Sitting on the edge of the world, ma

So there I was, sitting on the edge of the world, surrounded by people I love ...

... and thinking about ...

... blogging.

When I started my blog, back in Jan 2006, I wasn't sure what I expected to come from it or what I hoped for.

I know what I didn't expect though.

I wasn't looking to form new relationships,

to forge new bonds,

to make new friends.

But just look at what's happened!

I posted recently about the wonderful bloggers I've met in the last 18 months or so who have made the transition from Blog Life into my Real Life.

And this here Minx is truly the Cornish cream of the crop.

It's not just Minx and Debi - fellow writers and bloggers - any more.

It's our families,

our trajectories,

our very LIVES which have inextricably entwined to the mutual enrichment of us all.

What a gift.

What an utterly unanticipated blessing!

Thank you, blogosphere.

Outta here

No time for anything except to say goodbye and be good y'all and take lots of care.

Back whenever.

Brief mysterious post

Want to see an unusual combination of blogging babes and a sphinx?

Click here to see Mel, Eddy and my not-so-good self at Crystal Palace.
(Scroll down.)

Space - the final frontier

When we go away, our ancient Volvo estate (Helga) is stuffed to the gunwales with camping equipment, so that there's barely enough room for our hair and it takes a masterpiece (actually usually a mistresspiece) of design and organisation to fit everything in.

We've always known our holidaying lives would be transformed by one of those sleek aero-dynamic roof box thingys.

But they're SO expensive.
And neither of us earn money over the summer, so we'd decided - yet a again - that it's out of the question.

I'd emailed the boss man at the consultancy I do freelance critiques for to say I wouldn't be available for further edits until September.
The email must have crossed in the post/ether.
Because a couple of days ago a 400 page MS thudded through the letter box.

The Bad News
I have to get this completed before we go away.
I can't/won't take it with me.
And I don't want to go away knowing I'd have to come straight back to it.
And it's b-i-g ...
I foresee some very late nights over the next few days.

The Good News
We bought the roof box with the extra £££!

You know the Bob Marley song that includes the line:
We'll be together with a roof right over our heads?

My dear friend, Ch, once admitted to me she'd always thought the lyric was:
With a roof rack over our heads ...

Guess what the theme tune for this summer's hols is going to be ...

Arrivederci, Roma ...

Rome's finished and we're bereft.

I hardly watch tv these days and rarely get pulled into a series.
But this was such a wonderful spectacle, with mind blowing sets and some of the very best acting, that I was sucked in.

But I did find those names confusing.

First you had:

Lucius Vorenus
Lucius Malfoy
and Lucius Pepperus

Then there was:

Octavia
Octavian
and Octavier is the saddest month

Not to mention:

Titus Pullo
Titus Andronicus
and Titus Arsell.

Oh.
My mistake.
That last one appeared in Nirvana Bites which has yet to be serialised on the Beeb ...

Blogger lite

School's out!

Summer's here.
You can tell by the sheets of raining pouring from the leaden urban sky outside my window ...

Inevitably, blogging will be intermittent for the next few weeks.

Stay safe.
And dry.

Kicking, gnashing, spitting ...

WHAT THEY SAY
Choose a repair appointment to suit you

WHAT THEY MEAN
Go ahead. Choose. Doesn't mean you can get it.

WHAT THEY SAY
Book it with one call

WHAT THEY MEAN
This one call will sap your will to live. And don't think for an instant that at the end of it you will have achieved anything apart from shaving several years off your life

WHAT THEY SAY
Report your problem 24/7

WHAT THEY MEAN
You will be on the phone 24x7

WHAT THEY SAY
Relax, we'll keep in touch with you

WHAT THEY MEAN
Relax? Ha! That's a good one. The tenants'll have a good laugh with this.

OK. I give in. I'll book it online.
Log in to council website.
Navigate menu options.
Get to repairs section several lifetimes later.

Read message:
To report a repair, phone our hotline.

OK - so here's what I have to say (and believe me, I mean it).

Whichever fun-loving bureaucratic slimeball came up with a system that involves punching every button on the phone keypad so many times you get repetitive strain injury and listening to the combined works of every minor composer who ever lived, and STILL not getting to speak to a human being let alone book an appointment, needs to come round like NOW so they can see what it's like to have no lights in a windowless bathroom at the very point in the life cycle of head lice that means it's essential to nit comb and you're going to have to do it by candlelight when you never wanted the sodding fluorescents in the first place.

Medallion man

Want to see a pic of a demented-looking lover showing off his athletic assets?

Sound Bite

Warning!

If you're ever in a position to be interviewed, be aware that the journo may well have a fixed idea about the article before you so much as open your mouth.

And you may even realise what they're up to -
- but it won't help you.

Click here to see Fiction Bitch's experience of the phenomenon.

Loadsamoney

Guess how much Waterstone's are asking publishers to cough up in order to 'maximise the potential' of their books this Xmas.

(BTW - only 6 titles will qualify. Don't ask me what happens to the rest ...)

Go on. Guess.

Did you come anywhere near the real figure?

It's £45,000, according to the Times.

Here's some more figures from the article to make you weep:

£45,000 For one book to appear in window and front-of-store displays, and in Waterstone’s national press and TV advertisement campaign

£25,000 To feature in a bay at front of store as a ‘gift book’ in its genre and be displayed at the till

£17,000 To be one of two titles promoted as the ‘offer of the week’ for one week in the run-up to Christmas

£7,000 To be displayed at front of store as a ‘paperback of the year’ and be mentioned in newspaper adverts.

£500 Price of an entry in Waterstone’s Christmas gift guide, complete with a bookseller review

As for the rest of us ...Gissa quid for a cuppa tea, squire.

