How thrilled am I at this moment?

Is it:

a) very

b) amazinglyhugelyzomgone11!one

c) beyond the measure of human language and symbols, but within the scope of rational thought

d) running around in the carpark wearing only a beer hat shouting “squeeeee!”

e) yes, I experience a measure of satisfaction in uncovering the compleat opus within the rubble of my surging and searching mind, but the true happiness lies in the journey of self-expression and discovery. No real artist likes to gloat, of course, but I think we can safely say that [blah]

f) dude, I have totally run out of dumb ways to express my excitement, but it’s, like, totally.

The answer is g) all of the above except for the nudity.

Why?

Because the US paperback jacket design has just arrived, and it is gorgeous. Yes, it’s true, I wanted to ask all you guys to chip in and talk about it and so on, but this time around there wasn’t time and I was frankly too rubbish to sort it out, so we’ll have to save that for the next ‘un. However, I believe you will approve.

The book comes out some time in September, I’m not exactly sure when. The idea, obviously, is that I should have finished the new one by then – by which I mean finished a presentable draft – so that I can have double bragging rights and give myself superior looks in the mirror. I’ve made a small list of things I will say to myself while brushing my teeth, such as:

1) You said it couldn’t be done, you whiner!

2) Who the bookdaddy? Uh-huh uh-huh.

3) Are those your teeth? And are they the teeth of a two-time novelist? Yes, yes, I believe they are…

And so on. Sadly, I cannot yet say any of these things because I am still only about three quarters of the way in. Ten weeks to go, I hope, maybe twelve… wish me luck…

Re: your clients, Lech Kaczynski / Mirek Tololànek my blog post, 3.vi.09

Dear Mr Faversham,

  Thank you for your further correspondence regarding my blog post today. It really is remarkable how the digital age makes things so immediate.

  You are, of course, quite correct. It was wrong of me, entirely wrong, to suggest that either of your clients is mad. I have no evidence to support such a claim, even if – which I understand is denied – such were to exist. I accept entirely that I was wrong to write such a thing, and I deeply regret the decision. 

  You and your clients will, I hope, appreciate that I am for the most part a light-hearted writer, given to satire. My recent novel, The Gone-Away World, features sections in which Cuba joins the United Kingdom and the authorities of an unnamed nation take precautions against attacks by suicide shrews. I am not the most serious person, and this unfortunate tendency to hyperbole and low humour got the better of me on this occasion. I absolutely accept that Mr Kaczynski is as sane as the next man, and the next man, of course, is Mr Topolànek, who is as sane as the next man in the other direction.

  I hope it will go some way to ameliorating the situation if I explain that I was, by my own lights, being kind to your clients. To me, as a weak, immoral person with few virtues and many vices, towering pillars of virtue like your clients are incomprehensible. I mistrust people who describe homosexuality as a ‘pathology’, for example. I am too ethically blind to see the reasoning behind Mr Kaczynski’s support for the death penalty, and when Mr Topolànek refers to Global Warming as a ‘pseudo-crisis’, I’m afraid my anti-liberal soul, filled with the fear that I will lose out of the great beanfeast of subsidies heaped upon the Green Industry, curdles and rebels. Yes, I am stepped in sin. I know it, and my readers now know it to. It feels good to have cleared the air.

  The point is that, because these ideas are so far from my own – along with so many others which your clients espouse – I called them ‘loons’ – which is, after all, a friendly way to disagree with someone, colloquially – rather than referring to them as ‘homophobic monsters’ or what have you. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  I now deeply regret this decision and will hasten to make the offending passages more accurate.

  Yours Sincerely,

  Nick Harkaway

Given that maintaining a blog used to fall comfortably into my personal Room 101, I felt a certain bewildered satisfaction on discovering just now that De-icing was my hundredth post here. Almost entirely painless. Go figure.