Elliott Bay Book Company

This was the stunningly beautiful bookstore where I did my event tonight - with a great turnout for a Friday evening

We are in Seattle, in Washington State, after one helluva day. Up at 6am for a live, coast-to-coast radio interview on Chuck Morse Speaks. It was a political show, and he was much more interested to talk to me about the referendum than about the book - but at least he plugged it after every ad break!

It was a lively discussion, and we covered a lot of ground. He was blown away by the fact that 97 percent of eligible voters in Scotland have registered to vote. Perhaps it is because they are voting for the future of their country, rather than for a politician or political party. At any event, he declared that if he was Scottish he would vote Yes.

It was then a dash to LAX to catch our 3-hour flight to Seattle. Exhausted by the travails of the previous day, and hungry (having had no breakfast), we finally arrived at our Seattle hotel shortly after 2pm, ready to get a snack in the room and a couple of hours' sleep before the evening event - only to be told that check-in time was 4pm and our room wasn't ready. I have never come across a check-in time that late before. But to make matters worse, the restaurant was shut, and we had to sit at the bar and choose something to eat from a limited bar menu.

My bad mood got worse when I discovered that we had not yet been allocated a room number and so could not access the internet to pick up emails, nor could we charge the food to our room.

When finally we got to our room, described as "a cool corner room" with "amazing views" by the receptionist, it was to discovered that the views were of a multi-storey parking building on one side, and a brick wall on the other. Really amazing!

By then it was too late to sleep, and I freshened up and changed for the event before we headed off to find a taxi. We were finished by nine, but had a rendezvous with a journalist back at the hotel, and it was ten-thirty by the time we got back to the room, having begun the day at 6am. Too tired to eat, I have been catching up on the day's events in the referendum campaign, and it is now almost midnight.

But no long lie-ins, I'm afraid - I have a half-hour radio interview at 9am followed by a stock signing at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. Tomorrow night's event is a three-hour round trip away at a town north of Seattle called Bellingham. I think I will sleep in the afternoon by way of preparation!