Two big boxes of The Wormton Lamb

I know that I keep going on about it but I'm still very excited about the look of The Wormton Lamb. A large batch from the printer has arrived here at Anarchadia Publishing and soon I can start sending them out.

Although two boxes full may not sound much, when I look at them I can't help but think about what it must be like to have a whole garage full. That would have been the result if I'd had a conventional print run. This is the first batch of pre-publication copies of The Wormton Lamb and I'm going to have to think very carefully about to whom I send them.

Several obvious recipients are the national libraries for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Every book that has an ISBN must by law have a copy lodged with each of these national libraries. It seems like an expensive business at the time that is a consequence of having an ISBN. Personally, I think the benefits of having an ISBN outweigh the costs of sending out library copies but I know some self published authors who haven't bothered. Somehow they get by without having any cataloguing reference like an ISBN. Once you've got one, any bookshop can find your book and order it. To me, it seems a small price to pay.

Around the time of the launch date, I'll order another couple of cartons of The Wormton Lamb. These will be the collectable, numbered, pre-release copies that will one day be worth a fortune. I did a similar thing with The Horsepower Whisperer. Each book was numbered and signed and I made up a stamp, which, when used with a red ink pad, marked them out as one of a numbered edition of 40.

The stamp was carved out of the end of an old Pritt stick tube and was a vague representation of the Cornish cross at Perran Sands. Wheel head crosses are not uncommon in Cornwall but the one at Perran Sands is rotated slightly by about 45° so that it appears to be not so much across as a spoked wheel. I've adopted this as the Anarchadia logo and am convinced that there must have been an interesting story as to why this cross was marked out in this way but this tale is now lost in the mists of time and all we can do now is wonder about it.

My fictitious saint, St Bendix, who appears in my Anarchadian fantasy novels, is the patron saint of engineers and is also known as the Great Smith. I will cross such as this would be just ornament set up to commemorate St Bendix if he had ever existed so I find myself wondering if there really was a proto-engineer who lived at the same time as St Piran (after whom Perranporth was named). Or maybe somebody like St Bendix came along a bit later and invented the dune buggy during the Dark Ages.

The next time I visit this cross -- for it fascinates me -- I will examine it even more closely for any hieroglyphs or references to Dune buggies and sand rails.