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RichardB replied to the topic The $2,000,000 Guitar in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
God, the nostalgia. It’s all coming back to me…
A couple of little snippets from that Croydon club:
I was still at school and couldn’t afford to go there every week, so on weeks when lesser-known bands were billed I didn’t bother. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. One night the promoter got up on his hind legs at the beginning of the evening…[Read more]
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Hilary replied to the topic Monthly competition – February 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 6 years, 4 months ago
Congratulations, John! Well done to all – and thanks to Libby for the comp and the perceptive comments.
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Hilary replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
And thank you for your comments too, Mad Iguana.
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Hilary replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Debi thank you for this. Yes, I do think you’re right about the agent giving her time and it’s true that my disappointment is down to my expectations and hopes more than anything else. As I say, she was perfectly ‘nice’ and of course her prime motivation is going to be can she sell it. But in the meeting, I felt her doubt about this came across…[Read more]
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Raine replied to the topic Monthly competition – February 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 6 years, 4 months ago
Well done @johnalty – much deserved. Perhaps writing two stories then being forced to choose is a sound strategy to adopt 😀 And Thankyou Libby for an intriguing challenge 🙂
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Sandra started the topic Especially recommended books in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
Yes, there’s a load of ‘How-to’books out there, and how useful they are depends very much upon the user, but I thought there might be a place to list not every book we use, but the most useful.
To start, and more specifically for crime writers, I can thoroughly recommend ‘The real CSI’ by Kate Bendelow. Kate did a workshop at the ‘Crime &…[Read more]
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Sandra replied to the topic Monthly competition – February 2020 in the forum Monthly Competition 6 years, 4 months ago
Well done John, and thank you Libby for a competition which led to so many brilliant stories – what richness!
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Debi Alper replied to the topic Recent agent experience in the forum Blogs 6 years, 4 months ago
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]
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