This week sees World Book Day take place, and like many authors, my fellow captives are all off visiting schools and libraries up and down the country more or less every day this week.

I, on the other hand, am not.

You see, while I have written a few Ben 10 books and the like, I am very different from my fellow captives in that my own books aren’t out yet.  In fact, they’re not even nearly out yet.  The first one – INVISIBLE FIENDS: MR MUMBLES – comes out on Feb 1st 2010.  For the hard of counting, that’s eleven whole months away!

That’s why I’m not fully booked visiting schools this week – I’ve decided it’s best to wait until I have some books of my own to show off.

What do you mean “no-one wants me anyway”?  Of all the ruddy cheek…

Anyway, I’m settling in for a slow, boring week this week.  I have one school to visit on World Book Day itself, and will hopefully have time to fit in a live link-up from inside the cave with another, but other than that I’m going to be sitting here like Barry No Mates, twiddling my thumbs and trying to avoid looking my latest jailor – Gu’nthrr Splix – in the eye.  That’s not going to be easy, what with Gu’nthrr Splix being nothing but one huge staring eyeball.

Or, at least, I thought I was going to be sitting here bored.  However, when I collected my toilet bucket from the monsters today, I found a very damp, very smelly parcel inside.  What’s more, it was addressed to me!

“Great!” I thought.  “Some fresh underwear.  And maybe some Maltesers.”

How wrong I was.  The parcel wasn’t full of pants.  Nor did it cotain round balls of honeycomb with a delicious chocolate coating.  Instead it contained something even more exciting.  Namely a big bundle of proof copies of my first book!

Look at it sitting there, all proof-copyish.  I took a few photos of myself holding it, but since I haven’t been allowed to shave or shower in a month, I didn’t come out looking my best.  I decided to let Homer Simpson stand in for me.  I think he does a fine job of conveying how terrifying the series is on my behalf.

For those of you who don’t know, proof copies are rough mock-ups of books that publishers put together to help sell the book to foreign publishers/film producers, and anyone else who might fancy buying certain rights.

Although the book itself will look very different when it is released in February, this is the first time I’ve seen my story in anything even vaguely resembling the finished product, so I intend to spend the time the others are away just staring at it with a somewhat goofy expression on my face.

I also got an email this morning from a Norwegian TV company asking about the Invisible Fiends series.  All in all a very unusual day…

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