Wotcher, humans.

You know what? I’m starting to wonder whether eating the Enthoven on Friday was really such a good idea. Turns out my timing might have been better: today was the first day of a WEEK-LONG UK AUTHOR TOUR. If I hadn’t had the weekend to have a good nose ’round his files – on top of those months on the case since I first got to this planet of yours – I’m sure someone today would have rumbled me!

The first event of the day – a shortish session with thirty students at Ravenscroft School in Barnet – went like a charm. I’d got a couple of funny looks from Laura, the Random House Children’s Books publicist who was lookin’ after me, but that was normal fer the Enthoven anyway – he got funny looks even when he was alive! Certainly nobody else seemed to suspect the grisly truth. In fact, I was starting to feel pretty positive that I might get away with this…

But then in the afternoon came the second session of the day, speaking to around sixty students from Dame Alice Owen’s School, in Potters Bar. Folks, this was a close one. When one young gentleman in the audience stuck his hand up and asked what the Enthoven’s very first book was about – not his ‘orrible The Black Tattoo, mind, but the very first book he wrote, long before ‘e got published – for a moment things looked like they’d ‘ave to turn drastic. I didn’t /want/ to have to sprout tentacles and eat everybody in the room to make sure there were no witnesses. But I couldn’t let my plan turn blancmange-shaped on day one, neither. Lucky for me I’ve got a good memory, eh? And lucky for everyone else there, too, believe you me. ;p

I’ve been practisin’ his signature fer months, so that was a doddle (his handwriting looks like he’s used to holding a pen with tentacles not fingers, just like mine) And like the Ravenscroft School session in the morning, the Dame Alice Owen students were a pleasure to talk to. But, heh, here’s hoping they never find out ‘ow close they came to following the Enthoven to a SQUIDGEY DEMISE. 😉

My thanks to Lyn at Waterstone’s, The Spires, and to everyone else I met today: you gave me a lovely warm welcome and you’ve made this demon very happy.

Tentacles crossed I won’t ‘ave to eat anybody the rest of this week…;)

-Jagmat

Favourite word of the day: DISCOMBOBULATED. Currently reading: KAI-RO by Graham Marks

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