In a spare moment of thumb-twiddling, I wrote some ads for Lost for Words and entered them into London’s Underground Writer competition to win a free ad campaign. Joyfully, the long-copy ads were shortlisted out of hundreds of entries, and displayed in a posh exhibition on Pall Mall. You can see the shortlisted ads here, and the other campaign I entered here, as well as a properly bonkers campaign about upside down bananas which are, as we all know, the new way to find love.

Anyway, see photos from the night here.

As part of the 2007 London Design Festival, '26 Posters' set a challenge to twenty-six pairs of writers and designers. I worked with a talented designer at Lambie Nairn to create a six-word poster that reflected the lovely Tottenham Court Road and its environs. The result was 5 different short stories all about the butterfly effect... They were displayed on billboards and phoneboxes in September.

See mine and Dave Stockfis' poster campaign here.

There's a nice Design Week write up in on the whole project here.

Yes; I also write things that aren't made-up. In August 2006, a book came out called Common Ground: Around Britain in 30 Writers, published by CYAN books. It was a collaborative effort between the members of a writers group called 26. One of the chapters in it is called "Your Time Starts Now: Examining what's real in David Lodge's Birmingham".

I wrote it about David Lodge, a wonderful writer who has been a real inspiration to me ever since I first met him at Brum about 8 years ago. The piece is all about the impact his writing has had on me, my life and my writing.

You can read some of it here, if you like. There are lots of other wonderful chapters in the book about Julian Barnes, Paul 'Shameless' Abbott, and all sorts. It's a great read and a lovely way to explore this big island of ours from the comfort of your armchair/hammock/beanbag.

I've also just made a little foray into the big bad world of journalism. After my 3-year stint at Random House, I'm still really interested in book marketing, and how authors can come up with creative ways to get their books noticed. So in my spare time I write articles on this subject and even do the unthinkable - speak in public. No, not at Speakers Corner. Instead I recently gave a short presentation at the London Book Fair 2007. Oh, and this article on viral marketing was published in The Bookseller in June '07.