Today I went to Taunton to get my tax refund check into the bank, and I took the opportunity to go shopping. As it turned out, I mostly obeyed Cheryl’s #1 rule of shopping which is, “if nothing catches your eye, you don’t have to buy anything.” I can always get myself a present in the holiday sales when I get back to CA.

But I did buy a book. It is called Memoirs of a Master Forger and it is by a drunken licentious luvvie by the name of William Heaney who blames all of his bad habits on possession by demons. They do that, badly behaved men. Blame everything on demons. It was the demon that made me do it, Your Honour.

Except that Mr Heaney is actually something of a fraud, because in real life he is mild-mannered fantasy writer, Graham Joyce. Quite why Graham has opted for this masquerade, I am not entirely sure. Maybe it is something to do with fighting crime. Or Demons. Or both. But you need to know because otherwise you might miss this book, or get very confused, because sadly Jeremy and Jason have declined to go along with the jolly wheeze and the book that Night Shade will publish next month under the title of How to Make Friends with Demons (by Graham Joyce) is in fact exactly the same book that Gollancz is purporting to be by Mr. Heaney.

Unless of course the Night Shade boys have decided to Americanize the book, but I rather hope not because it is very clearly set in the bureaucratic nightmare that is New Labour Britain, and Americanizing it would be rather like Americanizing Inspector Chen (which Night Shade has wisely not done).

The other issue for Night Shade is what they will do with the cover, because Gollancz have done an absolutely bang-up job of making the book look like it is 100 years old or more. It really is very impressive. Well done whoever did the jacket design.

But look, there’s a new Graham Joyce novel out, I read a few pages on the train on the way home, and it looks like it is going to be a lot of fun. So don’t be fooled by all the Heaney stuff, go out and buy.