Here. Have a blurry iPhone photo of it:

The observant among you may recognise the photo as one I took of myself last summer, hiding from lions and tigers and bears oh my! in the field behind Sussex University.

For some reason their website seems to be down at the moment, but you can read the editorial at the Aesthetica blog. And, of course, buy the magazine at various places in the UK, Europe and the US.

The article is the first in the writing section, and I’m happily sandwiched between the writer Andrew Porter and dear Rufus Wainwright.

And there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Today is a day I never thought I’d live to see.

Today I have the day off work.

Today the sun is shining.

Today is a good day.

I know this because my iPhone told me and my iPhone knows everything:

I think I can realistically be described now as “squeeing my pants”.

Holy. Wow.

It’s live. It’s a live TV show. I’m going to be on live TV.

You know what this means, don’t you? Yeah:

• Profuse sweating: it’ll be like that scene out of Broadcast News, when wotshisname does his first anchor spot and nearly drowns in his own sweat.
• Profuse profanity: I won’t be able to stop myself. I’m sure I’ll unknowingly colour the air around me blue with expletives. Maybe I should do the interview in sign language, that way I’ll offend a lot less people.
• Giggling. Lots of.
• Falling off the sofa: I won’t be able to coordinate my limbs.
• Inappropriate stroking of Philip Schofield’s hair. Maybe. Probably.
• Dropping things: you know in Lauren bacall’s first role in To Have and Have Not, she was so nervous that she kept her head down and looked up at the camera and consequently looked spectacularly gorgeous and sultry and divine? Well, it’s going to be exactly like that when I try to drink coffee from the mug in front of me. And by “exactly like that” I mean absolutely nothing like that and I’ll either drop the whole thing or just dribble down my front.

I might be just a tad nervous. Can you tell?

I am such a lucky girl.

Though I really should get some decent author photos taken. Pointing the photographic departments of various magazines towards my Flickr pages to use my photos is all very well, but I’m sure people will soon tire of seeing me lurking in long grass and larking about in pigtails and require something rather more staid and serious.

Or maybe they won’t.

Hopefully they won’t.

I might have ripped the plastic off with my teeth. I might have done that.

I might also have rolled around on them for a while, hugged them, kissed them, cried, laughed. Yep, I may have done a lot of that. I mean, just look how beautiful they are:

That’s all I’m going to say about it, because I’m overwhelmed.

Oh, I will say one more thing. I’ll beg you to buy it. Please? I need to be able to afford a hair cut at some stage this year.

I’m especially chuffed about this, even more so than with my four-page article in the April edition of Glamour magazine (which of course is also hugely exciting), as it’s the first piece that will concentrate solely on the book, on my writing.

And that’s what it’s all about. Not yours truly. Not this silly mug. Not my family.

The writing.

So. I’ll just be bouncing off the walls for the rest of the day.

Don’t mind me.

Even more exciting was seeing the proof copy of Advice for Strays propped up on the main desk at the agency, right next to Ali Shaw’s wonderful and successful novel The Girl With The Glass Feet. Look how cosy they are together:

Now it’s really starting to feel real.

I found a package from my publisher yesterday when I got home after work, containing five proof copies of Advice for Strays.

What I did next:

• Gasped.
• Squeed.
• Almost threw up.
• Stroked them.
• Burst into tears.
• Laughed like a hyena.
• Cried some more.
• Smelled them.
• Opened one.
• Sobbed.
• Flicked through a few pages.
• Put it down.
• Fell off the sofa, on which I was kneeling, still in my coat and boots.
• Tried to get back up but tripped over the rug.
• Squealed.
• Whooped.
• Repeat.

These are just the proofs for reviewers and overseas publishers and other dignitaries, and the final novel will look like the central bit of the illustration you can see on the cover, but holy hell I’m unable to describe what it feels like to see my little book almost all growed up and printed and bound and my words inside and a photo of me on the back and my name, my name, on the cover.

I’ll calm down soon. Honest.

Please summarise the purpose and contents of your book (do not be modest).

The purpose of my book, I thought? Er, to be bought and read? To be enjoyed? To be used as a door stop? To be shredded and used as hamster bedding? Um…

The contents, I supposed, are words. Lots of words. Put together to form sentences which make a, um, story. Hopefully the story and its words will make some sort of sense and elicit some positive emotions and be enjoyed, rather than make people want to bang their heads against the wall in anger at having spend their hard-earned cash on it.

And I noticed that I shouldn’t be modest while I was about describing the contents and purpose of my book. So, let’s see..wait. What? Was I meant to be filling in this questionnaire while sitting in my window wearing only my underwear?

Hmm, I thought. Completing this questionnaire is going to take me longer than I anticipated..