I was just playing ‘The Meat Game’ the other morning. It isn’t rude, I assure you.

You dunno what The Meat Game is? You have to think of place names that have a genre of meat in it or could easily be. It was devised during an eight hour road trip last year:

Liverpool

Hampshire

Turkey

‘Uddersfield

Edinburger

Newcattle

… and of course, as the game came to an end and work had to resume, an email came in from a friendly face from Edinburger, asking ‘wot no blog posts?’

It’s been a while. Thanks for the emails.

I hope all four of the readers are keeping well.

Apart from that … did anyone see that publisher first up on ‘Dragons’ Den’ last night? Ouch.

It has been a bit hectic here at Chateau Tonto for a while. In production and due for release this year is ‘We Are Not Manslaughterers’ by Martin Knight on 9 Sep, ‘Him Off The Viz’ by Simon Donald on 7 Oct, ‘The Change Agent’ by Andrew Crofts on 21 Oct and ‘Mr Music Man’ by Mervyn Conn on 28 Oct.

‘Shakespeare & Love’ by Mike Kelly (the story of the stolen Shakespeare First Folio) is to be delayed slightly because of the addition of new and unseen material to the book. Those of you who saw the documentary on BBC1 recently will have a good understanding of the story … and all will be revealed in the book. Raymond was recently sentenced to 8 years in prison for handling the stolen folio and, although the sentence seems a bit harsh, Raymond is in good spirits and is waiting for security clearance so he can get a job in the prison. And of course, the job is in the prison library! Let’s hope he orders a few hundred copies of his book when it’s out.

There were a few more titles that have been moved to the 2011 list. ‘Tis a shame to have to do that, but it means that Tonto has the basis for a strong list of titles for next year and it means a longer lead time for sales and promotion too. It’s never easy trying to bring a load of books out when times are tough and there’s just one member of staff and a cat.

‘Him Off The Viz’ by Simon Donald is attracting a lot of attention and we’ve got a fair few gigs lined up from pub date through to Christmas. I’ll list them all on here when I get some more time. I’m looking forward to going out on tour with Simon. We’re doing signings as well as author events where he’ll be using a powerpoint projection to do a talk on Viz and bring in stories from the book. One of his events in Newcastle is called ‘Fart Jokes Bought Me Sports Cars’.

Those of you who are included in EMTSS … thanks for your patience with regards to the author copies being delayed. They are being despatched by the printer in the next few days and will be sent out as soon as they arrive. Amazon are (eventually) fulfilling orders and it’s also available on the Tonto site. Good old Amazon!

Robert ‘Disrepute’ Endeacott has had a few gigs recently too. He’s now a familiar voice on the wireless (always had a face for radio, etc, etc) and can be seen and heard talking about ‘Disrepute: Revie’s England’ at an event with Anthony Clavane and David Peace on 7 September at Waterstone’s in Leeds. It’ll be a brill night … and the visit to the pub after will be even brillerer (although ‘This is England ’86′ starts at 10pm that night, so it’s a close call). Don’t forget you can order the double pack of Disrepute and Dirty Leeds here.

Will see if I can post something else up some time soon. If not, Merry Christmas!