Posted by on Aug 16, 2007 in research, veracity | No Comments

How far do you go … For research purposes? I ask because in discussion with a fellow editor recently, she was horrified to discover I’d chewed paan (betel nut wrapped in a betel leaf with other aromatics – somewhat confusingly, betel nut and betel leaf come from two completely different plants) when I was in […]

We need to talk about titles (again) With apologies to Lionel Shriver. If you think I sounded jaded, I do. I’ve been reading slush for an anthology and while some of the work has been great, the absolute mind-numbing tedium of so many of the titles has broken my will to live. Listen up writers […]

Posted by on Aug 10, 2007 in editing, revising | 8 Comments

When it’s rubbish … What do you do? One of the most difficult things to decide is when a story is rubbish and when it just hasn’t arrived on the right desk yet. If you listen to the myths, you’ll hear that many an award-winning story was almost relegated to the back of the drawer, […]

I am a bookmother! Seriously. The inimitable Bunny Goodjohn stayed for a couple of nights on her way back to the USA, and we had a wonderful time. Well, I had a wonderful time and I hope she did too. Her novel, Sticklebacks and Snowglobes, will be published in October and she brought me the […]

Cold River Review redux and Clockwork Phoenix opening Go and read their copyright page. Kudos to Mr Sandoe and his team for what they’ve done to put things right. I said I would sing their praises and I am – believe me, all editors make mistakes (I know I have) and it takes guts to […]

Rough Love I’ve just been over on Goodreads and that, in combination with a book I’ve picked up, has exercised my mind no end. The subject being discussed at Goodreads (join up if you haven’t already – it’s wonderful) is how you treat your books. Well, I treat mine bad, and they stick around … […]

Caveat emptor – Cold River Review I’ve heard recently that a second writer of my acquaintance has had work republished in Cold River Review. Hurrah for them, you might think – but it’s not. You see, neither writer had given permission for their work to be used, or even been contacted to ask if this […]

The Brighton Reading That’s me, waving my arms around and pulling faces, as usual. The reading and launch went really well, I thought, and I’m extremely thankful that we did it on Thursday, because by Friday we had small rivers heading down every road to Brighton sea-front, and nobody would have wanted to plough through […]

Brighton Reading tonight! This is where we’ll be tonight, well, downstairs actually, in The Cella at The Sanctuary, in Brighton. It’s a venue I’ve read at several times, and really love; it’s intimate and very sophisticated, and of course, the food upstairs is superlative. So apart from the perennial fear that nobody will turn up […]

Posted by on Jul 17, 2007 in first drafts, notebook, Will Self | 3 Comments

Notebooks … Just before I head off for the latest reading for Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel, I wanted to sing the praises of notebooks. Not snazzy little laptop computers, but the real deal. Paper – and pens. One of the things that we may be about to lose, unless we’re Will Self […]