Blog Tagging

Well I was tagged by Patricia Debney (it's a thing that's going around) but I'm afraid this particular thread is going to snap here, not because I'm grumpy (well I am, but that's not the reason) but because I really do not know five people who blog that have not already been 'tagged' and it's not like we want this thing going around and around to the same people forever...

I've suddenly realised how few people I actually know. Oh, hang on, I think I knew that already and I think I kind of like it...

I was going to show I was in the spirit of things by posting five things about me but I just couldn't think of anything. Ermmm...no, nothing.

London on a Saturday

I was back in London today, training to be an A Level Examiner. It's part of my long term plan to be able to work from home and never set foot into a place of work again. It will probably never happen and in truth I'm pretty certain I'd miss some aspects of teaching were I to give it up entirely but that doesn't mean that I wouldn't mind giving it a try to see! Anyway, I spent the day with a bunch of people from all over the country who are new to examining A Level and now I feel far less terrified at the prospect. My biggest fear? Winding up with about half of my quota to complete on the last evening or something mad like that. Now, there are checks and balances and all sorts of ways to organise yourself so that this doesn't happen...

And London on a Saturday? Much more relaxing than on a weekday. Almost calm in fact...

John Clare 1793 - 1864

I'm teaching this guy's poetry for the first time at the moment, to A Level students. He's on the new syllabus too so I expect I'll get to know him quite well over time. I have to say I'm becoming a fan. What interests me are his more 'frustrated' poems about rural life at the beginning of the 19th Century, how he witnessed the very fabric of his existence being torn apart by the Agrarian Revolution and Enclosure.

In his poem Remembrances, Clare reflects on his childhood days:

When I used to lie and sing by old Eastwell's boiling spring
When I used to tie the willow boughs together for a 'swing'
And fish with crooked pins and thread and never catch a thing

And then on how these days are gone forever:

Then the fields were sudden bare and the sky got overcast
And boyhoods pleasing haunts like a blossom in the blast
Was shrivelled to a withered weed and trampled down and done
Till vanished was the morning spring and set that summer sun
And winter fought her battle strife and won

It got me thinking and reminiscing about the summers of my youth, cycling with rod strapped to the crossbar, yesterday's bait still on the hook, the few quiet miles to this place...



...where 'me and my mates' would spend day after day fishing and being twelve years old.

I wonder if I'll let my own son do the same when he's twelve?

The London Book Fair

Okay, so this was my first visit. I had a meeting arranged and thought I'd pop along to see what it was all about. I spent the first half-hour wandering aimlessly around the place (it's huge) feeling slightly bemused and then realised a better strategy was required so armed with my directory I grabbed a coffee and a table and set about organising myself. I sat for about 90 minutes working my way through the directory listings, selecting companies I wanted to check out and then a further 30 minutes locating these on my map. After that I set out with a clearer head and managed to visit just about all the places I intended.

The thing about this event though is it's all business. If ever an author wanted a better understanding of the industry then I'd recommend they visit. It puts things in perspective. I think new authors would benefit the most, particularly those that have yet to realise that publishing is about making money. I met Vanessa Robertson from Fidra books and commented on how as an author in my jeans and boots I had felt a little insignificant and out of place amongst the thousands of power dressing suits and how this was ironic as without authors the industry could not operate but she set me straight with a very sobering thought, that without the industry there would really be no avenue through which authors could ever hope to make a living or truly 'get their work out there'.

London Book Fair and other stuff

I'll be off to the LBF on Monday for the first time, courtesy of a free ticket from The Society of Authors. I have no idea what it'll be like but I hope to come back having met a few people face to face that I've been in contact with for what feels like ages by e-mail. I'll also be looking out for loads of freebies and generally mooching about. I do it in bookshops a lot, mooch about and see what's being published by whom, what the latest trends are etc. Today I bought one book and one CD.

I'm a big Del Amitri fan. For some reason they've always been considered too 'middle of the road' by many music critics. More fool them. I've never been disappointed by any of their albums and the Del Amitri gig I saw at Shepherds Bush Empire about four years ago remains one of the best live gigs I've ever been to...

This is Justin Currie's debut solo album, released last year.

I came across an extract from this novel at a recent A Level Literature Lecture. The passage I read was intriguing enough for me to want to buy the book but on recent visits to bookshops I could only find a single copy of Adam Thorpe's recent short story collection and no novels of his at all...so Amazon it is. 1921 tells the story of Joseph Monrow, a young writer holed up in the Chiltern's, trying to write the first great novel about WWI.

Waverton Good Read Award Update and more

The short-list has been announced and Asboville is not on it. Oh well. It feels a bit like the end of an FA Cup run, sort of like getting to the quarter finals or something...which isn't at all bad really but not as good as getting to the final or even winning it. Good luck to the remaining six writers and their novels. It must be said that the Waverton Good Read was a nice award to be in the running for, not least because the books are selected and voted upon by ordinary members of the public. You can't really say fairer than that and you can't argue with it either!

Fidra Books (who are publishing my children's novel Storm Clouds next year) are in the process of producing a mass market edition of The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker. The new cover can be seen here and it looks great! The cover was designed by Snowbooks.

What else? Well apart from re-working Storm Clouds and helping it 'grow up' a bit I'm beginning the process of gathering ideas for the book that will come after the book that will come after Asboville! That's the curious thing about this game. You have to be way ahead of yourself, otherwise they'll be huge gaps between projects and I don't want there to be huge gaps. So things begin with trying to find a subject or situation that inspires. It might be a song lyric or something somebody says. It might be a story I read on the web or in a newspaper. It might be a line out of a novel...

TFP Update

So, unsurprisingly TFP will no longer be publishing 'Naomi and the Devil of Darkling Green'. How do I feel? Disappointed, naturally but this book and its characters has been living in some form since I completed the first draft way back in 2003 and it will live on. Some time later in the year, if nothing happens in the meantime, I will start touting it again. You have to have thick skin in the writing game. I've been getting rejections, for short stories, novels, poems and the rest since I started and I've been rejected by publishers, agents, magazines and websites. How many rejections? Hundreds. Easily.

This one is a little harder to take because the book had a home for a while and started to become something. Now it's got to wait again. I really do think that if a publisher were to back it correctly it has the potential to be very big indeed, not just as a novel but also as a film, collectable, interactive adventure, computer game, you name it...but then I would say that, I'm the author!

I've followed the discussions on the various blogs and I've tried to look at things with an objective eye. What I've seen, I think, are a lot of disappointed people venting their frustrations. I know nothing about these people so can hardly comment though I do wonder if some are experiencing what really amounts to a form of rejection in the publishing world for the first time. I just don't know. Of course there are other issues. I feel for those that are owed money, especially those that are owed substantial sums. I'm owed a little too and to say I could do with it is an understatement. How those that were almost at debut publication stage (one author's book was due to be published tomorrow and I have no idea if that went ahead, if he was one of the chosen few, though blog silence and gut feeling tell me he probably wasn't) must be feeling I can't imagine. My heart goes out to them. For many writers, getting a book published is so much more than a business transaction. It's often a life-long dream come true...

What I do know is that I have to get on, with other projects, with writing. I said it a couple of days ago, that I'm lucky to have these other projects in the pipeline. I need to make them as good as they can possibly be and then work as hard as I can to publicise and market them, then I have to get on with more projects, more and more and more...