@johnalty
Active 5 years ago-
RichardB started the topic The $2,000,000 Guitar in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
$2,000,000? Who’d be crazy enough to pay that for a guitar? Kirk Hammett of Metallica, apparently. He did just that in 2016, so the story goes, for a fifty-seven-year-old Gibson Les Paul.
What possessed him, you may be thinking, to do such a thing?
Let’s start from the beginning.
In 1952, following the trend set by Fender, the Gibson Guitar…[Read more]
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Athelstone posted an update 6 years, 4 months ago
Cost of the Den of Writers: 2020 to 2021
Funding a Free Forum: the “Donations” group
Den of Writers is a FREE forum. That means that nobody pays for membership and if you join you are absolutely entitled to use and enjoy the place as much as anybody – in fact, you are encouraged to.
However, people have asked about contributing to the c…[Read more]
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KazG replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Congratulations Daeds! So well deserved, that story was something special 🙂 xx
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Hilary replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Thanks, Squidge! Don’t worry – I’m not giving up. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
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Thea replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Congratulations, Daeds! Excellent story 🙂
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Janette replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Great story, Daeds. Congratulations.
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Sandra replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Well done Daeds, a powerful example of your writing and story-telling.
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JaneShuff replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Excellent News. I loved that story!
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Elle replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Congratulations! Such a great story.
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Athelstone replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Fantastic news. A great story. Very thoughtful and moving.
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Kate replied to the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Brilliant Daed. Congratulations.
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Daedalus started the topic Short story in Barren magazine in the forum Podium 6 years, 4 months ago
Some of you might remember my story The Living from last year’s Den winter challenge. I’m pleased to say it has finally (in slightly evolved form) found a publisher in the shape of Barren magazine issue #13, now available to read online https://barrenmagazine.com/the-living/
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RichardB replied to the topic Very Serious Consequences: Harrow and Wealdstone, 1952 in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Complacency and casual disregard for human life ain’t the half of it, sometimes.
I mentioned above that the Railways Inspectorate had a battle in the nineteenth century to get fail-safe brakes adopted. They were up against not only reluctance to spend money – the so-called automatic vacuum brake was more complicated (and therefore more e…[Read more]
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Mad Iguana replied to the topic Very Serious Consequences: Harrow and Wealdstone, 1952 in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
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. -
Daedalus replied to the topic Very Serious Consequences: Harrow and Wealdstone, 1952 in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
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]
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Athelstone replied to the topic Very Serious Consequences: Harrow and Wealdstone, 1952 in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
How astonishing that an event with so much loss of life has faded from memory. I mean, not literally, it’s still there in the records – and you’ve just blogged about it. That said, it’s coming up to 70 years, I suppose. Great blog as ever, Richard. I shake my head when you write about the prevarication and penny-pinching over AWS. Then I remember…[Read more]
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Hilary replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Thanks, Jill and Philippa. I’m getting over the experience! But I still want to find a balanced overview about 1) whether book club fiction is a thing, and 2) whether age matters. I’m prepared to accept that it isn’t (as far as pitching to editors is concerned) and it does, but I’d still want an agent who said ‘We’ll show them …’ rather than…[Read more]
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I think if Debi says Book Club/Reading Group fiction is a thing and other agents identify it as something they’re looking for, you can be 100% sure it exists. For the age, maybe it does make a difference to some editors/agents (although I haven’t seen any examples of it and I am MUCH older than you) but, if so, they are not the sort of people I…[Read more]
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RichardB started the topic Very Serious Consequences: Harrow and Wealdstone, 1952 in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
We all make mistakes. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get away with it. Even if we don’t, sometimes the results aren’t too disastrous. But once in a while particularly unfortunate circumstances conspire to give a momentary error consequences that are catastrophic out of all proportion.
In the foggy early hours of Wednesday 8 October 1952 the…[Read more]
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Philippa East replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Oh Hil, I’m so sorry. You know my thoughts on this through the messages we’ve exchanged, and I just send my commiserations again xxx
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Hilary replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Thank you for the beta read offers. I’m not sure I’m ready yet, but I will keep you in mind, and return the offer. Swapsies!
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