Good news is good.

Well, I can declare Summer formally arrived. It was one of those blindingly hot days, where you lie about like a beached whale, crisping under the merciless sun and bugling weakly for iced tea. The sort of day that is ideal for a straw hat and a barbecue, which was fortunate, because I happened to be down in the delightful town of Bowral for a barbecue. Whilst wearing a straw hat. Bowral is a couple of hours away from Canberra (which is where I live), but I rather enjoy long car drives, as long as there’s good tunes, and I had the new Florence & The Machine CD, so it was a nice motoring expedition. Except that I have a nagging suspicion that I may have gotten caught out by one of those speed camera set-ups where they take your picture at one point, and then, at a completely unreasonable point located several dozen kilometers and a few distracted thoughts later, they take it again, and then they calculate the average speed. And I fear that my average speed may have been a little above average.

Anyway.

So, one of the things about living in the age of the internet, is that you have to get up pretty early to get the news first. Even when it’s news about you. As a result, earlier this week, I got quite a few emails congratulating me on Publishers Weekly before I knew what they were talking about. But, much to my delight, it seems that The Rook was Publishers Weekly’s ‘Pick of the Week’, and featured in a starred review right on the table of contents, right where everyone could see it. You can see it online at http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-316-09879-3 . And, if you want to recreate my entire experience, you should read it while eating some breakfast cereal, and then you should choke in excitement, and spew some Kellogg’s Just Right across the keyboard. I am ecstatic.

ALSO, Mr. Charles Yu, the distinguished author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, wrote a very nice blurb for The Rook, and I agonized for several hours about how to write him a thank-you note without sounding like too much of a crawler. You can read his very kind blurb on the Review page of this very website. And you should read his book, too, because it’s really a grand read.

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