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The old woman and the snow

I'm feeling remarkably ancient at the moment. The reason for this is that, one week after my 31st birthday, I went to the opticians and discovered that I now need to wear glasses. Not all the time - the optician helpfully said I only need them for computer work, reading and watching TV. Erm, that's pretty much all the time, then!

Apparently, my right eye is astygmatic - shaped like a rugby ball. 'This means,' the optician said, 'you don't see things in the same way as other people. You see the world in a warped and distorted manner.'

Hmm, I'm sure I've heard people say something similar before!

While I was waiting for my prescription to be drawn up, a member of staff came up to me, nervously, grinning, and said she'd recognised my name on the prescription sheet and had read Beholden and could she have my autograph please?

I was a little flummoxed, I have to admit. I'm used to signing books - I can see why people would want an author to sign a book - but my autograph? I was flattered, of course, but it seemed surreal. The whole thing was surreal - I went into the opticians as a young nobody, and came away feeling that I'd turned into a famous old woman without even noticing!

The things that happen, eh?

But it's easy to underestimate just how interested a lot of people are in books and writers. An event I did in Bedford, in the library around the corner from my parents' house (a small library that I used to visit most weekends as a child), brought this home to me.

It was in January, on the day that will forever be described as 'this year's winter'. It didn't just snow in Bedford, there was actually a blizzard, the genuine article with big flakes of horizontal snow whipped through the suburbs by arctic winds, blinding and freezing anyone foolish enough to venture outside. By the time seven pm came and I thought I really should head to the library, the blizzard had died down but it was absolutely freezing outside, and the snow had that compacted iciness that makes walking without ice-spikes on the soles of your hiking boots an extreme sport. I assumed this would have an impact on the size of the audience; I half-expected to find that the only audience would be my family and the library staff.

When I got to the library and found that the only people there were a gang of youths throwing snowballs, I fully expected to trudge back home again. But people gradually fought their way through the extreme weather - of the thirty ticketholders, fifteen actually made it, and I was very impressed by that. Honoured, too - if I'd been them, I'd probably have stayed at home, huddled next to the gas fire with a mug of hot chocolate.

When I looked around the room, I realised that I knew a lot of the audience. My parents, my sister and my sister's mother-in-law were there; I knew bad weather was unlikely to put them off, but there were also parents of people I was friends with at school, and people who worked with my parents, or went to their church. I thought a lot of the people must be there because they knew my family, not because they loved books, and when I started my talk I did wonder if I was pitching it all wrong, if they really would be interested in the process of writing a book, or how I found a publisher, or what I was trying to say in my writing.

When I threw the session open for questions, I don't really know what I was expecting; but I was delighted to discover that, far from coming simply because they knew my family, the audience had lots of insightful, interesting, intelligent questions about writing, and literature, and the crime genre. The vast majority had read Beholden, several had read Death Duty and excitedly told the room what they thought of it (luckily, they loved it!).

Far from the blizzard decimating the audience and undermining the event, it seemed to give impetus to the discussion. Maybe only the keenest made it through the snow, or maybe battling the elements fired people up to get as much out of the event as they could; either way, I thought it was a remarkable evening. Made even more remarkable by a latecomer turning out to be one of my best friends from school, all grown up and grinning to see me again.

(A similar thing happened when I went to Heffers bookshop in Cambridge a couple of weeks later - after the event, a staff member emerged from behind the till where she'd been hiding, and turned out to be a close friend I hadn't seen for twelve years. The joy of these rediscoveries!)

All of which is a distraction from the real work of writing. Book three is developing nicely and I'm pleased with the shape it's taking. Death Duty is published in hardback and I've had some good feedback, though reviews and things like that will probably come when the paperback is out in April. I'm hopeful about its chances - already, WH Smiths have bought it to stock in railway stations and airports, and Morrisons want to use it in a crime writing promotion they're doing later in the year. But of course, the real test is when actual genuine readers get their hands on it, and I'm sure they'll tell me what they think at future events.

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