Sold out

The hardback of Claudius has sold out on Amazon and on the Borders website and apparently the publishers have no more supplies. I had an inkling of this over the past couple of months when the Waterstone's shop in Stirling had been waiting for six weeks for their order, and there were none at Wigtown when I was there.

So, good news and bad news, and one of those things you don't consider before you've been published. The good news is that Transworld will be happy the print run has been sold. But it leaves them with a dilemma: whether to print another 1000 and risk being left with 500 unsold, or accept that you're on budget and on target and leave it at that. I suspect in these straitened financial times it'll be the second option. There is a third option which they're talking about, which is putting the trade paperback (airport edition) into mainstream shops. Which brings me to the bad news. If that doesn't happen it means Claudius won't be available in a lot of places for another eight months and I won't sell any books. The paperback doesn't come out until July, along with my next book Hero of Rome. It seems a big gap, but again I suppose it's all part of the learning process.

I've completed the second re-write - or is it the third - of Hero of Rome, really just a few very reasonable cuts, and a couple of minor tickles. I hate to tempt fate, but I think it's the best thing I've done yet. An epic of triumph and disaster, courage, love and betrayal set against the background of one of the bloodiest contests of the Boudicann rebellion.