She is unveiling the machine on 5 March at the London Book Fair.
Atwood recently announced the establishment of Unotchit Inc. -- a re-arrangement of intTouch, for "Internet Touch" ? to create a device which would ease the stress of the author?s life on the road. On the company?s website, at www.unotchit.com, Atwood described her inspiration for the machine:
?As I - Margaret Atwood speaking here - was whizzing around the United States on yet another demented book tour, getting up at four in the morning to catch planes, doing two cities a day, eating the Pringle food object out of the mini-bar at night as I crawled around on the hotel room floor, too tired even to phone Room Service (I am not alone in such practices), I thought: ?There must be a better way of doing this. Or of doing some of it.? So I talked to a few people, then put together a team to find out whether anything like it existed (no), and whether it could be done (yes).?
The machine, called the LonPen? sounds like something from one of Atwood?s visions of the future, but it will soon become reality, bar the few skeptics who believe the whole thing to be a hoax. Atwood is to unveil the gizmo at the London Book Fair, where she will sign her books remotely.
