Nyer-nyer ner ner ner...

Well, you can't say I didn't tell you.  Go on, try, because I think you'll find that your tongue cleaves unto the roof of your mouth like...you know that thing where you try to stuff as many marshmallows into your mouth as you can, and then say 'Chubby Bunnies', and you end up 'Floffffing' and have to go and spit into the nearest potted plant?  Oh come on, we all went to those parties, didn't we?  Anyway.  Like that.

For it was many moons ago, and actually, when you consider that there's a moon every day (or night, as it were), it was exactly the same number of moons ago as it was days.  Anyway. Have I lost any of you yet?  If anyone needs a break to go to the toilet, or to enable them to get a good headstart, then do go now.  I'll wait.  I have your names....

So.  A long while ago (it will have been about 2007) I sold my first novel to Samhain in the States.  It was called Reversing Over Liberace. As indeed it still is.  It was published as an e-book, so, prior to its publication, I attempted to interest the local populace in e-books in general.  Well, specifically mine, but you know what I mean. Ah, those heady days of 2007!  When the Royal Wedding was but a misty-eyed dream for the souvenir manufacturers and when the word 'Kindle' meant to set fire to something, which was a mistake and anyway nothing was ever proven and that petrol was planted on me and I never actually intended to cause criminal damage..ahem.  And when, try as I might, persuading people to buy books to download and read on their computer screens was like trying to sell twelve tonnes of slightly-gone-off Gorgonzola to a set of cheese-intolerants.


Of course, when the book came out in paperback it was a different story, as though people needed to be able to handle the book for it to be real.  Which is strange, I've never handled David Tennant, yet I firmly believe him to be a real person, even though I have my doubts about his hair.  But still I championed the e-book, despite all those slightly curled noses and the cries of 'read on a screen?' which you have to imagine to have been intoned in Lady Bracknellesque fashion.


And now look at us. Well, not at me, obviously, because I am shy and have a tendency to frizzy hair in the mornings and anyway I'm wearing my horrible cardigan, but look at people in general.  Go on.  I'll wait.


There.  I bet that somewhere within your circle, unless your circle is very small, or you're on retreat at a monastery in rural Cork with no walls and where you have to sleep on a donkey, someone will have a Kindle.  Even I have a Kindle, and you all know what I'm like with electrical objects.

Mine looks a bit like this. Only without the weird slug-balancing dude.  We're all at it.  Reading e-books.  Just like I predicted FOUR YEARS AGO.  So, just remember that, when I'm trying to get you to put your life-savings onto a horse called Jam Factory in the 4.30 from Plumpton.  I know what I'm talking about.

Discuss.