Well, phew!  I'm back from my trip up north, where I visited schools and bookshops and a lot of cities beginning with N.  Highlights include Moor Park School in Preston (plus all the great people I met at Borders, Preston, later that day), Fernwood School in Nottingham, and Norwich School on the cathedral grounds.  An excellent trip.

Welcome, too, to new commenters Sarah, Jack, Jane, Jen and Alice.  Excellent to hear from you all, thank you!  And comments, by the way, are the best way to speak to me directly.  I do read them all. 

I also wanted to say something about Facebook.  I joined Facebook because there were two different people pretending to be me.  Since I write for teens, one can only assume their motives weren't great, so I had them kicked right off and staked out my own name.

I do, however, make it a policy to not officially befriend readers for this very important reason:  If a reader comes up to me at an event (and they have) and says, "I'm a friend of yours on Facebook," I want to be able to say immediately that it's not me.  That way I'll know that someone is using my own good name, but more importantly, I'll be able to protect my readers from that person, too. 

There are some great fan sites on Facebook, though.  Like this one and this one and this one and probably others, too.  So feel free to join those.  And again, feel free to contact me here through the comments page.

Now, as today is also my birthday, I'm off to a swanky dinner.  Perhaps the Menu Gourmand tonight...