The film of How I Live Now is starting to look real.  Not that there's anything as real as a cast, but we have a wonderful director (can't say who quite yet) and we have a script and just last week I signed a bunch of very official looking contracts. For once in my life I actually read the documents -- mainly because they were short, though I'm almost positive that one was in French (why would that have been?).   The one in English stipulated that IF I wrote a sequel, and IF the production company wanted to film it, they would get first dibs and I would be entitled to 10% of the shooting budget.  Did someone say ten percent??  Hang on.  Let's assume a modest £10 million budget, drag in a twelve-year-old to do the maths (here's a child I made earlier) and all of a sudden I'm thinking my decision NEVER EVER IN A BILLION TRILLION YEARS NO MATTER WHAT to write a sequel to How I Live Now might have been...a little bit....hasty.

Not that I'm ever going to get around to writing a sequel at the rate I'm flying through There Is No Dog.

Oops.  Did I say "flying"?  I meant crawling.  Over broken glass.

Why has nobody taken the wonderful opportunity of worldwide recession to start a business that finishes off books for distressed and bewildered novelists?

I'm taking applications now.