I have finally had some time to take stock having been on holiday, and firstly, I have a book.

There is still a lot to do in terms of getting the book into new book shops, selling, and generally being an independent author, but I am definitely settling into the fact that the hard first step of getting a book into existence has been completed.

As you can see from the picture, I have had my first book event/signing, which went well despite the lovely hot day stealing a lot of my potential readers, but I had a great time in Waterstones Leicester. I am not a natural salesman, but hanging round in a book shop and talking to people about books was a pretty natural fit and I guess I must have been doing something right as I was taken for staff several times. I was able to pass these queries off to actual members of staff, who apart from knowing where all the relevant sections of the store were, also took great care of me and helped make the day the success it was.

In fact, lots of people have been genuinely great about the book being out. From the support of people at work, various friends in this country and abroad, plus local writers I had the pleasure of meetings at Waterstones, the reaction has been really positive and hopefully will continue once people sit down with the book.

In the coming weeks I will continue to reach out to bookshops, hopefully setup some more book events, and finally learn how we are doing with actual sales figures.

This will have to be a short blog as I’ve already started blogging about the NFL season, and I have various bits of book admin to do, but things keep rolling on, and I don’t think I will ever tire of finding out people have bought the book and how they found it.