The cheque's in the post

I did my accounts the other day, but I couldn't make them balance. I had £10.21 more than expected in the bank. It turned out I had received an unexpected electronic transfer credit from Amazon UK: my first referral payment for books and stuff I have mentioned on this website. Not bad, I suppose, considering I'm not exactly using hard-sell tactics. As promised, a cheque for £10.21 is now making its way to Amnesty International.

When I delved a bit deeper, I discovered that £9's worth of the £10.21 was due to multiple sales of one book: Fossils, Finches and Fuegians by Richard Keynes. This was particularly pleasing because, not only is it an excellent book, but I received my copy free from the publishers. This website malarkey does occasionally have certain perks, you know.

But the really strange discovery, when I looked into my referrals history, was that I had earned a (very small) referral fee for a book I have never read nor mentioned on this site: Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, whose synopsis on Amazon goes as follows:

It began in Scotland, at an ancient stone circle. Claire Randall was swept through time into the arms of James Fraser whose love for her became legend—a tale of tragic passion that ended with her return to the present to bear his child. Two decades later, Claire travelled back again to reunite with Jamie, this time in frontier America. But Claire had left someone behind in her own time—their daughter Brianna. Now Brianna has made a disturbing discovery that sends her to the stone circle and a terrifying leap into the unknown. In search of her mother and the father she has never met, she risks her own future to try to change history—and to save their lives. But as Brianna plunges into an uncharted wilderness, a heartbreaking encounter may strand her forever in the past… or root her in the place she should be, where her heart and soul belong…

OK, you chaps, hands up who's been reading historical romances.

See also: Fanny Cradock

Richard Carter

A fat, bearded chap with a Charles Darwin fixation.

One comment

  1. Hi,

    I reached your Web site through PicSearch.

    Thought I'd share a compliment for your Web site. That's a lovely header on your Web site. Good one. Beautiful.

    "If words were leaves on an autumn forest floor

    Oh what a bonfire mine would make"

    Regards,
    Chirayu

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