Writing can be a lonely business. I don’t have a garret to work in, but the office is upstairs and it looks out on Iceland – unfortunately not the Romantic storm-tossed Arctic variety, but the frozen food store. If I’m not there I am out in my shed on the allotment. It has windows with blinds, but I’m rarely in company, especially at this time of the year. The other favoured spot is in the University Library in Cambridge. I have a few desks I use, mostly up on the fifth floor, where you have to switch on some lights. It can be as silent as the grave, and often as chilly. Once the books are written they fly out to editors, and agents, and then the distant readers. It can all be a bit inhuman.

So Toppings bookshop is a saving grace. I launched The Waterclock there in 2001 – and since then nineteen other novels. It is less than two minutes away by foot. It’s often full of readers. And then there are the booksellers – always on hand to talk about their trade, what’s selling, what’s new, what’s been over-looked. The fact that the frist series of books was set locally, in the Black Fens, added to the idea that this was somehow ‘home’ – an anchor, a place to start from, and set out into the wider world. Now there are a growing number of Toppings: York, Bath, Edinbrugh, St Andrews… But the shop in Ely is where it all started, and its good to be able to report that they are expanding here, into the shop next door.

I popped in last night to sign copies of the new paperback of The Cambridge Siren. This is a now a ritual, part christening, part farewell. Each book’s life has begun here. So far they are all alive and well. And they all know where home is.