it's not unlike organising your own public flogging

In pondering the finer details of the Shadow Bound launch, there were some ideas that seemed OMG genius! on the face of it but which … didn't quite work out according to plan. In the interests of entertaining you, I thought I might share a couple of them with you.

One was that, in an attempt to decorate the room, I thought I might draw some golem characters. Good idea, no? Clay plays a pretty key role in Shadow Queen, after all, and there are even more golems in Shadow Bound, and I could draw a range of comic, cute and choleric golem faces to leer down at us from the walls.

And then I remembered … I can't really draw.

No, really. I'm not being humble. I have some rudimentary, grade-school skill, but it's simply not up to anything more than entertaining my brain during office meetings. My first attempt at drawing Clay's face made him, um, a girl. Oops? My second and third and fourth attempts did not produce any great leaps of artistic progress. If I had a good few years of daily practice between now and the book launch, I might have some hope of delivering hand-drawn golems for your entertainment, but as it is … yeah. Not so much.

So instead I'll be relying on the redoubtable Les Petersen's book covers to prettify the room. You can all thank me later.

The other idea — which would totally be genius, if we had the time to make it work, and if the Melbourne Convention Centre wasn't imposing a ban on the bringing-in of food they didn't supply, was to bake an enormous golem 'biscuit'.

This story I'll relate to you as it was related to me: in text message form. With photos.

Adorable. Yet horrific.

He fell over in the heat. He's weeping butter. This is…not really working.

I have no way of knowing if his bowels are cooked. This operation? Total buttergeddon.

So sadly there won't be an enormous golem 'biscuit' which I can use to inflict death-by-butter on you all 🙁