There wasn't a blog post yesterday as I spent all day working at both of my 'two jobs'. In the afternoon I was racing around East London rushing genuinely ill people into hospital. In the morning I was doing a bit of publicity for my book.

Now - given how us ambulance people make fun of each other, I'm writing about this only because you, dear reader, deserve a good laugh. I fully expect to get ridiculed at work. Can you see the trauma I put myself through for you?

The plan was simple, there is a company that make short 'talk to camera' videos of authors talking about their books. These videos then get posted on the internet, get linked to from Amazon, get sent out to independant bookshops and find their way onto touchscreens in Tescos. It's all good publicity, and I am a whore for publicity these days. They are called 'Meet The Author'.

So I found myself in my publishers office having to talk about my book in an unscripted fashion for around one or two minutes. In one take. While everyone in the office watched.

Well, after four or five attempts This is what we got. Please do not mock the video virgin.

Many thanks to John the camera guy who made the whole process much less painful than I thought it would be. After the first take where I stated my name, the title of the book, whimpered the word 'ambulance' and froze, he took his time to get me warmed up to the idea of talking on camera.

So, when you view the video I want you to remember that I had to talk off the top of my head into an unblinking camera lense.

One thing though - I do seem to be channelling Norman Lovett (without the jokes).


Of course, when I got home the first thing that I did was take a look and see how other authors did, and there are a lot of authors there and a lot of big names. I'm heartened to se that some of them look more frightened than I...

...although if I'd done my research I took could have had a 'stunt lime'.