Very Important Ladies

My first engagement that didn't involve biscuits was at Books of Wonder on W 18th St. It was a joint signing with Melissa Marr, author of a teen-fantasy-fairy-romance entitled Wicked Lovely. Melissa is a tattoo afficionado (though hers were all discreetly hidden) and irresistably attracted to all things Oirish. She rhapsodised about a recent visit to Ireland, where she stayed in a haunted castle whose proprietor was happy to indulge her with liberal doses of diddly-eye music and roguish tales. And why not, indeed.

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in bookshop land. A few curious onlookers sidled by and one girl sat patiently with her father for a whole hour, so I read a chapter of the Tiger's Egg, and we signed piles of books while being entertained by the bookshop owner, Peter. There seemed to be few subjects with which he was unfamiliar, not least some lesser known (in the US at any rate) British TV series that were staples of my childhood and which he must have followed on some obscure channel. He apologised for the modest size of our fanbase, but in truth I doubt that anyone passing the shop had the faintest idea who the two famous authors inside were. And it was a quiet Sunday afternoon.

Monday morning's event was in Clinton, New Jersey. The school visit was arranged by an affable gent named Harvey, who had quit the rat-race to run a bookshop in a quiet town, and seemed to be doing a fine job of it. I was road-testing a short powerpoint presentation that would accompany my usual preamble on illustration and how it can lead to a downward spiral of involvement in childrens literature and culminate in a life of writing. It seemed to go down well.

Afterwards I was driven to Harper Collins offices to meet the charming Very Important Ladies of Children's publishing, and we sat around in a room far too comfortable to be called an office until it was time for my flight to Chicago. I attempted to have the term 'latte' explained to me, but the closest we could get was that it was a sort of stuffing in a coffee that made it taller. Somebody was dispatched to get me one. It was an excellent coffee, but I couldn't taste the tallness.

Flights from La Guardia were delayed, and my plane sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours while the captain counted down the number of aircraft queuing in front of us. By the time I arrived in my Chicago hotel it was late, and I was hungry. After the customary dive for the thermostat to defrost the room, I called room service and ordered Nachos with Everything. A plate the size of a dustbin lid arrived in due course, with a mountain of tortilla chips and chili piled on it. Unfortunately the human animal possesses no natural impulse to stop eating cheese nachos until his teeth hit the plate, and I think it was only jaw fatigue that saved my life. My ill-considered menu choice became apparent in the morning when I realised the degree of intestinal fortitude that would be required to stand up for two hours of presentations after feasting on Jalapenos in the early hours. Did I possess the Right Stuff, I wondered?