We have visuals

By cunningly choosing horizontal images only, I've managed to get some photos onto the Wye post to give you a fuller flavour ...

The best blogging by-product

I met Verilion, fresh from Paris, yesterday on the South Bank.
She was vertical when I met her ...

As you can see, no sooner did I congratulate myself on transferring photos from camera to laptop, than I ran into an ... er ... small technical difficulty ...

Can anyone tell me how I rotate these things?

Anyway - back to the lovely V.
This crossing over from Blogworld to Real Life has been a completely unexpected but wholeheartedly welcomed by-product of blogging.

So now V joins the impressive list of bloggers I've met.

Cast list (in order of appearance)

Maxine, Link Queen
Sharon, Think Queen
Minx, Rinky dink Queen
Skint, Not a Queen
crimeficreader, Crime Queen
Cailleach, Poetry Queen
Natalie, Chats with deities
Elizabeth, Not in the slightest bit bitchy
Clare, Boob Queen
Nikki, Award winning Queen
Granny P, Matriarchal Queen
Rivergirlie, Queen of comedy
Marie Not so struggling Queen

Number crunching

Over 1,000,000 - the number of books in print in the UK

200,000 - the number of new titles published each year

135,000 - the number of these considered suitable for bookshops

30,000 - stock held by the average branch of Waterstone's

200,000 - stock held by the largest branch of Waterstone's

500 - number of years of existing literature that must also be held in stock

1 in 10 - the chances a new book has of being displayed in a bookshop

(Figures from Danuta Kean's article, 'Chain-reaction', in the latest edition of The Author.)

Lucky 7s

Did you hear about Elizabeth Elie?

She was born in delivery room 7 at Birmingham's Good Hope Hospital ...

... at 7.57

... on 07/07/07.

Oh, and she was her parents' 7th child.

Now there's someone who will grow up needing little convincing there's a pattern to the universe.

Brrrrr.....

Did I happen to say anything about Bookarazzi yesterday?

I did?

Really?

OK - in that case I'll just mention in passing that the site has had 405 visits and 2,428 page views so far this week.

Positively polar

This is cooler than cool.

No, I'm not talking about the migration of the polar ice cap to the freezer box of my fridge resulting in the fridge door not closing and me having to add defrosting the damn thing to my already unmanageable list of things I have to do today ....

No, no indeed.
I'm talking about this - the newest, bestest, coolest place to hang out in the literary blogosphere.



You may remember me telling you some time ago that I'd joined a Bloggers with Book Deals group, which explained the explosion of fab links (eyes right) since that time.

Well, for the last few weeks, we've been absorbed in creating a new collectively-run website.

(Actually, Lucy Pepper did the clever techy stuff and Clare's done sterling work as ever in pulling it all together.)
There are about 50 of us involved - some of the biggest names in the literary blogosphere, so you can imagine we're really excited about this.

The site is packed with resources, regular articles and features as well as links to all the Bookarazzi members' bios and books.

There's a blog where you can pop in and comment,
a useful FAQ section for writers,
news and events pages,
comprehensive links
and lots more.

The site will be regularly updated and will always be a work in progress.

Pop along now and make sure you bookmark us for future visits.
We look forward to seeing you there.

Oh and don't forget to let us know if you want us to link to you ...

Loved up and knackered at Wye Fayre

You can judge how successful a music festival has been by the vibe the morning after the night before.

Yesterday saw people floating round the campsite, taking down tents, packing, tidying (I didn't see a single abandoned can, bottle or plastic cup in the field) and exchanging beatific smiles:

'We were there. We shared the experience. It was s-o-o very good, wasn't it?'

There were 5 of us.
Me, G, First Born, Little Guy and Surrogate Sister.

Almost as soon as we arrived, I knew having a girl with us would make for a very different experience ...
SS's tent was a pink and lilac confection plastered in Bratz logos.
Before we'd so much as unrolled the sleeping bags, LG's nails had been painted shiny silver.

No worries - the Wye Fayre was always going to be a place where my boys having long hair and painted nails would barely raise an eyebrow.

And howzabout the weather?
After a week of flooding, the sun shone benevolently down on us all.

SS's cheeks turned a brighter shade of pink than her tent almost as soon as we'd unpacked the car.
Another new experience - I don't know if blondes have more fun, but they sure as hell burn faster.The tent field was directly opposite the main Fayre site across a tiny road, so wherever you were, you could always hear music.
I've always thought life would be much improved if it had a soundtrack, and this was as close as you can get.

The venue and the way it was set up meant that it felt totally safe.
We plastered the kids in sunscreen and let them off the leash, bumping into them every couple of hours (usually when they were hungry).

They hit the sack round about midnight on Friday night.
And woke at 4.30am!
After growling, 'Get back in your bags' at regular intervals, I finally gave up and they were off again fueled, I suspect, by copious amounts of Red Bull.

I'm sure the organisers and performers would have preferred the place to be heaving, but from a punter's point of view, not being packed was a huge plus and added to the feeling that we were in a space so laid back and easy going it had none of the negativity you can sometimes encounter at larger events.

I have a suggestion for next year ...
The food consisted of a van selling burgers, chips and tannine stew and another doing healthier options of salads and soups.
If there had been a real coffee and cakes option, I reckon it would have done a roaring trade. (With us anyway ...)

Alcohol drinkers were more than well-catered for;
a gigantic beer tent with stacked barrels offering a bewildering array of choices;
a converted VW van which opened out to reveal a fully-stocked cocktail bar;

and (my personal fave) The Bimble Inn - a massive tipi with a champagne bar down one side and a stage at the far end.
The floor was covered in rush matting, blankets and cushions and the wooden tent poles were festooned with twisted muslin and fairy lights, creating the ultimate chill-out zone (esp after the sun went down and the temperature plummeted).

