I spent a fascinating day in the Great Wen [William Cobbett's somewhat disparaging term for London] on Tuesday filming a documentary for National Geographic. Filming took place down in a cellar somewhere near the Tower of London. I stood near a see-through blackboard [white board? glass board?], and opined away about my index date breakthrough in the Complete Prophecies, scratching wildly on the board all the while with a sort of yellow marker pen. The crew, which consisted of our producer, Caroline, her assistant, Millie, our Canadian interviewer, Jeff, and a couple of very cheery camera and audio technicians, made the whole process a delight from start to finish. Caroline, Jeff, Millie and I were able to bond over dinner the evening before, so by the time were were ready for the crack of dawn interview, we were all comfortable with each other, and were able to crack a few jokes to lay the ghosts of the dead.

Emerging from the Kensington Hilton, pre-interview, at about a quarter to seven that morning, I realised afresh why I live in the country. It’s simply a far more civilised environment to conduct one’s ‘drab, wretched’ life - pace Tom Lehrer - in. On the train back, later that afternoon, my spirits soared, as usual , upon my first sight of a wood. Then I started looking out for deer on the edges of the woods, followed by hares, partridge, pheasants, rabbits, and sundry birds of prey. I saw all of them during the two hour journey back to Wiltshire. One only needs to look. I’m sure cities hold similar joys, but I tend to tire of them sooner. Paris is something of an exception, of course, but if I’m honest, I’ve never spent more than a week or so there at any one time, and I would probably tire of even that. The countryside, on the other hand, never palls. Yesterday I saw roe deer, muntjac, pheasant curling in the high wind, buzzards, a badger, four hares, and I heard, rather than saw, a plethora of owls intercommunicating. Total magic. Now I’m sitting in my study, looking out at the sunshine and a field full of horses. Sublime.

It’s nice to know there’s already considerable interest in my follow-up novel to The Nostradamus Prophecies, provisionally entitled Corpus Maleficus. My publishers in Brazil and Poland have both pre-empted the novel, setting us on what I hope and trust will be a similar trajectory to TNP [for which foreign rights have already been sold in 34 countries].

To be frighteningly frank, it’s a great feeling being wanted as a writer. I spent so many years fending off rejection slips from pretty much every quarter under the sun, that now it is really satisfying to have people actually vying to employ me! I know I’ve said this before, in a marginally different context, but I can’t emphasise enough to budding writers that they must be flexible. It’s all very well convincing yourself that what you are writing probably contains the sum total of all world knowledge, but the reality in publishing is that you are highly unlikely to find anyone else prepared to agree with you. Especially if what you are writing represents the commercial viability of a three day old sandwich.

No. If you fail with one line of attack, change tack and have a go at another. Check out the market. Play to your strengths. Do your homework properly. Conduct your research on the ground. Be prepared to make a significant investment in both time and money before you hit pay dirt. Flexibility also implies that you may not be the best person to decide where your real strengths lie. So don’t be afraid of asking the opinion of other, hopefully enlightened, beings. And when you are given advice by people who really know what the writing trade is about, take it.

No one likes revising - especially at the beginning of one’s career. One wants it all to be easy. But it isn’t. Revision will be your strongest weapon, and will make the difference between being treated as a professional or being sidelined as an amateur. Virtually all the books I see by putative writers, and that I suspect won’t make the grade, simply have not been properly revised. When I explain to would be writers quite how much revision I do in the course of writing a book, they look at me in horror. But that’s what it takes. One good writer in a million can just churn out the words without needing to go over, and over, and over them again. I work on some individual chapters 50, 60, or even 70 times. I never get bored. Not if I’m improving the text by even one iota. And this applies to commercial fiction as well as literary fiction [and I've written both].

It is very complicated indeed to make something seem simple. To make it trip off the page like a flake of gold dust. Read some of the Greats, but with your eyes open. Then work on creating your own voice. When you get a rejection slip that contains even a sliver of advice, don’t tear it up in a snit, but ask yourself why the person rejecting you has bothered to give an opinion, when all they really needed to do was to send your manuscript back via S.A.E., with an agency card pinned to the title page. Ask yourself whether what they might be saying could actually, horror of horrors, be true. And then re-address those aspects of your work they found wanting. If you do this, you’ll almost certainly make it in the end. I hope you do. It’s really worth the journey. Every last bit of it.