‘Why Q Needs U’ – Out Today!

The long-awaited day (awaited by me at least) is here, as October 2nd is the publication day of my new book Why Q Needs U: A history of our letters and how we use them! Find it here: https://geni.us/WhyQNeedsU

Published in the UK by Blink/Bonnier, it’s now available to find in British bookshops – as am I! There was no way I was going to be away for this moment, which I’ve thought about since at least the age of seven. I swung by several big London stores yesterday to see what the situation was, and what I found genuinely left me feeling faint.

Foyles has it by the main entrance and by the cash desk; Waterstones Piccadilly has put it by the entrance and given it its own table. In bookshop terms, this is prime real estate.

So, it’s out there in the world. I now have to digest the fact that ideas and words from my brain, frozen in one form, are sitting in shops and waiting for readers. The chick has flown the nest; they’re no longer my ideas and words, but rather are ready to belong to new people with new perspectives and interpretations.

To help me come to terms with these facts and feelings, I’ll be taking refuge in and advice from one of my dearest authorial heroes, who trod this path before me and understood it much better too.

“The text is there, and produces its own effects … The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose, 1983.

Death in a figurative sense, of course. In reality, I’ll be visiting more bookshops.