Younger children were also more than well-catered for with some wonderful imaginative entertainments.
So on to our personal musical highlights - bearing in mind there were 4 stages running concurrently - a veritable smörgåsbord of audio treats:

Middleman (thumping bass)
Alf (gorgeous voice from the lead singer who wrote Ray of Light recorded by Madonna)
The Moon Music Orchestra (see pic)
Ralfe Band (guitar riff reminiscent of a Ry Cooder and Pink Floyd mix)
James Yuill (man with laptop)
and Alberta Cross (kids bought cd)

The undoubted ultimate highlight for the kids was making friends with Seamus from Any Dream Will Do.
There were the inevitable glitches, as with any event this size, the most obvious being the delay in the arrival of diesel for the generator on Saturday morning, with the result that it took some time before any of the acts could perform on the main stage and several had to be bumped sideways onto the smaller stages.

Further evidence of the chilled-out vibe - I saw no aggression, no prima donna tantrums - only laid-back spontaneity and good humour.

The organisers say this about themselves and their aim:

'Wye Fayre is brought to you by people who love music festivals the way they used to be - high standards, non-commercialised, good value for money, family support, great food, great creativity and bulging imagination.'

As far as we're concerned, they fulfilled this on every level.

Want further evidence?
I don't usually post pix of the kids here, but couldn't resist this, taken on the journey home.
UPDATE
Forgot to mention we were delighted to see Dan Maitland perform on one of the stages.Dan's a member of EDWG - a talented writer as well as accomplished musician.
Clever, eh?

Women Who Read

A lovely ex-blogger emailed this to me.
I went to her blog to do the link and found - oh joy! - she's back!
And while we're on the subject of virtual comings and goings, look who's popped up here.
And how did I get THERE?

So - back to that email:

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.
Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out.
She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a Game Warden in his boat.
He pulls up alongside the woman and says,
"Good morning, Ma'am. What are you doing?"
"Reading a book," she replies (thinking, Isn't that obvious?).
"You're in a Restricted Fishing Area," he informs her.
"I'm sorry, officer, but I'm not fishing. I'm reading."
"Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could
start at any moment. I'll have to take you in and write you up."
"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault,"
says the woman.
"But I haven't even touched you," says the game warden.
"That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know
you could start at any moment."
"Have a nice day ma'am," and he left.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It's likely she can
also think.

What to Wear in Wye

Hoping to meet up with lots of you at Wye Fayre this weekend.

Check the website for latest details.

According to the weather forecast it looks set to be fine ...

... And they never get it wrong, do they?

So - suntan lotion and welly boots it is then.

Net results good

I've been thinking about this here blogging lark.
Nothing new there then, you might say.

Except that this time I'm thinking about it in conjunction with its potential to be a force for good or evil.

I posted recently about Rachel's hideous experience with a deeply disturbed cyberstalker.
This woman committed true crimes for our times.
She used blogging as a tool for a vicious and sustained campaign of harassment, eventually going on the run and using internet cafes to continue her abuse.

Rachel's experience was clearly extreme and all the more horrific given the other things she was dealing with in her life at the time.

But I doubt if there's anyone who's been hanging round the blogosphere for long who hasn't had negative experiences to some degree or other.

From bullying comments to malicious emails;
from frustrations with the technology to fears re exposure;
from spammers and porno merchants to painful misunderstandings that take on an existence of their own;
all life is here.

BUT ...

Rachel harnessed the power of the blogosphere to eventually catch her stalker.
A button was produced with the stalker's photo and the Crimestoppers number.
A host of blogging good guys published the button on their blogs, with the result that the stalker was eventually caught in an internet cafe in Aldgate.
(I was deeply mired in Hay at the time, so didn't take part in this particular aspect of the campaign.)

Then take the story of Dina's book and its journey through the blogosphere.
As Lee, who initiated the journey, commented:
'It goes to show that not every virus is malignant.'

So next time you're wondering if blogging has a place in your life ...
Or you're feeling intimidated and considering allowing yourself to be bullied out of the playground ...
Remember this:
The potential to do good is here too.

It's up to us.

The next link

I'm delighted to announce that this lovely blogger is the next link in the chain from here.

I will be sending Dina's book to her later today and look forward to the continuation of its journey through the blogosphere.

Meanwhile, Dina's blog continues to provide us with an insight into her life.

In this post, for example, she says:

'I realised that what's really new with cancer is this sense of living longer. So, for example, right now, the other mothers at school - most of whom haven't seen me for several weeks now - have no sense of what kind of illness this is. Is this cancer you die from? Recover from? And the truth is I don't know either, and none of the medical people answer these questions either. This is the unknown of now - so everybody just says, take each day as it comes.'

She follows this up with a discourse on the Guardian crossword.
That's Dina for you.

Lucky me!

Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday greetings.

I had a great day ...

This friend kindly offered to babysit.

So G and I went here to celebrate their 10th birthday -
- and the launch of (the brilliant and quirky) Martin Millar's new book, Lonely Werewolf Girl.

And I received a wonderful pressy from these people.

Lucky lucky me ...

Ola Tatiana (and thank you, Steve)

Look! Look! Look!
(I'm excited - can you tell?)

Senor Redwood has kindly forwarded this to me - a very positive review of Buscando a Tatiana - the Spanish translation of Trading Tatiana - written by Zeki, editor of Gangsterera.
(Clearly an enlightened and highly intelligent individual with wonderful taste in literature.)

My lovely man in Spain has also been kind enough to provide me with a translation.

