December 2020 - The wrong man

You are right - Christmas is all a bit different this year. Anyway, I'll leave you to your own Christmas merriment and tell you what has been happening in my book world.

Two schools contacted me to say that they enjoyed my writing and could I send a video message to their pupils. I felt very honoured. One school even said that they had decorated their library with characters from my writing. I immediately considered images of Pete 'Peruvian God' Dixon, the lucky pants of Gartside, the legendary Balachandran, the reverse bartering Blood, the magic hostel, the eye poking doctor and myself (in some sort of Herculean backpacking pose).

You are right. Why would a school want to put those images in their library? Something was wrong. It turns out that I am the wrong Jeff Brown. They really wanted the Jeff Brown that wrote the children's book Flat Stanley. I'm now a bit concerned that my wife may announce that she also married the wrong Jeff Brown and my mum will confirm that she took the wrong Jeff Brown from the hospital.

Oh well, I tried to give us Jeff Browns a good name by contacting Jeff 'Flat Stanley' Brown's website, but he is long dead and there were no contact details for an administrator. I therefore wrote an e-mail to his publisher, with the schools details, to see if they could provide anything. The publishers said they would contact the school and I informed the school. Unfortunately, the publishers forgot to enclose a big juicy five book contract deal for me and the school were too embarrassed to reply to my message,

Oh well. Happy Christmas!