Phew, a mere three days at Earls Court, having largely lovely conversations and dashing off to the odd seminar, how exhausting the whole thing was. And as suspected it was often the people I didn’t expect to see who gave me the most pleasure by stopping by. So a quick, virtual wave to the following: Chris West, author of our fabulously exotic Death of a Blue Lantern; it was lovely to put a face to the name of Viniita from the Institute of Contemporary Arts with whom I had a quick Envelopes and Rachel Caine love-in; the blogosphere was well represented with the ladies from Eurocrime and It’s a Crime (or a mystery!). With my ebooks hat on, it was a pleasure to meet, albeit briefly, the charming Neelan Choksi who was there representing Lexcycle, the people behind the Stanza application for the iPhone. If additional testers of your beautiful app are needed, I’m your gal (just, umm, send me an iPhone, pleeeeaase?) And much kudos to A&B work experience alumnus Sophie who was having another high-powered Book Fair. In between fending off people insistent on providing us with typesetting services it was lovely to have a proper chat and ask the perennial question: “Is it quieter this year, do you think?” And while we await confirmation as to the presence of Paul Daniels at the Fair, am I the only one who didn’t have a clue that Boris Johnson gave the keynote speech? I wonder what gems of wisdom he had to share with the book industry…

Lesley-Anne Brown, Sales and Marketing Manager