It’s not often you achieve a lifetime goal – I think the last time I could say that, hand on heart, was when I graduated – but today is one of those days. The novel that I laboured over for more than four years has finally gone out into the world, or at least those parts of it that own Kindles or are within reach of my publishers’ North American distribution chain.

It’s been a funny old day so far. I was warned not to expect anything terribly exciting or life-changing, and to be honest it hasn’t been much different from any of the other days in the run-up to release. Some of my friends have congratulated me on Twitter; Lee Harris at Angry Robot showed off a photo of this month’s new titles, hot off the presses; and my guest post on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea went live. However both paperback and Kindle are now trending upwards on Amazon.com, which is nice (the UK version of Author Central isn’t showing any stats for the Kindle edition, so I have no idea how well that’s going).

I guess it won’t feel quite real until Saturday, when I attend my first signing in Waterstones in Manchester, and then of course there’s the official launch party at Heffer’s in Cambridge on April 5th (tickets still available if you can make it!). I’ll probably have to make a speech at the latter, but in case I have a fit of nerves and fluff my lines:

“A published novel is not the work of one person, even if it is less of a collaborative work than a movie. There’s all the editorial, production work and promotion work (handled by the lovely chaps at Angry Robot Books) and of course the beautiful cover art (by Larry Rostant), without which this novel would not be reaching you in such a desirable form. Anyway, thank you, guys, for all the hard work!”

Right, back to outlining The Prince of Lies. These books don’t write themselves, more’s the pity…