Thank you London for an amazing time, despite the first two days of FREEZING COLD (aka balmy English Spring) weather.

The Shining Girls has hit the Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller List in its first week which makes me want to bounce off the walls and go lie down at the same time. Happiness + Shock is a bit of a confusing combination.

If you bought the book or tweeted about it or wrote a review on Goodreads or Amazon or your blog on for the media, thank you. You made this happen. (You shouldn’t shine) 

Nick Higham interviewed me for the BBC’s Meet The Author at the official launch at Forbidden Planet, where the signing line seemed endless, in the best possible way. WATCH THE INTERVIEW: Meet The Author with Nick Higham

I got to talk writing, comics, movies, punching payphones and the deep dark woods with Warren Ellis and Benjamin Percy at the Kitschies Storytelling Without Limits at the Brixton Ritzy.

Hardcore authors are hardcore. Or hoping someone will bring them another drink.

I was one of the speakers at the Arthur C Clarke Award’s inaugural conference Write the Future (with the auspicious and appropriate hashtag #WTF13) ran to an intimate event at SOAS for a free-ranging discussion about all my books and raced back to attend the actual Clarke Award ceremony later that night where Chris Beckett won for Dark Eden.

All the events were fantastic, and thanks to my gracious hosts, my incredible publicist Louise Swannell and the HarperCollins team, and everyone who came along. I signed a megaton of books (pictured here at Goldsboro, with precariously balanced caffeinated beverage), figured out that signing in silver sharpie on the black endpapers of the HarperCollins edition looks the prettiest and met fantastic people all round.

Signing at Goldsboro with precariously balanced caffeinated beverage

And also managed to sneak in a viewing of The Book Of Mormon (dark, scathingly sacrilegious, hilarious), hang out with friends and husbandguy, buy a mermaid for the kidling, on specific instructions, have dinner with my brilliant, lovely agents, buy presents and do a bunch of interviews, including ones where I kept crossing with Pink Martini’s China Forbes who has promised (threatened?) to take me karaoke singing in Portland.

All round awesome. Thank you.