Snippets:

'Looking for Tatiana (El Tercer Nombre) by the English writer Debi Alper reminds me of another novel which at the time, despite its undoubted qualities, passed more or less unnoticed through the commercial bookshop sector without attracting much critical interest. I’m referring to The Dwarves of Death by Jonathan Coe, another English writer. Both novels portray English society from the viewpoint of hopeless (’defeated’) young people who expect little from an establishment which has already destined them to the most menial tasks. They move through the underworld of the ghettoes relying on social aid, somewhere between the world of outcasts and libertarian and creative bohemia, resisting the failure looming over them with a mixture of hope, making do with the least possible, and a belief, somewhere between idealist and disillusioned, in the eternal values of solidarity and brotherhood.'

It's interesting that he's picked up on the way the book has passed under the general radar.

But he's also been very astute in sussing out the underlying themes of the book:

'The story combines the flight of the two young women in a kind of interior immigration. Tatiana, an immigrant from an eastern European country, fights to escape the clutches of unscrupulous compatriots intent on keeping her as a sex slave, while Jo, a permanent exile on the edges of the welfare state, strives for a place in this society which is denied her.

We are presented with the radiography of a cosmopolitan and variegated society which hides its social deficiencies under the cosmetic of a savage liberalism. However, the novel delves into the tiny opportunities left by hope, gambling on human relations free of spurious interests, struggling to give birth to an optimism that ends up by proving itself to be almost impossible.

A special sensitivity in the creation of the characters gives us a highly evocative reading experience that allows us to glimpse the challenges confronting the younger generations. Spaces of utopia won’t be created without victims – but they will be created: that is the final message of this text that goes beyond the usual clichés.'

Justice

Rachel's cyberstalker (see here and here) has been jailed for 6 months (see here and here) after she was caught in an internet cafe.

Let's hope she's now given the help she clearly needs and Rachel can breathe easily knowing this hideous harassment is at an end.

Small talk

Home made birthday cards

From FB:

Dear Mum,
I love you so mutch and miss you when your in onther room.
Have a lovely day.

Even I'm not mean enough to suggest he should have proof read it ...

From LG:

Dear Tity,
I wish you a lovely and fantastic birthday.

The boys have recently taken to calling me Mumitty, which they sometimes shorten to Titty ...
... much to my blushes when they call me in public.

Blag this

Skint's come up with (yet another) clever idea.

A Blag - not quite a blog nor a mag - but a sort of online hybrid.

Check here for details.

Have you asked an adult if you can be here?

Apparently my blog is rated as above ...

... on the basis that I've used the word bitch and pussy!

I suspect the 'bitch' reference is about this fellow blogger ...

... and pussy???

I once described G as being a pussy cat.
Ooooh - better protect the kiddies from that kind of language, eh?

I'd thought it might have been connected to my cats who look like Hitler post, but apparently not.

Click here to rate your blog.
Thanks to Rachel for the link.

Now it's your turn ...

I've finished reading Take Off Your Party Dress by Dina Rabinovitch.

In a no-holds-barred narrative, Dina focuses her unflinching journalist's eye onto her life over the last couple of years since she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

This is Dina's story, but it's also much much more.

Her criticisms of some of the medical staff (what joy when she comes across one who can get a needle into a vein in one go) will be familiar to anyone who's had so much as a blood test or who has felt they are seen as a symptom rather than a person.

Analysing the cynical way drug companies sink their resources into the search for a cure as opposed to prevention (less lucrative) she expresses the anger and frustration of us all.

And she does all this with wit, wisdom, humour and insight.

In some ways it may appear that Dina's position is very different from that of many other women - private treatment, access to the top consultants, phone conversations with Madonna, a session with a Vogue stylist to choose post-mastectomy clothes ...

But in every important way, Dina articulates the voice of any women with breast cancer.
Denial, fear, trying to 'fit cancer in' round the demands of a large extended family ...
Her feelings about the loss of her breast, her hair ...
How she feels as a women dealing with male doctors ...

These are issues every women can relate to.

This is what Dina has to say about losing a pound a week and realising the cancer is back:

'This is the real indictment of the times I have grown up in, more even than the fact that cancer is on the increase all around us. Cancer is running at one in three in the UK, one in four dying of it but, bad as that is, it seems to me worse that what really marks me as early twenty-first century woman is this: I'm welcoming the weight loss.'

I said it before and I'll say it again: This is an Important Book.
Now it's over to you.
My copy of the book is inscribed:

For Kate, Towards a cure! and with love, Dina (May 2007)

It came to me via Minx and Cailleach, whose blog URLs are listed in the cover, now joined by mine.

I will send the book to the first person leaving a comment requesting it.
(You'll need to email me at info at debialper dot co dot uk to give me an address to send it to.)
You then read, blog, pass it on.

See? Easy.

There's another version of this blog chain currently in the US here.

Of course you can also buy the book and help raise money.

As Dina says,
Towards a cure!

Norm's competition

Norman Geras is running a short story competition some of you might be interested in.

Not for me, I'm afraid.
Life's so packed that if breathing took time, I'd be in trouble ...

Assistance required for techy twit

Heeeeelllllpppp meeeee .....

I want to put Shimshon on my sidebar, but he refuses to go.

I have some weird version of Blogger.
When I updated a while back, it changed/improved the posting, but the template etc stayed the same ie using html.

I didn't even know this wasn't the case for everyone 'til I helped Meloney set up her blog and saw how easy it was for her to add links etc.

So does anyone know how I can coax Shimshon onto the sidebar so I can show my allegiance to the Shameless Lions?

Apart from leaving half a slain antelope there?

Wye we're going ...

