I have been busy, plus I explain why I can't be famous without Bisto, a penguin suit and the Kirkbymoorside Brass Band.

Apologies for the lateness of this week's missive, I was delayed by unexpected visitors. Well, not that unexpected, it was my eldest son, his partner and their baby, and since I know of their existence, and that they don't live that far away, it was hardly completely unexpected.  Now, if someone had said to me 'a son, of which you had no prior knowledge, is going to drop in on you', that would have been unexpected.  So, I suppose this was more unscheduled.  But it still held me up.  So, anyway, here I am now.

And what a tootlesome busy week it's been indeed, in the Lovering household!

 On Tuesday (which was release day for Vampire State of Mind, available in all good bookshops at a reasonable price, also for Kindle), I was invited into the studios of Radio York.  Oh, it's all right, they usually invite me, they don't have to tempt me over the threshold by rattling a tin of Quality Street, it's all prearranged.  Mostly to give them time to insulate the bunker and give Russell Walker those special tablets that he has to take whenever I go in.  Anyway, I went and I talked to them, and it was all very nice and I got a cup of coffee, so that was good.


 On Wednesday I was in Waterstones at Scarborough, signing books - it's all right, they were my own books, I didn't break in to scribble in crayon in my arch-nemesis's backlist.  And I met some lovely people, some of who had heard me on Russell's show the day before, and came to look at me in the flesh.  Like this,

which was a lovely lady called Hettie, who came with her mother and bought books!  I do like it when I meet real people!  And some women's magazines had reviewed my vampires (it was 'Star' and 'Bella', to namedrop just a touch), and I put on a false nose and a moustache to rush into a shop and buy them, since they are not magazines which I normally buy.  I was probably the only Groucho Marx in the shop that day, but I like to think that I passed unnoticed.

And, on Thursday, because I'd been so busy, and got all over excited and everything, I had to have a nice lie-down, and I did some writing and ate some biscuits, which calmed me down.

On Friday, after I'd been woken up to be on Radio Leeds on the phone, talking about celebrations (that's the party-thing, not the chocolates, which was a shame because I can talk about chocolate for a very long time), my youngest daughter came back from a month-long trip to Kenya.  She climbed a mountain, got altitude sickness and her hair froze, then she came down and hefted bricks for three weeks.  But, apparently, it was all great fun, which is always nice to hear because Kenya is a long way to go to have a miserable time.  I can do that by going to the end of my garden, which is also cheaper and doesn't have elephants.

So, as you can tell, there has been much going on to fuel my writing-type work-thingie for a while, although mostly what it has done is fuel my desire to be on the radio talking about myself a lot.  It's almost like being famous, only without being on the front of Hello magazine, wearing unsuitable clothes, an orange tan and a member of a boy-band, which, I understand, is necessary these days in order to be famous.  I think I could probably manage the tan, or at least I could rub myself with Bisto, put on my celebrated Penguin Onesie, with the feet and the hood and link arms with the Kirkbymoorside Brass Band.

Which is probably as close as I'm going to come.  And with that mental picture, I shall leave you...