Books in my office

During the summer I work in different places around the house, often where it's easy to access the garden. But in the cooler months I hibernate in to a tiny upstairs office where I'm writing now. A whole wall of this office is bookshelves and if I tell you that the books blipped here are directly behind my back, you can work out I only needed to swivel my chair to take this one. I used a support too because the light is poor today.

I've just had a commission from the Financial Times which I suppose should fill me with joy since it's real money for my words and its a subject on which I have a bit of expertise. That's work. I look at work in the spirit of Jerome K Jerome, who wrote:

"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." This quote and a whole lot of other fascinating stuff about work can be found in my first book, The History of Work.

The FT stuff is looking at The Future of Work, another hobby horse. But it's going to take me away from the novel which is my current obsession. The thing is that the novel is finished (apart from a bit of tickling) but getting from the state of completed novel to published book which you may open on your knee is a hell of a lot of work and the hardest part is finding others who might want to share in the grand obsession.