A Picture of a eBook

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Books. I’ve been in love with books forever. I’ve got thousands of them stacked all over the house. Just the word ‘book’ looks like a comfy, cosy bed, into which one could sink with a good, long book. Books…

I’ve wanted to write books for as long as I can remember. Not only that, I have written them, from ‘The Adventures Of The T Family’ in 1985 (in which the family’s mother foils a robbery in a toy shop by beating a burglar with her handbag, and which, incidentally, passes the Bechdel test) to the series of ‘comic’ novels I wrote in my early 20s and that no one will ever see. Because they are awful enough to shatter the enamel on your teeth.

I’ve writen for newspapers, radio, the television, the internet, but not books. I even got one of my manuscripts bound so it could sit on a bookcase with my name on the spine like a book, but I’ve never ritten anything that’s actually in a proper book. Until now.

True, when I visualised stroking the glossy covers of my masterpieces, they rarely had light-blue, undead revenants on the cover, turning to advce on the reader with a terrible, merciless glint in their eyes. But that’s because I didn’t know that what I wrote was going to be in The Zombie Feed: Volume 1, a new anthology from Jason Sizemore.

And now I get to march in the grand parade of self-promotion for yet another reason. I now won’t just be hassling you to come to shows, or watch TV at a certain time in morning, or listen to podcasts, but to actually buy books.

Like the e-book version which you can get if you can’t wait for the book itself to be published. Yes, within seconds of reading this your e-reader of choice could be throbbing with 17 new short stories about zombies. One of which will be by me. And, if you get it from Amazon, it’s £2.14 for your Kindle (or Kindle-enabled device. Your kinda Kindle). That’s not even the price of a soft drink in most London hostelries.

And I’ll get royalties! Perhaps. I haven’t checked the contract for e-book sales. But I might. And that’s something.

So this year I can tick off Radio 4 and books. Pretty much all that’s left now is comics. And films. And grownup TV. And the West End. And a musical. And… oh poo.

Buy! Buy! Buy! And then buy a ticket to my show in Brighton!