OK, so judging by the number of messages I received containing guesses about the title of the final Jimmy Coates book, I can deduce three things:

1. There are more of you reading this blog than I thought. (In which case, why haven’t we been rescued yet? What possible other priorities could there be in life?

2. You all know a lot of words beginning with G. To be fair, that was the only clue I gave you, so I should expected some very keen people to simply plough through the dictionary. Perhaps I was naive in thinking nobody would ever guess it. There are, after all, only a finite number of G words in the English language.

3. What was number 3? Oh yes: The Monsters don’t seem to be blocking my emails. Unless that’s just what they want me to think and they’re really faking all of my internet activities to make me believe I’m interacting with the outside world when I’m actually just talking to one of the monsters, who’s giggling into his monster much right now. Yes, I think that must be it. What other possible explanation could there be for England being bowled out for 51?!? It’s a fake!

Anyway, eventually one of those (fake?) messages did contain the right answer – and it was a comment on this very blog!

So congratulations to Matt Price, who suggested a whole string of G words, including ‘Gregorian’ and ‘Googleplex’. But hidden among all those suggestions was…

JIMMY COATES: GENESIS

(Well done to my sister as well, who also guessed it correctly, but she guessed it second, so doesn’t win the prize. Which is a relief because it probably would have been a bit silly if I’d ended up having to send a whole set of signed books to my sister. I think conspiracy theorists would have been suspicious. And was it really my sister? Or was it yet another monster in disguise? And couldn’t the monsters have come up with better disguises than that?)

Well done Matt Price. You win a complete set of signed Jimmy Coates books!

I hope you all like the title. I’m excited about it. You may now all start to guess what the plot is. But no more prizes on offer for now. I just want to hear all your ridiculous suggestions. If they involve the creation of the world and the garden of eden, so much the better. If they involve Phil Collins, not so good. Though I do have a lot of respect for Mr Collins as a songwriter and performer. I’m not going to put him in the last Jimmy Coates book. I think that would be strange.

However, if a generous and benevolent monster wanted to go out and bring him to the cave for a tired and lonely bunch of authors to have a bit of retro entertainment, I wouldn’t object.

JIMMY COATES: GENESIS is due to come out in October this year, but not until after book 7 has come out – JIMMY COATES: BLACKOUT, due in April.

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Jimmy Coates, Joe Craig, Phil Collins