Christopher Shevlin

Odd news: the Times has bought 20,000 copies of my Penguin book (Writing For Business), but I can't find out what it is doing with them. Penguin say the Times is giving them away this week, but I don't know why or to whom. Four other books in the Writers' Guides series are getting the same treatment, I've heard.

I've also finished a light soufflé of a book, which you can read a bit of by clicking on 'Books' above, or 'Current projects' to the right. It seems to be going down well so far. Let me know what you think. I've sent it to three agents.

And I've abandoned my historical novel. Actually I abandoned it in September, but I couldn't face saying it then.

There - three pieces of news. Let no one say that this isn't the Web's premier source of Christopher-Shevlin-based facts.

Hello, I’m Christopher Shevlin and this is my personal website. If you’re a client (or might become one), you’d be better off going to my professional website – www.shevlin.org.uk – which has details of my published books, corporate writing, editing, speechwriting and training.

This personal website is where I put up my more creative stuff, including novels, comedy, drawings and poems (you can also click on the blue buttons above).

The most popular (or least ignored) things on the site come under the heading of flim-flam.  They’re light, easy and won’t spoil your appetite (except for the forthcoming ‘Horrible Tale of the Whitechapel Toilet’).

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can see what’s new and what’s popular. For some reason, the two lists almost never contain any of the same items. This introduction always appears near or at the top of the popular column, but that’s only because people  click on the title of it (or click the read more button down to the right), thinking that there might be a bit more to read*.

This is a book about a slightly useless part-time Harrods sales assistant who inadvertently brings down the government.

That's the elevator pitch anyway, but there's so much more to it: an upper-class housewife who discovers that she is an excellent burglar, a low-speed car chase, a fight to the death on a very small balcony, a shadowy company taking over the government, a dashing detective/loss-adjustor who gradually changes his attitudes to women, an epic battle at the Ritz in which a relative of the Duke of Portland is thrown over an occasional table, a shop selling edible puns, a personal crisis in a life-drawing class, a beautiful beige-haired philosophy student, a murderer with a really comfortable balaclava, a missing one-eared cat...

All are packed into a book which quite literally several people say they like. Even I like it.

But don't take our word for it, read the first six chapters for yourself.

It is called either Cooking A Fish or The Scapegoat Farm. Let me know which you prefer, and tell me whether you are one of the people who like it or part of a new group who don't like it.

I finished writing this in late-January 2010 and am currently looking for an agent. I have sent samples to three agents so far – watch this space for news.

I ought to tell you that, even though it begins from the point of view of a dead person, it isn't one of those annoying books that are written from the point of view of a dead person. The dead person is only in three chapters. There are lots of other characters.

Have you ever seen that episode of the Twilight Zone where a man finds that words are gradually being replaced? One day his wife asks him what he wants for dinosaur. He says 'Dinosaur? Why don't we call it lunch anymore?' She says 'because lunch is a sort of light red colour.' He says 'No, pink is a light red colour' and she replies 'Pink is a kind of long pole used by anglers to catch fish'. And it goes on like that, with more and more words changing each day. Eventually he's taken to an asylum and has to relearn the whole language because everyone else thinks that he's just talking random nonsense. It ends with a gentle doctor sitting down beside him, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder and saying,