The latest re the Wye Fayre.
6 & 7 July 2007

Withersdane Hall, Wye, nr Ashford, Kent TN25 5DA

The fab new festival with the ‘old school’ feel that’s just an hour on the train from London:

- folk, rock, blues, roots, Americana, indie, electronica, psychedelia and raw grooves

- 100 acts, 4 stages + alternative entertainment, great food & drink, ices on trikes, an al fresco record shop, children’s play tent, alternative therapies tent, free camping & parking - all in a great and green country environment.

UPDATE & FULL LINE-UP (at 17 June 2007)

With just three weeks to go until the gates open at midday 6 July, plenty of the exciting new bands and artists playing at this perfectly-formed 5,000-capacity festival in Kent are causing a stir on radio and in the music press with debut releases.

The full line-up is on the website which now includes links so you can sample the music.

In addition to the music, there’s the excellent Penned In The Margins poets and some of the best up-and-coming comedians and street performers in Cafe Muso; the Healing & Alternative Therapies Tent; bars for beers, wines, cocktails and champagne; great food and ice cream; and acres of space for camping and parking. There's even the ingenious Play Tent, where the very young children can play while DJs entertain their parents.

The site is just an hour by train from London and Lille, and on the direct Eurostar route from Paris, Brussels and Avignon.

Music kicks off at 6pm on the Friday. Camping is available to everyone with a day or weekend ticket and there's a separate field for parking. Wye train station is 20 minutes walk from the festival site and there’s a shuttle bus from Ashford International.

SOME OF THE ACTS CURRENTLY IN THE NEWS:

* Huw Stephens' Radio 1 playlist for Thurs 14 June included Middleman and Eugene McGuinness.

* 2 July release date for Middleman single, Eugene McGuinness single and Ruarri Joseph album.

* Luke Toms: one of four featured new artists in Mitchell & Webb’s current film ‘Magicians’.

* Middleman: nominated for 'unsigned act of the year' on Channel Four's Freshly Squeezed; ‘unsigned band of the week’ on Steve Lamacq show, R1; ‘Blah Blah Blah’ featured as Tom Robinson’s ‘Record of the Week’ 10-17 June on BBC R6; ‘hottest tip for 2007’ and invited for a Maida Vale session by Huw Stephens (R1/R Cymru).

* Eugene McGuinness: live session on Gideon Coe's Radio 6 show following Glastonbury appearances.

* Tom McKean & The Emperors: "Plaintive, bleak and beautiful" – Stephen Merchant, BBC 6 Music; "Tom McKean is in possession of a deep, rich voice and dark, moody songs. Fantastic" - TimeOut, London; Nizlopi’s double-bass playing John Parker now in the line-up and featured on www.ilikemusic.com in a Wye Fayre promotion.

TICKETS:

Weekend tickets £45 / Day tickets £25 / see website for concessions

Tickets include camping and parking on Friday and/or Saturday nights - site is open noon Friday to afternoon Sunday.

* via www.ticketweb.co.uk (£5 booking fee):

* via www.wegotickets.com (£3.15 booking fee):

* or email tickets@wyefayre.co.uk for details of how to save up to £10 on a weekend ticket.
* if you leave it too late to book, just turn up on the day!

For further info check the website or the MySpace ...er ... space.

Lit for all

Heard about London Lit +?
A literary festival with a difference ... open access and packed full of enthusiasm and invention.

Here's what they say about themselves:

London Lit Plus (LL+) is an open festival, which means anyone can participate, and anyone can hold an event. All you have to do to be included is to submit your event, and we’ll add it to the list on this website. We want to showcase all the wonderful literary goings-on in London that we can in a two-week period.

The only conditions for entry are that it must be literary, it must be within the M25, and it must be taking place between the 29th of June and the 13th of July 2007.

We’d particularly like independent publishers and booksellers and schools to get involved, but everyone is invited.

Click here to see the events already scheduled.

They've even got t-shirts ...

Thanks to Sarah for the link.

A Day in the Life of ....

Want a snapshot of my life?
This was yesterday ...

8.50am Take LG to school.
9.10am Back home, check urgent emails and gulp caffeine.
9.30am Leave to go to dad by bus and tube across London.
Work on ms I'm editing while on tube.

(Had phone call last night saying dad had been rushed to hospital with severe SOB - shortness of breath - and was 'extremely ill'. But when I phoned again at 10.45pm they said they were discharging him!)

11.15am Arrive at dad's. He's not there! Rush round to his GP - he's not there either.
Just about to start scouring streets when I have a brainwave.
Phone hospital - they kept him in after all.
12 noon Having packed a bag for dad, leave to get bus to hospital.
1.00pm Arrive at hospital. He's not too bad, though very frail.
Staff nurse and I try to discuss care options with him but he's having none of it.
2.30pm Leave hospital. Bus, tube, bus back home.
4.00pm Arrive home. L is already here for pre-arranged meeting.
4.15pm G drives me and L to FB's school for meeting to finalise parents' newsletter which L and I have been working on.
5.40pm Leave school and walk home.
6.15pm Arrive home and gulp down some food.
6.45pm Leave again to go to park for Dulwich run.
7.15pm LG runs 1500m.
7.45pm G runs 5km.
8.15pm Back home. Clean up. Make tomorrow's lunches. Get kids to bed. Start editing.
1.00am Bed.

PS. This is not an elaborate excuse to get out of doing memes!

Will 5 do?

Oh yikes. I've been tagged ...
And I know Cailleach isn't the first to nab me for this.
And (guilt, guilt) I now can't remember who else it was ...
Sorry!

8 things about me ... gasp.

Thing is I'm so rushed - 2 manuscripts to edit plus my dad was rushed into hospital on Wed.
(I know - it's emotional blackmail.)

Am I allowed to cheat by linking back to 5 things and asking that you let me off the other 3?

