Claudius

I went into Stirling yesterday and signed a couple of hardbacks of Claudius at our local Waterstone's. Only a couple because they were all that were left of the fifteen they'd ordered in. The manager said he was well pleased with the way they were selling and that Caligula had had a boost as well. I'm appearing at the Stirling Book Festival in about a month and Waterstone's will have a stall there, he promised to get a good supply in.

Overall, Claudius appears to be doing pretty well and I've been doing what I can to publicise it. There have been very positive reviews in the Scotsman and the Scottish Sunday Express and I'm doing an interview with our local paper, the Stirling Observer, at the end of next week.

I'm also charging on with the next book, but I took a day off on Friday to go salmon fishing on the River Tay with my friend, Robin, who's a lecturer at Stirling Uni. We fished all day in the pouring rain and didn't even get a bite between us. The only thing I hooked was me and a size 10 double-hooked salmon fly through your finger may be poetic justice, but it's no joke. So I spent an hour and a half in accident and emergency at Stirling Royal, where a very efficient nurse practitioner pushed the hook so that the barbed point came out through the skin and then snipped it off with a pair of pliers before pulling the rest back through the way it had gone in. Expert, painless and it's barely left a mark, who says there's anything wrong with the NHS?