Well, it’s been one week since Dark­house went on sale. This may have been the longest week ever. There’s some­thing so… anti-climatic about finally pub­lish­ing your work. All the months (years, actu­ally) of antic­i­pa­tion, sweat, blood, tears and then… now what? Luck­ily, I imme­di­ately left for a week of music and friends in San Fran­cisco, so I wasn’t left alone at home and ana­lyz­ing my book sales (which by the way, ain’t too shabby, considering).

Any­way, I’ll be back to being a pro­mot­ing machine as soon as I return home. But for now, I’m just kick­ing back and enjoy­ing the “down time.” And cool moments, such as the photo above, where Shan­non, the swell bar­tender at Polk Street bar Blur, asked to buy a copy of the book — so as long as I signed it. And sign it I did (hope you like it, Shan­non!). Actu­ally, I’ve been sell­ing a lot of in per­son copies. Sign­ing them for cer­tain peo­ple has been quite sur­real. And silly

If you ever write a book (or get said book pub­lished), you really ought to do some­thing to cel­e­brate the occa­sion. Me? I got a tattoo.

I’m not much of a tat­too per­son, but last year, while in Fin­land, I got a tat­too of my favourite band on the back of my neck. It’s brought me noth­ing but amaz­ing luck, espe­cially with regards to my music jour­nal­ist career. I thought it was the only tat­too I’d ever get.

Until I men­tioned the Dark­house pub­li­ca­tion date to my friend Helen. She pointed out that many peo­ple get Fri­day the 13th tat­toos. Sud­denly, that’s all I wanted. A tat­too to com­mem­o­rate the pub­li­ca­tion of my first novel and the start of some­thing amazing.

So, yes­ter­day, I got the lit­tle 13 behind the ear. For some rea­son, it barely hurt, took less than 10 min­utes, and is really dis­crete. I love it, though. I think it’s going to bring me, and my books, noth­ing but good luck.

Also, now when my hair is up, I look pretty hard­core