llangollen. Andrea Skinner, who is poorly though recovering came and gave me a hug – cheers. Also, thanks to her friend, Lisa, and Rob, her hubby.

So 18 books isn’t a huge heap, and my body leaked too much heat, but meeting so many good people warmed me nicely.

Borders book signing

I don’t know why writers put ourselves through this humiliating process. I am to sit at a table near the open door of the Cheshire Oaks Borders book shop tomorrow to sign Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Wrap up well, is the advice from the events manager, wise words for the soul as well as skin. There are enough books for 20 or so people but more than that and I’ll be signing IOUs. In the unlikely event of running out the shop has copies of my humorous thriller, Escaping Reality, so there’ll be no excuse for anyone to go home without one of my books! Hah, who am I kidding? Anyway, I know some folk who said they’ll definitely come along to support me so I won’t be lonely all day. One of them is Brian Lux, retired dentist who now lives in Llandudno. He has to be there because he is signing his own book, Court of Foxes. It is a children’s / teen book and expects to sell shelf-fulls. Perhaps I ought to cut out the sex and add more violence so I can call my books childrens.

An interesting promo website is carrying my humorous thriller, Escaping Reality >>> http://www.sleuthedit.com/GeoffNelder/EscapingReality.html

It is for mystery novels, and so as it is a mystery why Escaping Reality has only sold 1500 or so copies instead of the 200 million expected, they have included it.

On the radio in America!

Kim McDougall, who produced my Exit, Pursued by a Bee video trailer, was on a blogtalk radio yesterday in the USA and mentioned my name and book. Thanks Kim. She talked about trailers on Bookbites for Kids at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bookbitesforkids It’s an interesting topic and my name is about halfway through. It’s fun yet unaccustomed to hear my name being mentioned by American accents thousands of miles away.

Besides being on Youtube and approaching 650 hits >>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnr-135u84c

Kim has placed it on a community press website I’ve not seen called gather.com

The good news is that DDP are bringing Exit out as a trade paperback shortly, so my local bookshops will be able to sell them. I’ll bring a pile along to the British Fantasy Society FantasyCon in Nottingham in September. I wonder who has a stall for me to share?

It is taking me ages to transcribe Exit as an audio script for Jon Eastwood and his actor friends from the London Bridge Experience to read to a microphone. Every day I do 30 or so pages. Because there is more than one voice I can take the opportunity to morph aspects to make the audio experience exciting. David Blunket MP wants it on his MP3 player. He had my humour thriller, Escaping Reality read to tape by the RNIB and so he must enjoy my writing enough to ask for this one too!

My Left Luggage science fiction is still in the hands of my US Literary agent. He likes the Exit trailer too, and we are contemplating making a trailer to promote Left Luggage to prospective publishers. It shows not just the premise of the book then but that the author is prepared to do some promo.

Borders

I took two copies of my thriller, Escaping Reality, and two of the Escape Velocity (pure coincidental similarities in the titles even though maybe Jungian?) to my local Borders – a huge bookshop chain –  a few weeks ago. The store buyer wasn’t available so I had to leave contact details and a note. Today I popped in and finally met the buyer in person. She was friendly, sympathetic and helpful. She couldn’t take the EV magazines cos HQ is rationalizing to reduce the number of independents magazine publishers they have to deal with. But she gave me the name of a wholesaler they deal with who specializes in independent mag publishers!  If you want a copy of Escape Velocity then please visit http://www.escapevelocitymagazine.com the ebook costs less than a bus fare to anywhere, and the paper version is less than a hairbrush yet more satisfying  

She did take Escaping Reality. 10 copies on sale or return. I don’t know if they will sell them at the RRP of £7.99 or less. So that’s big news. They are the largest shop to take my book.
So if you are shopping in Cheshire Oaks, Ellesmere Port then pop into Borders and buy Escaping Reality!

If my editor at DDP is reading this, I’ve revised up to 2/3 of Exit, Pursued by a Bee. It is amazing that no matter how often we re re re revise a novel, we always find another phrase to improve – often by cutting it out.

 We tried out a satnav device today. We often get a bit lost finding a hospital in Liverpool. It is on Crown Street. So I punched in the address into the GPS device and we set off. I know the post code might have been better but it responded with a different street name. We were impressed with the way the nice woman’s voice directed us out of Chester – warned us that our opted route included a toll tunnel, then she shut up in the actual tunnel. Sadly, I didn’t know there are two Crown Streets in Liverpool and it chose to take us to the wrong one! So after annoying a Liverpool bus trying to squash us, I punched another road I knew of and the first instruction was: “Do a U turn.” Arrgggh – we were on a four-lane road in Liverpool where only taxis and bankrobbers do U turns! It did finally take us to the right place but you just know that the woman inside the box was being sarcastic and demeaning when she said: “You are at your destination. Everyone applaud.”

Yesterday, I looked into the eye of a terracotta Chinese soldier who was supposed to be guarding the First Emperor before the chinese dug him out and flew him to the British Museum along with a dozen mates. Over 2,200 years old he’s life-size and lifelike – amazing. He gave me a stony stare back but I swear I detected a glint. A spirit lurks. While in the British Museum I meandered among the other exhibits. I searched for prehistoric representatins of the human form because the large reclining women statuettes found on Gozo maybe unique. I ogled naked women and men in the ancient Greek and Egyptian rooms and admired the outer space aliens that seemed to have landed on Cyprus two thousand years ago. The humanoids forgot to take off their helmets when the local sculpure created their effigies. With some surprise I couldn’t find any exhibits from Malta or Gozo in the museum. Maybe they have another building.

I’m revving up to attend the World Arts Festival in Groningen tomorrow in order to collect my book award.  Hot Air might be the name of thriller I wrote, but I’m feeling really cool and calm at the moment. I wonder if when I visit Amsterdam too, that I should take a copy of Escaping Reality & persuade a bookshop to stock it?

Funny how many of the gawkers in the First Emperor exhibition seemed to be Chinese tourists…