Eye Contact

For me, this is a day of days. Ever since I was a kid, lost in the pages of Tolkien or Douglas Adams, I have dreamed of being a published author.

Over the years I've written magazine articles, and even managed to get the odd short story into print, but a proper book? That was always more of a long-term goal or, if I'm honest, more of a long-shot.

But today, my first novel is finally published by Hodder & Stoughton. Eye Contact began life as an ongoing piece of homework for a Creative Writing evening class. When I started attending that class, our tutor asked each of us what our ambitions were – I told him that I wanted to get a novel published, and that I wanted to walk into a bookshop and see a copy of it on the shelf.

Well, today, I'm off to a series of meetings in London. But on the way home, I'm going to pop into a few book shops and see if I can find a copy.

And I'm going to count myself very, very fortunate indeed.