Two more countries to add to the burgeoning foreign rights list for The Nostradamus Prophecies - China and the Ukraine. This takes us to 22 so far. My agent, Oli Munson, obviously has the bit between his teeth! I admit to feeling just a little bewildered. My editor at Atlantic, Ravi Mirchandani, wrote to me the other day saying that WH Smith Travel [they run all the WH Smith airport and railway station bookshops] have designated my novel as their ‘Read of the Week’ for the last week in July [which just happens to coincide with one of the busiest weeks of the holiday season]. He mentioned in his letter that I might reasonably take this as ‘good news’. Something of an understatement, I felt! To know that thousands of busy commuters and holiday makers will magically have access to my new book via the WH Smith travel outlets is exciting beyond measure. I can already imagine myself lurking around Waterloo Station praying that someone will actually buy the book while I am watching - or maybe see someone on the underground, or on a train, reading it [I have yet to taste of such an experience]. All the more important, then, that I get on and finish my follow-up to The Nostradamus Prophecies, which is taking its final shape as we speak. I have all my characters in place for a grand denouement - now all I have to do is pull off the denouement. Phew. I’m feeling weary just thinking about it…. Writing anything is hard graft - and writing the follow-up to what might very well prove to be a runaway success [fingers firmly crossed here, and resolutely no painting of devils on walls] is harder graft still. Novelists set up expectations at their peril. Readers expect results, not to mention instant gratification. And novelists have to provide that instant gratification, and even surpass it, or face going under. Sometimes I look back with nostalgia on my non-fiction days, when most of the novels I churned out came winging their way back in the post, complete with rejection slip, and I was forced either to write non-fiction or face starvation. I now have the inestimable privilege of choice, and I am truly grateful for it, and to all those readers, editors and publishers who have accorded it to me.