Spent another day seeing to various office-related items, such as signing contracts, responding to business mail, unpacking boxes, replying to emails, etc. It's annoying not to be able to get back to my editing duties, but that's the problem with being on the road so often -- office work mounts up, and if you don't deal with it as soon as you can, it continues to grow and will eventually spiral out of control!!!

Received a lot of post today, containing new editions of my books from several different countries, as well as the latest installments of the Japanese Darren Shan manga adaptation. I LOVE receiving post like this! It's always nice when something pleasant is delivered, and that niceness is intensified even more if that something is one of your own books!!! I read on Anthony Horowitz's blog recently that he still gets excited when he opens a box of his own books that have been sent to him by his publisher, and I have to agree -- I always get a little buzz when I see my work in its final, printed state. In a way, it's even more enjoyable getting editions from other countries -- because I work with my UK publishers the most closely, I'm fairly involved with the genesis and design of the book; I help settle on the cover image; I get updates from the artist; I see a proof of the cover; I read through the page proofs; and so on. But with most other editions, I have nothing at all to do with my publishers, and the books often arrive out of the blue -- today, among others, I got the first Estonian editions of "Cirque Du Freak", a menacing-looking Norwegian edition of "Slawter", and a hardback Dutch edition of "Koyasan". They were all surprises, especially "Koyasan" -- I didn't realize they were doing it in hardback, and I was delighted when I saw what a great job the publishers had made of it!!! There are a lot of good things about being a writer, but getting exotic copies of your books which you had no idea were on their way ranks WAY up there.