Hello lovely people that made my book happen.

Yes, Cockerings is now close to publication.

And YOU did that. YOU!

That's the power of Unbound. It puts the power to create new books into the hands of readers rather than risk-averse publishing accountants.

Give yourselves a hearty round of applause. If I could hug you all, I would.

So ... the book is released into the wild on 19th August and I'm VERY excited. It's my favourite book and, I believe, the best (and funniest) piece of fiction I've ever written. As you probably know, Cockerings began life as an exam question which then grew into a short story and then a novel. The whole journey has taken around 30 years to reach its destination and I couldn't be prouder or more excited.

Thank you so much!

And now (fanfare) a cover reveal for you.

If you have my previous books, A Murder To Die For and The Diabolical Club, you'll see that we've changed style ever so slightly while retaining some features of the first two books. There are several reasons for that. Firstly, there's the fact that we couldn't get the brilliant Neil Gower for this cover. He drew the first two and it would have been wrong (and possibly illegal) to copy his unique visual cues. But we could allude to them. 

Secondly, the first two books form a complete unit with TDC picking up some loose strands left over at the end of AMTDF. The only strand picked up by Cockerings is that we learn what has happened to the disgraced Detective Inspector Blount from AMTDF. Also, this new book isn't a murder-mystery (although there are some quite spectacular deaths involved). 

Thirdly, the new design offered me the opportunity to flex my drawing muscles and I was delighted to be asked to illustrate the characters who are dotted all over the cover.

Designer Mark Ecob has done a great job of creating a look that references the old while also being quite strikingly new. With most people buying books online these days, you're reliant on a tiny icon of your cover to sell your work. It needs to pop off the screen and invite a click through. I hope the title and the delicious yellow/duck egg blue/red combo will do just that. This new layout also allowed us to incorporate more text and having stellar cover quotes from the likes of Stephen Fry, Sandi Toksvig, Neil Dudgeon, David Quantick, Mary Jane Baker, Joel Morris and Alex Horne definitely won't do me any harm. 

So there you go. We only have two months to wait before we all have a copy of the book in our hands.

Having waited for three decades, I'm as excited as a small child squirming in the front row and waiting for the circus show to begin.