“I wish there were more books about fishing like this one – by turns witty, anarchic, informative and fun.” How kind. The full review is published on the Fishing Book Reviews website and you can read it there. Still, while we’ve got you, let’s pick out a few more choice comments: “...completely barking...” and “...funny as all got out...” and “As good inside as it looks from the outside...” Or for those of you who like to plan ahead, how about “I would definitely buy a copy and save it up for Christmas...”?

At last. It’s arrived. After a long, difficult fight, the new fishing book as finally been brought to the bank and netted safely. We’ve taken a quick photo here before returning her gently to the water to fight another day (and she will, believe me, she will). Anyone wishing to own a copy of their can pre-order from the shop on this site - and I’ll get a few extra pence (always worth doing in these times of thrift). There’s a Kindle version too but I’m not going to be promoting that until Amazon can be bothered to spell my name correctly. Meantime, check out the faux leather cover, the thoughtful illustrations and the way they reflect the undoubted gravity of the content inside. Can’t wait - and I wrote it.

I’ve written another fishing book. As I write this, thousands (millions?) of zeroes and ones are no doubt flying electronically through what our ancestors dubbed ‘the aether’ to some printers somewhere on the other side of the world where printing books is really cheap. Not that the book itself will be cheap. Or available any time soon. In fact, the publication date is going to be April 1st, 2012. Yes folks, my new book will be out on April Fool’s Day.

I love it. It’s a fishing book full of the things that are close to my heart and once the publishers have given the all-clear I’ll be back here with a front cover and some details of what’s inside. For now though, I’ll just sign off.

‘RB’

Well, how about that? My new book Playing Cards: The Complete Guide to 52 Games, 52, Tricks and 52 Skills is out this month. At least it’s out in the US according to Barnes & Noble’s web site. More news when I get it, but I wanted to flag this up to anyone who’s looking for late summer gift or early back to school present (or indeed anyone who has $9.98 in their pocket). It’s pretty much as described in the title and has some nice, easy-to-follow step by step instructions that explain how everything works. Details to follow.

All hail the Brighton Evening Argus which today gives one of my books a very healthy - if somewhat overdue - plug. It’s a nice piece by Georgy Edgson who styles herself as an urban avant gardener (I’m not going to disagree) and she has some flattering things to say about 101 Things To Do In A Shed. Out of all the books I’ve written, this is the one that just keeps on giving and I’m very grateful. The link will take you to the full article.

Yesterday morning I took off my technology hat for 15 minutes to talk about another of my favourite subjects - sheds. I’d been invited onto the Gerry Anderson Show on BBC Radio Ulster to talk about a new survey showing that many men use their sheds to hide from their wives. A likely story. The connection was obviously my two books: 101 Things To Do In A Shed and 101 Incredible Experiments For The Shed Scientist. It was a fun interview and it was great to swap some banter with the other guest, Liz about shed gender, shed churn and sheds versus Wendy Houses.

I know, I know, but I want to give it a try and so will also be using Twitter from now on to explain what I’m up to. I haven’t been this excited since I first saw the dBase prompt.

I've been writing my fishing blog for a few years now but for a while now I've been thinking about a more work-related one where I can talk a bit about what I'm writing about. So here it is.