Last night, it was with great resignation that I accepted the revelation that one of my various authorial pipe-dreams shall never come to pass.

Specifically, my work will never be read by Sir Terry Prachett.

When I first made a serious commitment to creative writing as a hobby, it was because I was a child who really wanted to be a bit like Terry Pratchett.

I have trouble classifying myself, genre-wise. The best (or possibly just 'funniest') label I could come up with for the Mediochre Q Seth series was Modern Comic Urban Fantasy Young Adult Novel Series with Dragons and Stuff, or (as I insist it is to be pronounced) "Mod-Com-Urb-Fan-YA-No-Ser-with-Drag-n-Stuff" - but that's actually pretty simple compared to some of the other stuff I've written that's currently sitting on my hard drive.

When I think about it, "A Child Who Really Wants to be a Bit Like Terry Pratchett" is as good a summary of my writing style as any.

Having wandered off of the bromeliad of mortality, he leaves the world suddenly smaller and less marvellous. I suspect he would have thought it was our duty as writers and readers to go out there and make it bigger and more marvellous again as best we can.

I suspect he would have worded it more wittily and possibly more irreverantly, also.

Today is the first day of the post-Prachett era. Let us make sure not to screw it up.

De Chelonian Mobile.

Calum P Cameron