Hi everybody,

First, let me just say a massive thank you to everybody who has backed this book. It still astonishes me how kind and generous you lot are, although perhaps it shouldn’t: you consistently show how decent you are, and this is just another example.

I’d also add a huge thank you to people who support any book in this way. Tell friends and family about Unbound. You wouldn’t believe how important it is to authors, knowing there is a market for their work, and feeling the support of the thousands of people placing their trust in us. Writing tends to be a solitary pursuit, and it's generally a good thing to write for yourself, rather than trying to please an audience. So it’s easy to spend a year looking inwards, and lose any sense of the reader. Seeing your support reconnects me with the world, and that’s never a bad thing.

Plus, it helps to pay for my cheesecake habit, and keeps the dog in chew-sticks. Baxter says thanks.

This is supposed to be a progress report, and to put it bluntly, progress has been good. The book is finished, fact-checked, subjected to the tender-yet-terrifying warnings of a small army of lawyers, edited, tweaked, refined, percolated, purified, primped and is now ready to be mecilessly pimped around the nation’s bookshops. The final proofs are finished, the galleys have been… galleyed? … the cover is designed, the pages numbered, and (assuming no more typos are found) it’ll be winding its way to the printers as soon as possible.

I probably shouldn’t say this, because we’re all supposed to be aloof about our achievements, and gifted with bottomless modesty about the thing we’ve just spent a year battling to make as good as possible; but I’m really proud of this one. I think it’s very funny and punchy, and I can’t wait for your reaction. I think you'll love it, and if you don't, at least it's heavy enough to be really effective when hurled from a barricade.

And now I’m going to rest for a while.

Thank you for backing books. Any books. They remain a wonder, and helping them into life is a marvellous thing to do.

Russ