.......hello. Is there anybody still here

Simon;

10 days since my last post. Jeez man, who the hell do I think I am?
Yeah, sorry about that, things have been a bit busy and that, what with stuff and other stuff.
June has been great so far, and there's lots to talk about. So here we go then.
Oh no, i've forgotten.

We had Lynne Featherstone come to see us. She's our local MP and she's lovely.
Here she is.............


Oh no, wait. Tim, she's not here yet.
Ah, that's better

She came in and bought a copy of Persepolis, and seemed to like the shop. I hope she recommends us on her blog

We've also started Crime Week in Wood Green. This is a week of events celebrating the best in Crime writing, and if i'm honest, it was very very hard to organise. Especially as i'm a bit of a 'let's just see how things go' kind of guy. But, also if i'm honest, it's brilliant!!
Yesterday (Monday) we had the wonderful talents of Cathi Unsworth and Danny King. For those of you who need to , Danny has written many novels, including The Burglar Diaries, the Hitman Diaries, of whom Maxim said 'the book’s hitman protagonist himself [is] a piece of work so nasty he makes Osama bin Laden look like Claire Rayner’(blimey) and his latest gem School for Scumbags, and Cathi is a wonderful journalist and writer, who's latest novel 'The Singer', Lydia Lunch describes as 'beautifully written, hard hitting and haunting. And respect always has to go to Lunch.
Well, i'll tell you something for nothing. They were both briliant. Here they are, flogging their books.

This crime week is going to be an annual affair, and in years to come the lucky punters who turned up to listen to Cathi and Danny read fromtheir books and the like, will be able to say 'I was there' at the first ever event at the biggest crime festival in Britain. You mark my words.

On the Murakami front, no more news.....

Other things that seem to be happening at the moment.

Graham Marks came to see us. He's brilliant in all the ways that authors who come to the shop can be brilliant. It was a small turnout, due to it being half term and the fact we're new and still need to get our marketing better, but Graham sat and chatted for an hour and was brilliant value. He even said lovely things about us in the local paper that week too.

If you haven't joined our facebook group yet, you've missed out big time.

My opinion on age ranging of children's books? Bollocks. This isn't opinion actually, it's fact. OK?

An orange fly has just landed on my computer screen

Karen McCombie is coming to visit us this weekend. She's brill and should be carried around North London and cheered at all day, although she'd probably get nothing done if that happened. Anyway, she's at the shop on saturday to entertain us and out customers. 1PM, so don't be late.

Life is good, and Katie and I are about 3 weeks away from having a small person who'll be weeing, puking, sleeping, and demanding food all day. Working with Tim for the last few months has been really good practice for me.

More stories soon, but thanks for coming back after my long break
x