As well as being one of the most beautiful autumns in recent memory, with colours to die for throughout the Cranborne Chase, it has also been a good fall for my novel, The Nostradamus Prophecies [foreign title The 52], which has just been bought by Ravi Mirchandani, of Atlantic Books. Atlantic and Ravi have just brought off a coup, with his author, Aravind Adiga, winning this year’s Booker Prize with his novel, The White Tiger. Rumour has it that Ravi took a letter, written in the style of the novel, and a fistful of rupees to Adiga’s agents’ office in order to win the right to publish him. I would like to say that a similar flourish was required to win my The Nostradamus Prophecies [a vellum incunabula, perhaps, and a sackful of golden ecus], but Reader, it would be a lie. The whole thing was done by telephone and e-mail. Atlantic is a splendid company [one of the last big independents in the business, alongside Faber & Faber], and I am sure to benefit from the largesse brimming down on them from the Booker wellspring. 2009 is shaping up very well now, with both my The Complete Nostradamus, and my thriller, The Nostradamus Prophecies [The 52], coming out in a heady panoply of different markets. Meanwhile I sit back here in my workroom, in studious oblivion, never having met the army of translators, publicists, editors, salesmen, printers, designers, copy editors and proofreaders who are contributing to the preparation and parturition of my books. Ladies and gentlemen, if you can hear me out there, thank you! It’s wonderful to know that I am part of an international, multi-dimensional family, all of whom are courteous enough, and trusting enough, to labour on behalf of a man they neither know, nor have any reason, beyond the commercially expedient, to care two figs about. And yet…and yet…my experience has been that a strange, quasi-symbiotic bond often emerges in such relationships, and that such supra-etheral communication very often amounts to considerably more than the simple sum of its parts. We are all working for each other - I, in writing the book, and you, in securing its sale - and for that I am deeply grateful. I wish you and your families well wherever you may be.

It’s odd how things suddenly come at one out of the blue. I was out beating the other day [that's driving game towards waiting guns, for the non-cognoscenti - it's harder than it sounds, believe me], when I suddenly had the urge to write an article about this peculiar passion of mine. The sporting aspect is really secondary to the excuse to get away from my desk and out into the open air for seven precious hours, in excellent company, and in any weather - beating keeps me fit, sane, and earthbound, in other words. Anyway, I phoned The Field magazine’s commissioning editor and left her a message. She called back that same evening whilst I was luxuriating in a well-earned bath. They wanted the article, but they wanted it now! They’d up-paged their December edition and needed more content urgently. Well, I was only too happy to oblige [it's nice to feel wanted]! Sporting types can therefore keep their eyes peeled for the Reading by-line [last seen in The Sunday Times Magazine, God knows how many years ago...]. More good news, too, on the thriller front, with a Brazilian sale for The 52 - thank you, Frankfurt Book Fair, and thank you to Oli Munson, my agent. It must be hell out there on the literary world’s front line. I’m secretly relieved to be back here at home writing odd articles and getting on with my follow-up to The 52 whilst those with far more business sense than me make the commercial running. Anyway, we’ve sold 12 foreign rights to the novel already, with more, it seems, to come. Never thought I’d be saying that…

Took the train to London yesterday for a quick British Library fix, followed by the Society of Authors AGM. The AGM was being held at the Conway Hall in Red Lion Square - a venue which comes straight off the pages of an A. J. Cronin novel. I half expected to stumble into a Temperance Society do, or a Fabian Society meeting with Sidney and Beatrice Webb in heated debate with H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw on the merits and demerits of Socialist Utopianism. In the event we were greeted by Tracy Chevalier [our 'Chair' - a marginal tongue-in-cheek manifests itself here, not about the author but the piece of furniture], Jonny Geller, Managing Director of the books division of Curtis Brown, Alexandra Pringle, Editor-in-Chief of Bloomsbury Publishing, and Graham Rand, Commercial Director of Bertram and President of the Booksellers Association. Powerful figures all. I waited expectantly for a shaft of light to flash down and strike me on the head - a sort of literary version of Jung’s spontaneous morphology, in which I suddenly understood the respective positions of all elements in the literary hierarchy, and they were all pulling together…..  Dear Reader, it was not to be. Alexandra Pringle then explained how editors still had to ‘fall in love’ with a project [be it novel, non-fiction or celebrity memoir] before it stood a rabid pigeon’s chance of getting through the Bloomsbury skirmish line. I was tempted to put up my hand and ask “What about enlightened pragmatism?”, but didn’t. Whatever happened to discrimination? To going with something you may not necessarily like yourself, but which you reckon the reading public might? The way it is now, unless you as a writer can appeal to the no doubt exquisitely-honed tastes of the predominantly distaff editors of most publishing houses, you’re shot. Thank God for the Europeans, I say. The old chestnut of, “Well, the reading public largely consists of middle-aged women” was then trotted out. That’s not so surprising, is it, when that’s who most of the editors are. Look, I’ve nothing remotely against women editors [long live any editor who buys my books], and even less against middle-aged women readers [you're bloody marvellous, all of you!] but this silly English “we have to fall in love with a project” simply has to stop. Take a step back, editors, and shake yourselves. Think laterally. Take a punt and buy something you would never normally think of buying, and build a brand-new readership for it. Act decisively. Surprise your sales department. Epatez vos comptables [that's 'surprise your accountants' to those of you who don't speak German]. There are millions of people out there eager to buy books, but they’re being alienated by a product mired in ‘accepted practice’. The first British Publisher prepared to go against their instincts and buy something a little dangerous and off-the-wall is onto a sure-fire winner. Go European. See what Foreign Publishers are buying. Try a little spice with your porridge….  There. I’ve had my rant. The waters have calmed. The storm is over. All is well again down at the farm…..