Post girding

Well, hands were shaken, books were signed, queues were queued, loins were girded, and jam was defended. That, my lords ladies and gentlemen, was Games Day UK 2007, and I hope you all had as much fun as Nik and I did.

In a day literally jam packed, many fun moments stand out, but I would particularly like to thank:

1) Xhalax, for the jam of course (real, defendable jam, everyone). (NB - Xhalax is a she, Steve)

2) Rachel, for the thank you gift - the dedication was my pleasure.

3) Anybody who came on behalf of someone else and queued in the mammoth queue (it was long, I don’t mean it had extinct ice age elephants in it). Great examples of this would be kampfhamster who came and said hi on Packmaster’s behalf, and Matthew Churchill’s mate, who stood in line on Matt’s behest and casually handed me a cell phone with Matt at the other end of it when he reached me, which was, frankly, very jet set.

4) My fellow Black Library creative types: Graham (and Rebecca), Nathan Long, Jim Swallow, Alex Stewart, Ben Counter, Neil Roberts, Mitchel Scanlon, Ian Edginton, Steve Parker (great to meet you at last!), Jonathan Green and everyone else. It was great to see everyone and a shame there wasn’t time to chat more.

5) B.P. Steve and Claire. Hope you liked the book.

6) Mat, Dju and Leonidas from the Bibliotheque Interdite for being such great company on Saturday night.

7) Marco, Lindsey and the entire staff of BL for working so hard to make it all happen. There were a lot of tired faces in VIP by the end, so I hope the evening in Bugman’s afterwards recharged your batteries. Thanks very much for a great day, Black Library.

8) And everyone else (think that covers it).


There are, as regular readers can tell, some ‘follow up issues’ regarding the casting suggestions. Glad that stirred things up, and I will go back and sort the wheat from the chaff at some point (not now). But I would like to follow up on rfox’s question about the Games Day exclusive and the ship is sinking’s about the OID collector’s edition: I am reliably informed that both are now available via the BL mail order (while stocks last). So, uh, HURRY is all I can say.

And finally, I’d like to share the follow words with you (in no particular order): loins, gird, defend, pumpernickel (Saberrox is right, that’s great to type).

I ate all the jam.

I’m Alpharius, goodnight!