Chrissy

Brilliant Daed. Congratulations.

Another interesting blog, Richard, thank you.

Jeez that’s some incident. I did not know about this at all – thanks for telling the story so vividly, Richard!
It just shows that human nature – our inability to foresee and avert disaster until something truly catastrophic has happened – is unchanged over the years/decades/centuries.

It certainly is. Mindboggling that such a catastrophe could have come about through a momentary lapse by a single person. Less mindboggling that the means of preventing such a catastrophe had long existed but not been implemented.

As Ath says, the parallels between this incident, along with many of the others you’ve written about over the y…[Read more]

Thank you Raine. Yes it turned out to be a pretty cunning ploy.

Oh Hilary! I was alerted to this thread by Ath. I can see you’re taking this well but I know how much it must hurt. I’m going to try to take a step back and see where the agent might have been coming from. Don’t shout at me!

Agents love books, of course, and get very excited when they are part of the process that leads to publication. For some,…[Read more]

Jeez that’s shocking behaviour. Both from your agent @Hilary and @janette.
I’ve never got that close – I mean, I’ve had full requests but no more than that – but I’d have thought you could at least rely on agents to be honest.
We’ve all been blanked on a submission – which is par for the course, even if I don’t particularly like it. But to bring…[Read more]

Wow, thanks Libby! Well done to the other participants. I’ll think up some devilishly difficult competition for March and post later tomorrow.

How incredibly insensitive of her, Hilary. Of course you were excited and expecting something after being asked to meet her. What on earth was the agent thinking? But, as others have said, there mat be a positive side. Perhaps give yourself time to get some distance then decide if her suggested revision are for you or not.

And Janette – another…[Read more]

I’m late to this debate, but it’s a very interesting one, so I hope no-one minds me resurrecting it.

My view on this is very utilitarian (I think), in that I always – consciously or unconsciously – try to work out whether the value of the book/music/art/movie/whatever is greater to me than the cost of reading/listening/watching it.

And the…[Read more]

I just posted something which seems to have disappeared. Probably my error.

In brief, I liked this Literary Friction podcast about how we judge people by what they read.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/literary-friction-minisode-three/id1000387053?i=1000433931359

New Day

The smoke from cooking fires lay like a grey blanket over Alexandra township and a tangerine sun rose behind it, then burst clear and threw its warming mantle over the land. The windows of the high-rise buildings on the distant Johannesburg skyline glinted like slabs of molten gold. A typical autumn dawn on the highveld but this was not a…[Read more]

Just seen an interesting twist on this. A bookshop is making a donation to a charity supporting trans kids every time they sell a book by JK Rowling

A brief reminder for potential participants that we’re half way through the month. Though as it’s a leap year we do get an extra day.

An author’s hypocrisy, offensiveness, crassness or general liverish misanthropy doesn’t normally put me off reading them. It depends what the benefits might be. Good writing, insights I might otherwise not acquire, my own curiosity – all are reasons to go ahead. There are some blocks, and adding money to the Roald Dahl estate is one of them.…[Read more]

I wouldn’t put up with a thousandth of the crap Michael Rosen gets every single day for all the tea in China. The man is.. I was going to say saint, but you know what I mean. I didn’t mean you to alter or amend the original blog by the way, it’s at the very least a widespread view of Dahl and I wouldn’t say it was any less valid than mine (and I…[Read more]