Linny said she felt sick, but then she’s never been an animal lover. It beat me why she’d chosen to marry Tertius the Tycoon, because he’s so hairy he doesn’t really need clothing to be decent in public, which is probably where the word ‘hirsute’ came from in the first place.

Linny was feeling a bit snippy anyway, because she hadn’t heard a thing from any of the publishers she’d sent her manuscript to. I kept telling her these things take time, especially without an agent. I didn’t mention the towering slush piles of unread novels – I didn’t want to depress her further.

On Thursday of that week I was sitting in my local bookshop signing hardback copies of Spring Breezes. Well, I say signing copies, but you know how it is: I had three friends round me all pretending they were big fans of my books.

Anyway, there I was, when in walked this thin, peevish woman with grey hair, who looked like an escaped dishmop from Cold Comfort Farm, and she waltzed right up to me and said: ‘Is it any good, then?’ while riffling through a copy, crumpling the pages.

Something came over me and before I could stop myself I said, ‘No, it’s rubbish, don’t waste your money.’

‘All right then, I won’t.’ She put it down, then stared at me and said, ‘I’m going to write a novel when I retire, a bestseller.’

She said it accusingly, like it might be my fault, so I told her when I retired I was going to be a brain surgeon. ‘You’ve left it a bit late, haven’t you?’ she remarked, and walked off.

Really, it made me wonder if book signings were worth the effort. Still, the bookshop is very supportive of local authors, despite stocking very little fiction. Actually it is called Necromancer’s Nook and the décor is a bit gloomy, but the staff are friendly once you get past the vampire-style make-up. In fact, the only time I took Sergei in there I thought I’d never get him out again.

I arranged lots of local promotion for Spring Breezes because I’d learned from bitter experience that if I waited for Libby Garnett at Salubrious to do anything about it then I’d wait for ever, and I was trying to get a bit of a ‘buzz’ going about the book before the paperback came out.