Any Human Face launch

Any Human Face had its official UK launch yesterday evening in the Travel Bookshop, a place I wholeheartedly recommend for all your reading needs should you be in or near Notting Hill, and probably worth a specific trip for. (It is a travel bookshop, after all.) I was accompanied by Simon Barraclough, who pulled some fine Italian-focused work from his poetic hat, and introduced by my friend and agent, the poet Isobel Dixon, so I couldn't have been happier. I also had the chance not only to see some old friends - including one I haven't seen for 33 years (hello, Sara!) - some newer ones (hello, Katy!) and some very new ones ( hello Essie!), but also to cement some previously virtual ones (hello Rob! hello Anne!).

You can see more photos of the event here.

Disturbing...

Rob Spence reviews Any Human Face on Topsyturvydom, his highly recommended blog. It's a great thrill when someone whose opinion you respect gets it, and Rob certainly gets it here. This is a taste of the review:

This novel is, in concept, an excellent, disturbing, stylish thriller, but one with aspirations beyond the working out of a criminal act. It uses most of the thriller conventions, but goes well beyond them, to offer a story which deals with universal themes, particularly of man's inhumanity to man, and the dark heart of loneliness at the centre of many lives.

You can read the rest of the review here.

Dropping in at Edge Hill

The penultimate leg of my Something Rich and Strange tour can be found at Rob Spence's blog, Topsyturvydom. Rob, for those of you who don't know, is a proud Mancunian, a lecturer in English literature at Edge Hill University and, with Ailsa Cox, the editor of 21: A Journal of Contemporary and Innovative Fiction, and I'm honoured to be invited. In the interview, we chat about genre, craft and what exile might involve. Talking about my story collection, The Scent of Cinnamon, Rob comments: 

"If anything is going to restore the popularity of short fiction in this country, it must be the publication of stories such as these, by turns humorous, surreal, disturbing, but always memorable." 

His last words, which I wholeheartedly endorse, are these: 

"Now, gentle reader, buy the book! "

As I close the door behind me...

...I just wanted to alert you to a review of Little Monsters.It's by Rob Spence on his blog Topsyturvydom, which, I'm pleased to see, has a link to Ben Goldacre. And to me.

And now I really must go.