Busy, busy, busy

So what kind of week have you had?

Mine has been hectic.

Last week I took a short break away to Tunisia looking to catch a little sun on my pallid flesh, but things didn't work out that way. Day one was nice, day two was nice until lunchtime, days three four and five I may as well have been in gloomy, cold overcast Cumbria, day six was cold and blowing a gale, day seven...well...talk about monsoons of all monsoons. The rain came down and continued coming down and for a time I feared that all flights back to the UK would be grounded. Travelling back to Monastir airport we'd have been better in a boat than a coach because the roads had become torrents resembling an open sewer. Thankfully though the rain went off about an hour before my flight was due (not that it meant the plane was going to be on time, we got away an hour and a bit later than we should have). If it hadn't been for the great company we had (Hello to Roy and Joan, and to Kath and David) it would have been a pretty boring old time.

Any way, I made it back to the UK and was home in time to attend the Words by the Water literary festival at Keswick's Theatre by the Lake on Monday evening, so all's well that ends well.

Because I promised my wife I wouldn't take my laptop with me on holiday, I gave in to technology in another way and purchased a BlackBerry. That way I could still keep up with emails, blogs etc, or so I thought. Have I mentioned that I'm a bit of a Luddite - of course I forgot to add worldwide coverage, so none of my emails came through and I couldn't access the web. D'OH! Therefore I had 134 emails waiting for me on my return, many of them requiring immediate responses. Many of them were submissions to Thrillers, Killers 'n' Chillers, my sister blog, and also short stories for the competition I'm running to win a signed copy of my next book. Monday and Tuesday were therefore spent at my laptop catching up with the backlog. I also got through the page proofs for book four CUT AND RUN and worked my way through them with the old beady eye and editing pencil at the ready. I managed to get through that by midnight on Wednesday night.

Yesterday was more of the same, posting competition stories to Joe Hunter's Fixers and then out of the blue I had a journalist contact me for an interview. Said journalist turned up and we spent the best part of two hours putting together a two page spread due to appear in the News and Star this coming Monday. I managed to get about 1,000 words of my latest book written, but that was all.

Today, I've signed and dated stacks of books and then repackaged them - if you're nearby there's 50 odd copies of Slash and Burn going into Goldsboro Books, Cecil Street, London in a few days time, and if you're in Brighton visit Alan White Fine Books for some of the same. I also did another interview with another journalist and this piece will be in the West Cumbrian newspapers sometime next week. As I write, I'm waiting for a photographer to arrive to take shots to accompany the pieces, so have looked out a decent shirt and spritzed myself up a bit. The high life, eh?

You'll also probably be happy to hear that I've got a little more writing done, and that an old 'friend' has reared his head again and will make book 6 Joe Hunter's worst day ever!

Remember that the deadline for entries to the Joe Hunter competition is midnight GMT tonight - that means around early evening for youse guys over in the states, and if you live in OZ or NZ well, you're already too late. Only kidding. Any timed before 24:00 hours at my end will still be entered into the comp.

Happy writing folks (trust me, I'm very happy).
Matt