Finest corduroy!
It was a great evening. I was surprised at the turnout: 40 people or so? Naomi Foyle made an ideal launch partner, far more at ease tackling difficult questions (and blimey, I didn't even understand one of them) and doing the "acting" thing when reading. The owner of the independent coffee shop in that branch of Waterstones made (and gave free) some delicious cakes for the occasion, and plenty of them. The staff were great. I could hardly have asked for more.
(especially when Dan Jones asked about sex in the books...)
It's a shame I wasn't warned about this question in advance, because I might then have been have to think of a much better response: "Shut up, Dan!"
(His question, for the curious, was why any kind of sex seems to be punished in these books, and punished in the proper Old Testament sense. I think I said -- at least I should have done -- that it's of a theme with the divisive way the story-world is set up, and that if the characters do their jobs properly, it might not always be so. But in panic I might have gabbled a load of incoherent nonsense.)
(breathe, Bryan, breathe!)
Thanks to the refreshments, I actually felt pretty relaxed for most of it. The camera seems to have caught me at a moment when I was less so!