A choice of celebrations

Ain't it always the way?

You wait ages for a decent literary event close to home, then two come along on the same date.

On 29th June, Natalie will be at the Apple Mac store in Regent Street doing a presentation (scroll down to post on 6th June) on how she turned this into a book.
I've read the book and it is full of wit,wisdom and beauty. (Bit like Natalie then ...)

And on the same day ...

Martin Millar will be launching Lonely Werewolf Girl at my fave indie bookshop, the Bookseller Crow on the Hill ...

who are using the occasion to celebrate their 10th birthday.

And that date also happens to be ...

... my birthday.

So - do I go there?
Or there?

Or somewhere else all together?

A Yorkshire Davida meets a global Goliath ...

Milly at the Yorkshire Pudding Club is immersed in a case claiming constructive dismissal against her former employers.

If, like me, you instinctively support the Davidas when they take on the global greed-merchants, pop along to her blog to give her a shout and let her know she's not alone.

Authors and their blogs

The Penguin has a post about what makes a good author blog.

Funny that ... I never sat down and wondered about how or what I would blog ...
The way I do it just seemed like the only possibility.

I've realised recently that my blog voice, Real Life voice and fiction voice are all one and the same.
That could be a symptom of a lack of imagination on my part or it could be that I've managed to achieve consistency in at least one area of my life.

What about you?
Do you have a range of different voices that you can call on depending on the arena and circumstances?

Big thanks as ever to Maxine for commenting on the Penguin blog and giving a shout to myself and Clare as examples of good author blogs.

Duck! We're under attack - again (yawn)

Don't bother getting in a flap about this - we're used to this kind of attack and see it for what it is.

Here's an excerpt for your info anyway:

...book bloggers have also brought another, less salutary influence to bear on literary culture: a powerful resentment. Often isolated and inexperienced, usually longing to break into print themselves, bloggers — even the influential bloggers who are courted by publishers — tend to consider themselves disenfranchised. As a result, they are naturally ready to see ethical violations and conspiracies everywhere in the literary world. As anyone who reads literary blogs can attest, hell hath no fury like a blogger scorned. And the scorn is reciprocated: Professional writers usually assume that those who can, do, while those who can't, blog.

In fact, despite what the bloggers themselves believe, the future of literary culture does not lie with blogs — or at least, it shouldn't. The blog form, that miscellany of observations, opinions, and links, is not well-suited to writing about literature, and it is no coincidence that there is no literary blogger with the audience and influence of the top political bloggers. For one thing, literature is not news the way politics is news — it doesn't offer multiple events every day for the blogger to comment on. For another, bitesized commentary, which is all the blog form allows, is next to useless when it comes to talking about books. Literary criticism is only worth having if it at least strives to be literary in its own right, with a scope, complexity, and authority that no blogger I know even wants to achieve. The only useful part of most book blogs, in fact, are the links to long-form essays and articles by professional writers, usually from print journals.

Of course, now that I've linked to the article, this will no doubt been seen as evidence of that last line.
I have only one response to that: 'Am I bovvered?'

Thanks to Working Words for the link.

Techy triumph and a sticky end

A couple of the (many) things that have happened this weekend:

• techy mate came round yesterday. As a result my browsing has transformed from snail on barbiturates to greyhound on amphetamines. Whoosh ....

• G and First Born had a big row. I just managed to prevent FB from cutting up the Father's Day card he had spent hours making. Instead, he took his revenge by applying a thick layer of glue to G's chair!
  

A post re the post

I've just received This Very Important Book in the post today.



I'm grateful for the opportunity to have become the latest link in a chain that should take it on a wide-ranging journey through the blogosphere.

Lee told Minx here.
Minx blogged about it here.
She sent it to Cailleach who blogged about it here.
And then sent it to me.

I'm going to read it now, blog about it when I've finished and then pass it on to the first person who emails me requesting it.
(info at debialper dot co dot uk)
They will then blog about it, put their name and url in the front cover, and pass it on to the next person.

Oh and by the way, Dina blogs here.
And any money raised from sales of the book goes here.

Debi the Vid Kid

I have Google alerts set up to let me know whenever my books are mentioned anywhere online.

It sometimes seems a bit random ...
For example, I know of mentions that the alerts don't pick up ...

And sometimes it tells me about ancient history, with no indication why a particular site should crop up now ...

Anyway, today I got this link to an online Chatshow interview I did a couple of years ago, when Trading Tatiana was published, and thought it might amuse if you haven't already seen it.

One of the few bits that don't make my toes curl in embarassment is when I'm asked for my favourite diva dressing room demand (!) and I say, 'An ashtray.'

An addition to our family

I've cracked.

I've adopted one of the Shameless lions.

I resisted for ages.

I'm too busy, I told myself.
I have to focus.
I need discipline.
I'm blogging too much and writing too little.

But then I popped into Shameless's blog in an unguarded moment.

And saw that 44 out of 48 lions had been adopted.
And there were over 100 comments on the original post!

Just about all my long-term blogmates had their own lion ...

I couldn't stand it.
The fact is, I just didn't want to be left out ...

So I'm now the proud adopter of Shimshon!

His name is the Hebrew version of Samson ...
... strong, with rippling muscles and a tumbling mane of hair.

First Born, having just turned 12, will be celebrating his barmitzvah next year.
He will read the portion in the synagogue that corresponds with his Hebrew birthday (according to the lunar calendar).

His portion is ... Shimshon!

FB is half an inch shorter than me, weighs a stone more and has a shoe size 3 times larger.
He also has a tumbling mane of hair that cascades down his back.

So when we came to name our lion, there was only one real possibility ...
We don't believe in coincidence.

Meet Shimshon.

