The Iron Age, a novel.

I've written a book, tra la la! It is called The Iron Age and I'm well pleased with it. And everyone who can read between the lines will understand that it is a hilarious book. But also bleak in parts and set in a harsh climate. There's the chiaroscuro for you, your light and shade.
It is all very well to write a book and get it published. But I still had to do my bit to promote the book at book festivals. It came as a bit of a chock to me.
The first book festival was the scariest and a most inauspicious start. I was set up to be on the same stage as a writer who had just bagged a big prize and may have wanted to be paired up with a more high-ranking writer than me. Or going solo. Whatever the reason this prize-winning writer didn't turn up for the meeting an hour before the event with the moderator and me. We talked about the weather for an hour which you can easily do in the West of Ireland with its changeable weather. Every now and then the moderator would turn her head full circle and say 'where's the other writer then?'
With the hour up and no sign of the writer we ran for the event where we, rather out of breath, found the prize-winning author set up and miked up and sitting on stage. The prize-winning writer had a well prepared introduction and then read a few pages. When it was my turn I opened and shut my mouth like a ventriloquist's dummy with nothing much coming out. So I went straight to reading a few pages out of The Iron Age hoping that my hands holding the book wouldn't tremble noticeably. And so my humiliation went on until it was over and it was time to sign books. It was quick work for me and a long queue for the prize-winning writer.
Before I left I went over to shake the prize-winner's hand to take my good byes and to say congratulations on the prize. She gave me a puzzled look because she had forgotten me already, the wagon.
After that I failed better.