This Book is Dedicated to ... Oops! Bugger!

I had my second encounter with the popular (and eccentric) Urban Fantasy author Ben Aaronovitch yesterday. He was signing copies of his new novella The October Man at a new independent bookshop called Storysmith, a short distance from the centre of Bristol. I copy-edited the manuscript last year, so I was quite excited to learn that he was touring the UK to promote this one. On the bizarre grounds that it's cheaper and – slightly – more convenient to go to an event in a different country than it is to get to Wales's second city, I decided to pop along and say hello.

Bear in mind that I'd had a nice chat with Ben at his signing in Swansea last year. I'd also had a good chat with Stevie Finegan, Gollancz's publicist, while we were queueing to meet the man himself. Since then Stevie and I have often chatted on Twitter – mainly about her prodigious healthy appetite and her strange taste in ornaments.

More by luck than judgement (First Great Western made me feel quite nostalgic for Arriva Trains Fails), I was able to get to the bookshop a few minutes before Ben and Stevie did. She recognised me when I said hello, but Ben looked a bit vague until she jogged his memory. Stevie told me afterwards that he's quite forgetful anyway, but that was just a taster of the fun to follow.

The bookshop was packed for a lunchtime signing, including a lady who was at the Swansea signing and whose travel arrangements had also been buggered up by First Great Western. It turned out that we'd arrived at Temple Meads at the same time; if only we'd seen each other on the platform, we could have shared a taxi to Bedminster.

Ben gave very entertaining answers to some great questions, and then sat down at the front of the shop to sign everyone's books. To speed things up a bit, Stevie was writing everyone's names on Post-it Notes, which she then stuck to the front of the books before we got to the signing table. This is what she wrote on mine:

When I got to the table, I could tell that Ben's relentless criss-crossing of the mainland was starting to take its toll. He wrote a name in the book, and I looked at Stevie.

'He's dedicated it to you,' I said.

We all laughed, and Ben made a hasty correction. Sort of …

'That's the third one I've buggered up this week,' he replied.

As a result, I have a unique signed copy dedicated to my female alter ego, Stevie. As I said on Twitter in the evening, it was an easy mistake to make. After all, Ms Finegan and I have much the same measurements (distributed rather differently, of course).