Well, how about that? My new book Playing Cards: The Complete Guide to 52 Games, 52, Tricks and 52 Skills is out this month. At least it’s out in the US according to Barnes & Noble’s web site. More news when I get it, but I wanted to flag this up to anyone who’s looking for late summer gift or early back to school present (or indeed anyone who has $9.98 in their pocket). It’s pretty much as described in the title and has some nice, easy-to-follow step by step instructions that explain how everything works. Details to follow.

All hail the Brighton Evening Argus which today gives one of my books a very healthy - if somewhat overdue - plug. It’s a nice piece by Georgy Edgson who styles herself as an urban avant gardener (I’m not going to disagree) and she has some flattering things to say about 101 Things To Do In A Shed. Out of all the books I’ve written, this is the one that just keeps on giving and I’m very grateful. The link will take you to the full article.

Yesterday morning I took off my technology hat for 15 minutes to talk about another of my favourite subjects - sheds. I’d been invited onto the Gerry Anderson Show on BBC Radio Ulster to talk about a new survey showing that many men use their sheds to hide from their wives. A likely story. The connection was obviously my two books: 101 Things To Do In A Shed and 101 Incredible Experiments For The Shed Scientist. It was a fun interview and it was great to swap some banter with the other guest, Liz about shed gender, shed churn and sheds versus Wendy Houses.

I know, I know, but I want to give it a try and so will also be using Twitter from now on to explain what I’m up to. I haven’t been this excited since I first saw the dBase prompt.

I've been writing my fishing blog for a few years now but for a while now I've been thinking about a more work-related one where I can talk a bit about what I'm writing about. So here it is.