Like one of those straggly cheap trees which are the only ones left at the Christmas Tree place because you've left it too late, our Christmas offering is a bit sparse this year. We have Krimson in hardback, which is brilliant, but not much else. This is as much to do with the eye-watering marketing charges at this time of year than anything.

However: great news! Lovely Waterstone's are running a horror promotion in section over the next 8 weeks. You may have noticed that we have some rather fine examples of the genre. So this morning when I looked at sales, there's hundreds of copies of most of them sold! It's made it a nearly £5000 sales week, which is smashing, and a lot more than if we'd have sold one or two frontlist titles on promotion - along with the associated marketing charges and print bills. It's only taken 7 years, but at last we have a viable business in the backlist. Yey!

Right: on with my To Do list!