Engine Punk

I've just had an extremely positive review on BookPleasures.com, the independent internet review site. Read it here! I am particularly encouraged by this coup - I had a sneaky feeling some of the humour wouldn't be got by an American reader. Either the reviewer was particularly clever and understood what I was on about or it's not so abstruse for our transatlantic cousins as I'd thought. At first I never considered how it would appeal to an American reader. People are still people wherever you go but over the years I've heard many instances of British shows being adapted for American tastes. This seems especially true of comedies but it doesn't seem to be a problem for Jaspar Fforde whose very Britishness is one of his keyways to success. Wallace and Gromit also cross this great alleged divide. The Japanese love them especially their tea drinking. It makes for an alternative take on their tea ceremony, I suppose. In case Jaspar's sense of humour ne...

I spent some time this week following up leads about book reviews. With The Wormton Lamb coming out at Easter, I want to create more of a media splash than I managed with The Horsepower Whisperer. The ultimate is to arouse (good word) some interest from the national media but this seems to be a closed shop. If you are not a buddy of the editor I don't think you get a foot in the door. I could send them a copy but from remarks Bill Bryson made in his introduction to The Ascent of Rum Doodle by W E Bowman, newspaper offices are awash with books sent in for possible review that either get pulped, binned, sold on eBay and Amazon or used as Christmas presents by skinflints. Not that Bill Bryson would ever do this, of course. The point of his introduction was how pleased he was to have discovered The Ascent of Rum Doodle , which enjoyed a kind of cult following among rock climbers against all the odds. As you can imagine, that kind of story interests and inspires me great...