My new year plans for global domination are quickly unfolding. Or unravelling. Certainly one of the two. With 'Jerusalem' set to hit the shops in July, the burgeoning sense of apathy is almost palpable. So I'm cracking on with the noblest efforts to maximise (and, indeed, monetize) my brand attributes in a real and meaningful way. Do I feel dirty? No I do not. 

The Book Slam lecture series is coming together at the British Library for the end of the year, and we're meeting with advertisers and sponsors, partners and funders, soft money and hard money. Personally, I quite fancy meeting the mob and their dirty money just to complete the set. I don't suppose wise guys have ever shown much interest in a slice of the literature event market, but it's a nice thought - they could run books like they used to run numbers. I could be Hoffa.

What's more, 'Babel - The Ballet' will be treading the boards come the Autumn (truly), 'Jerusalem - The Club Banger' will be a wrecking a dancefloor near you soon (madly), and 'City Of Tiny Lights' will be a major motion picture (deeply). All these things will happen ('you gotta believe to achieve, Paddy boy') and I'll attain a level of wealth and celebrity equivalent to a Big Brother, Series 3, first week evictee. I'm living the dream.

This, as The Darkness has often pointed out, is what happens when you get paid for attempting creativity - before long what you once did because that is what you do transforms into an attempt to attract column inches in the Chelmsford Bugle. It is also, of course, the very subject matter of  'Jerusalem' and, to me, this seems to suggest that my life (as opposed to my novel) has become a work of metafiction. Can it be true?

Oh well. At least I have Jack Boots at my side, cutting deals, barking into his iPhone and streaming files on rapid share with his right hand as his left seeks to sell my work of art. Naturally, we view the irony ironically; by which I mean that we don't actually understand what irony means any more ...