Right, so a few days ago, I received a lovely email from some very polite Germans called Annika, Bodo, Denis and Silke asking politely for autographed photos of yours truly.

Now, the book's been out in Germany for a month, and I've had a terrific response from German readers (I truly have, and I thank those who've written in), so naturally, feeling flattered, I sent off some signed bookplates to the vier Deutschlanders and felt good about things.

Not twenty-four hours later, I get another request, also from Germany, from Guenter, asking the same thing.  I thought, oh, what a curious coincidence.  And then in quick succession, I got the same request from Bjorn and Monika, also in Germany, Brian from Denmark, Piotr from Poland, and just today, Gao Wei from China.

This seemed such a bizarre concentration of requests that I did a bit of web searching...  and disocovered that Annika, Bodo, Denis, Monika, Piotr and Gao Wei are also fans of everyone from American children's writers to a New Orleans jazz singer to a Russian woman whose job remains a mystery, all writing exactly the same email (verbatim except for our names), requesting signatures.

Now, I'm assuming these are probably autograph vendors who see something in one of their rivals' stocks and then send out an email requesting the same, but just these five or six?  And just in the past couple weeks? No one quite seems to know what's going on, just that it's a mysterious, sudden phenomena.

Anyone have any ideas?  Needless to say, I've not sent any since I realised things might be fishy (and if you're you-know-who that I spoke to Weds in Yorkshire, don't worry, that's still fine), but how very strange...