Wake Up! It’s 1840!

I know, I know, who wants a blog that falls asleep for a couple of months? All I can say is that we need to live in the world, too – and get down to some hard writing when the winter festivities are cleared away…
Thanks to the delightful people who have written to say how much they enjoy the Yashim stories. Thanks too to Faber, who have come up with another cover for The Bellini Card, for the paperback edition which will be out this Spring. It’s a move away from the fruity orientalism of the Ventura artworks, which I really liked, and I’ll post it here asap. Promise.
Meanwhile the forthcoming US edition really goes to show what a difference close line-editing can make to an author’s pride, at the very least. And with that, I have to ackowledge my enormous debt to Enrico Basaglio, who read The Bellini Card for fun and made a note of all my mistakes… He’s a true Venetian, so he knows what’s what. I can’t thank him enough.
Back soon. In the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for the FT on researching Venice:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b916dd3e-d6c7-11dd-9bf7-000077b07658.html