It’s been a funny old week.  We went down to Kerry for a few days, making the most of our Senior Citizen free travel passes before the Irish government decides to withdraw that generous concession. But I took with me two pieces of work: the page proofs of The Grand Duchess of Nowhere which required immediate attention and my research notes for the new book. My mind, you might say, was definitely on work in hand. Also a nice seafood lunch in Dingle.  I was therefore thrown for a minute when I received an email from my publisher congratulating me on publication day. Then I got it. They meant the mass market edition of The Liar’s Daughter.

I used to get excited about publication days and expected others to do likewise. My first couple of books  I wondered why the streets weren’t strung with bunting. Then I began to understand the scale of the book business. A novel may be a year’s work to me but it’s  just another drop in the ocean of publishing. I calmed down. Celebrated pub day quietly with my loved ones and then went back to work. The release of a cheaper edition, a year after first publication, doesn’t even register on the seismograph because by then I’ve moved on and typed an awful lot more words.

However…. I know I have readers who can’t afford hardbacks or trade paperbacks, readers who watch intently for publication of the mass market edition and rush out to buy it, God bless them. So in case any of you missed last week’s muted fanfare, it’s out, it’s cheap, and it got a nice little review in the Independent.

Now, on with Project 2015.