Verticality - to authors what table tennis is to cats...and the terror of the Author Picture

In honour of the paperback appearance of How I Wonder What You Are...(go ahead, check it out, I'll wait...) and because the sun was shining, I decided that now was the time to get a new author photo.  Now, I am an author for several reasons, and only one of those reasons is that I don't have to get my face out in public, but sometimes people need to know what you look like, even if it's only so that they can avoid you at gatherings.  So, in the interests of alerting people to my presence, I thought it was only fair that a truly representative picture should be achieved.

So I went over onto our immaculate village green, my own garden being in a state of dandelion and puppy, and posed, whilst DD1, who has some experience in these matters, pointed a camera at my face.  The grass was wet. I got damp pants in the interests of trying to look 'authorly'. Plus, I was wearing a new top (to look writerly), clean trousers (so as not to look too writerly, because we all know most writers wear their trousers until it's only the dirt holding them up), and, for some unholy reason, heels.  I wore the heels because I actually, and misguidedly, thought that some of the pictures might be of, you know, me vertical. Even though verticality is to authors what table-tennis is to cats (we might experiment with it from time to time, but it's not really for us, we don't have the right equipment and things bend in the middle and occasionally snap shut at inopportune moments). Anyway.  Here, in glorious technicolour, is a picture that I feel is representative of me and my writing..

And also my surprise at being in front of the camera. Damp pants not shown.

Also taken was a photograph of how authors really come by their books - it's a little known fact that we don't, in fact, write them, we just wait until the conditions are right and then harvest them from fields. Like aubergines.

Or it might be anchovies. I forget.

But, eventually, and after some faffing during which my pants got wet, dried out, and then got wet again, DD1 (whose name is Vienna, incidentally) managed to capture me, nail me to the ground, and forced me to have an expression that wouldn't make people want to run away.  So, here it is, in all its glory - my new author picture..

Ta, as they say, dah!