October is the month in which the reader’s heart turns to mulled wine, and hot chocolate, and pumpkin spice, and the chance to curl up under a blanket, by a fire, with a book that makes you dream of different worlds from the safety and warmth of your own hearth.

If distant countries make you dream, you can now buy copies of THE WRITER’S MAP, with chapters from me, Philip Pullman and many other wanderers through the landscapes of the mind. And if you’re starting to feel the cold, you can also pre-order copies of THE BLUE SALT ROAD, to be published this November. Or if your heart craves the comfort of audiobooks this autumn, I just recorded the introduction and the epilogue to the new audiobook, and from what I’ve already heard, I know it’s going to be fabulous…