Here's my 48 word contribution to the Shameless Lions Writing Circle:

A LION CALLED SHIMSHON

- A lion? You've adopted a lion?
- Well, you always said you wanted a pet ...
- Yes, but I was thinking of goldfish ... maybe a hamster ...
- B-o-o-o-ring ...
- You said you'd never even have a dog!
- Too true, squire. They hump table legs and stick their noses in pooh.
Whereas lions ...

Phew, that was close ...

I came this close (holding tips of forefinger and thumb a millimetre apart) to having to change my name, have plastic surgery and move abroad today.

I was going out to collect Little Guy from school.

I got as far as the front door when I realised something didn't feel quite right.

I looked down.

And saw ...

... attached to the sole of my shoe ...

... a pristine white ...

... pant liner.

Blogger blast

Many of you will already have virtually met Caroline Smailes, whose book, In Search of Adam, was picked up by The Friday Project, through her blog.

I haven't read it myself yet, but there have been some rave reviews from the blogosphere.
(Click on the right hand bar of Caroline's blog to find the links.)

Let's hope this is an example for the future ...

... a book picked up as the result of a blog ...
... by a publisher who specialises in finding new authors via the web ...
... publicised by blogs before anyone else even gets hold of it ...
... so that the pre-publication buzz is in place ...
... hopefully resulting in huge success.

If you're in the Manchester area, click here for details of launch events.

Who, What, When in Wye

The lovely people at Flying Monkey, organisers of Wye Fayre, have offered us a weekend pass for the whole family in return for me being Blogger at Large at the event.

Which needless to say will give me very great pleasure!

In answer to the questions some people have asked, the Fayre kicks off on Friday 6th July.
If you come on the Saturday, you pay for one day only and can still camp at no extra cost.

Prices are £45 per adult for both days, £25 for one day only.
13-17 year olds are £15 and under-12s are free.

It's shaping up to be a wonderful weekend.

What do you mean you're not coming???
Don't you want to be able to say in years to come,
'Ah, yes. Wye Fayre. I was there at the beginning ...'?

Click here to see and hear some of what you can look forward to.

And in case you're still not convinced, take a look at this:

WYE FAYRE, our perfectly-formed 5,000 capacity festival takes place on the 6th-8th of July 2007 in the Kent countryside, one hour from London. We've got a stunning line-up of established and up-and-coming international bands and artists with all the festival trimmings you'd expect and plenty more you won't be expecting.


Electroacoustic Club will host The Bimble Inn (as seen at Glastonbury and last year's End Of The Road festival) and there'll be a towering outdoor main stage, the Far & Away Stage, set in 'Dingly Dell,' and The Stage With No Name (the singer-songwriter tent). The Brixton Therapy Centre will have their own big tent, where you can be massaged and generally 'healed' and there's the ingenious 'Play' tent, where kids can entertain themselves, whilst DJs entertain their parents. There are real ale and lager bars, a wine bar and even a converted camper van bar serving cocktails and champagne. There's also great food and ice cream.


Best of all, after the main stage shuts down at midnight, the trees become lit up and the whole site transforms into an after-hours arena of alternative entertainment, including films, Penned In the Margins poets and impromptu acoustic performances by some of the headliners. There are separate fields and acres of space for camping and parking, including a dedicated family camping area, as well as rooms to rent for those of you who aren't happy campers.

Something different

FB is at home needing a duvet day and I'm mad busy so no time for proper post.

Instead I thought I'd trompe your oeuil with this ...

Another festival? Wye not ...?

From a festival in Hay-on -Wye to a fayre in Wye.
How's that for nifty leap?

Check here for details of an exciting event in Kent Wye on 6th and 7th July (as opposed to Welsh Wye).

'Revel from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning in the stunning grounds of Withersdane Hall, set in the heart of the Kent countryside and only an hour by train from London.

Five stages of folk, rock, blues, roots, Americana, indie, electronica, raw grooves and psychedelia, plus comedy / real ale, real lager, wines & cocktail bars / great food & ice cream tricycles / al fresco record shop / marketplace / alternative healing & therapies tent / free camping & parking / rooms to rent.'

Sounds great, doesn't it?
You can see the full lineup here.

Here's what the organisers have to say about themselves:
'Wye Fayre is organised by a passionate and enthusiastic bunch of live music and comedy promoters, event organisers, designers and musicians.'

L, who told me about it, says:
'It's starting out on a similar scale to what Glastonbury once was ...'

How can you resist?
Tickets available here.

UPDATE: Just realised the links to the separate pages don't work for some reason too techy for my poor tired brain to work out. Each takes you to the main page and you can follow the links from there.

Tha last Hay in the stack

I just thought I'd pull together the blog buzz from Hay survivors.

It's a clear sign of the diversity you get in this here blogosphere and a vindication of the decision to acknowledge the role bloggers have to play by officially commissioning them (us!) to cover events.

First up, there's my epic post covering the first couple of days of the Festival.
(Can you imagine how long this post would've been if I'd been there for the full festival?)

Then we have Fiction Bitch's political analysis.

John Baker's published several posts culminating here - some straightforward reporting, others showing how real life situations can inspire good fiction in the right hands.

On the It's a Crime blog, Crimeficreader gives us the Welsh perspective as a regular attendee at Hay.

And so, in his inimitable fashion, does Skint Writer.

Struggling Author shares her enthusiasm here.

You can get the insider's view here from a festival volunteer.

And here from a contributor.

And finally scroll down to the bottom of the comments here to see that we're not just howling at the moon - people do hear us.

Finally, if you missed it all, go here for all the interviews and show details ...
... and here for the free download.

Wear some wellies, close your eyes ... it's the next best thing to being there ...

