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I promise to update the blogspot on the site more frequently once publication comes along, but at the moment this is a bit like talking to myself. Which, to be honest, I already do quite a lot of. I also find myself talking to the sparrows and house buntings up on the terrace - even if they were listening I doubt they'd understand anything but Berber - to the television (oh, come on ref, that was never a penalty!), and to the hoover when it plays up. But at least that's in private.

In fact, Tafraout has suddenly become rather public. First of all we had the visit from the Mail on Sunday YOU magazine journalist (Jane Gordon), photographer (Charlotte Murphy and her assistant Lenka) and it was in the end great fun. Watch for photos of Abdel and me fondling goats, hefting cockerels and eyeing up sheeps' heads in the local souk: publication date March 23rd. Luckily, I shall still be here and not back in Cornwall for a fortnight after this has appeared, by which time I am hoping everyone will have forgotten about it...

The short tourist season has suddenly hit with a vengeance and we are besieged by French and German 'camping-caristes' - driving vast RUVs and parking all over the countryside, in people's fields and gardens, all over the place (just because they think they can); and by Italian and German and British walkers and climbers, who have a bit more sensitivity to their environment.

We've had our friends James and Betty staying for a climbing trip, soon to be joined by their friends (now ours, too) Egg and Ruthie and their bright yellow van; and suddenly I found myself wishing I hadn't deliberately left all my climbing gear at home in Cornwall in order to concentrate on my deadlines. Despite mixed weather, many adventures were had by all, although no one else has managed to get benighted on the Lion's Head as Bruce and I did in that fateful February in 2005. Hearing their tales of loose rock and thin moves, awkward cruxes and perfect slabs made my palms itch. But I have got a lot of writing done instead.

And then this week we have had writers for three guidebooks descend on Tafraout. I missed the chap from the Lonely Planet (which seems apt), shared a fine evening with Julius Honnor from Footprint, sampling one of Abdel's chicken tajines and watching Chelsea grind out a grim 0-0 draw with Olympiakos (what odds finding another West Country Chelsea fan in this out of the way spot?), and then last night mint tea and cakes with Sam Le Quesne from Time Out, who turns out to be a friend of a friend. Sometimes it's a very small world. Which is both perversely reassuring and bizarre: I came here to get away from it all!

It's hot in Morocco; but on the news there's snow in the US, China and UK, miserable weather, power outages and traffic chaos. It feels surreal. I look out of the window here onto a curiously timeless world: rose-coloured houses bathed in sunshine, palm trees vivid against dusty rock, roof terraces colourful with airing rugs and drying washing, women in black haiks carrying sacks of flour home from the market, sometimes even on donkey-back.

Boys are playing football in the street outside because there's hardly any traffic to disturb them, and it's one of the rest days in the Africa Cup of Nations football contest. There was a day of national mourning here last week when Guinea knocked Morocco out of the tournament, but when the Cote d'Ivoire knocked Guinea out 5-0 on Sunday, no one was cheering: they'd largely lost interest. If Barcelona are on TV, or Manchester United, or even Chelsea, they'll be packing into one of the little cafes in the town with an old telly braced to the wall to watch the match.

I'm in that odd limbo time before publication of the book, when no one really knows what the reaction to it will be; and this dusty little corner of Morocco seems the most appropriate place to be in this odd space, before returning to the modern world for the London Book Fair, Oxford Literary Festival and publicity events in UK, US and Canada. It's a great luxury to be able to get your head down somewhere quiet like this, where you're able to hold the rest of the world at bay via email, pondering ideas for the next work, taking notes, reading research material, letting your mind be quiet. Ideas need quiet time to mulch down, like a compost heap...

How surprising then, to be tracked down to this remote place by the Mail on Sunday, You magazine. A team arrive tomorrow: a journalist and photographer to cover the story behind Crossed Bones/Tenth Gift. I wonder what they'll make of Tafraout? I see its beauties easily now, though it took a while to learn to look past the strewn plastic bags, the overflowing oil cans of rubbish, the ever-present building work, the dust. This morning when I cycled into the countryside I saw the almond trees were beginning to blossom, though the silver branches of the figs are still bare. I disturbed a rock squirrel among the twisted roots of an argan tree when I sat in the shade for a while; I watched a crested lark soar up into the uninterrupted blue of the sky. The modern world, with its Sunday newspapers, publicity opportunities and strictly regulated hours and timetables seemed literally a world away.