Why do we do it?

Minx and Maht (M&M?) have been talking about their writing process.
And Fiction Bitch tagged me a while back on a similar subject.

I'm trying to write, dammit - and it seems to me that writing about how I write is not what I should be focusing on right now ...

So instead, I'll direct you here where you can see some people's responses once they've achieved the holy grail of a book deal.

Here's a little taster ...

'And even before the potential post-publication humiliation, there’s deadline pressure; crippling self-doubt; diets of Entenmann’s pastries and black coffee; self-made cubicles structured with piles of books, papers and unpaid bills; night-owl tendencies; failed relationships; unanswered phone calls; weight gain; poverty; and, of course, exhaustion.'

Cyberstalker

Remember my Blogging from the Dark Side post?

If you've been following Rachel's blog, you'll know that her cyberstalking nightmare has been ongoing.

Now it seems there has been a resolution at last.

Let's hope FJL now gets the help she clearly needs -
- and her victims get some much-needed breathing space.

Clear speech

We all use words but there's a huge difference between writing them on a page or screen and speaking them aloud to an audience.

Personally I would far rather sit at my laptop and communicate than stand on a platform with all eyes on me.

But imagine how much harder that would be if the words just don't come.
If they get stuck behind your teeth and refuse to tumble from your lips.

And now imagine if that was the case not just in public speaking but in every aspect of your life.

Imagine how hard it would be to communicate - as a child in class or in the playground - or as an adult in every area of your life.

That's the reality for people who stutter.

Mark Arram - best buddie and esteemed founder of the East Dulwich Writers' Group - knows what that's like, having battled with stammering throughout his childhood.

But in typical procative fashion, he's pulled together the various strands of his life as a mentor, counsellor and skilled percussionist and come up with a solution that really works.

The In - Rhythm technique for relieving the anxiety in stammering is concerned with externalising the speaker's voice onto their body through the use of rhythm.

Stammering is a very internal experience: tightening of the chest, butterflies in the stomach, heating of the head, shallowness of the breath, rapid swallowing. All these things happen prior to and during the stammering speech. It is analogous to a spluttering engine where all we hear are the sounds of its faltering parts.

The In - Rhythm technique for relieving stammering tensions does away with having to look 'under the bonnet' of the stammerer by locating speech immediately on the body, diverting any anxiety away with rhythm.

Click here to see some impressive case studies and videos.
The technique is clearly effective.

This is the kind of thing that changes lives ...

It's a blog's life ...

We bloggers are accustomed to being dismissed as amateurs.
(And we've been called a lot worse than that too. See here and here and here.)

Blowhards provide a useful addition to the debate.
(Thanks to Frank at Books Inq for drawing this one to our attention.)

And lookee ... there are intelligent comments on the post too
ie a debate ...
... one thing you can get on a blog that you can't access with print journalism.

Maybe that's what scares them ...
... as I said in a history lesson here.

Anyway, I'm reminded of this quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

UPDATE:
Just found these further contributions on the subject with yet more insightful comments here and here at Petrona.

Another hotel ... another story ...

It was suggested to me here that I could lean out of the bathroom window to smoke while I was away last week.

But I've had bad experiences in that area that have left permanent psychological scars.

A few years ago, we were in Bristol where G was running in a half marathon.
No smoking anywhere in the hotel.
But no one will be any the wiser if I just slip into the bathroom, I thought ...

A few puffs in ...
... fire alarm shrieks.

It's me, I think in horror.
I must have activated a smoke alarm ...

'It's ok,' I tell G and the kids.
'It's a ... er ... false alarm.'

A few minutes later, there's frantic knocking on our door.
'Evacuate the hotel!' a voice yells. 'There's a fire alarm.'

What can we do?
I can't tell him the 'fire' was less than a centimetre in cirumference and had been dangling from my lips a few minutes earlier.

So outside we go to join all the other disgruntled guests, workers etc huddled in the car park.
I shrink away to the periphery, casting guilty glances all round.
Can anyone tell?
Will they smell the smoke on me?
What will they do to me if they find out???

I spot a woman I'd met earlier and sidle over to her.
'This is a drag,' I say, twisting my features into a rictus grin.
'OMG,' she replies.
'It was me!
It was all my fault.
I'd sneaked into the bathroom for a crafty smoke and it set the alarms off!'

Sandi says ...

That clever Sandi Toksvig made me laugh at Hay and now she's gone one better by making me nod my head in agreement so violently it nearly rolled off onto the floor to nestle under the chest of drawers along with the fluff balls ...

I've retrieved it now and it's back on my shoulders so I can share the quote with you.

When asked about how she felt about her looks, Sandi replied,

'Too many women have wept good time away worrying about the physical when they could have been reading - or, better yet, writing - a good book.'

Heads up - we're in the Guardian ...

The review section of Saturday's Guardian has a 'From the blogs' section chosen by the editor of Guardian Unlimited books.

So guess who's up this week ...

Yep - they've quoted from my Hay blog and from Fiction Bitch's post re the festival.

The other 2 blogs quoted were interesting too.
The Midnight Bell and Hodmandod both mention the emergence of new independent publishers - Social Disease, (website currently unavailable) Wrecking Ball and Burning Shore Press.

Then there's Readreverb - publishers of my man in Spain, Steve Redwood.
Click here to see their philosophy.

These add fuel to my theory that this is both the best of times and the worst of times for writers.

'Worst' in that traditional publishing is becoming ever harder to break into ... especially for those whose writing is not considered mainstream or authors whose early books don't go mega overnight.

'Best' in that there are some really inspiring alternatives - a long way from the 'self-published' stigma of yesteryear.

Let's hear it from the glass-half-full posse!