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Richard and Judy Book Club back – sans the duo

Love them or hate them, Richard and Judy had a massive impact on the UK’s book buying public. However, their popular show didn’t survive when it was transplanted from Channel 4 to Watch, a digital channel, and left the air back in July. (I wonder why?)

Never fear TV Book Club fans, Channel 4 will be returning the Book Club to our screens – albeit without the duo. Instead books will be discussed by folks like Strictly Come Dancing contestant Laila Rouass, comic Jo Brand and stylist Gok Wan. Interesting. I wonder whether these guys will have the same ability to effectively launch careers on the back of a televised discussion of its merits? Whether they will end up fighting over the books? Whether Gok will make the authors get naked?

I guess it’s got to be a good thing either way, the more people reading the better.

Bye bye Borders? UK bookshop hits the skids

Will the bad news for book shops and book lovers never end? Today we hear tell that UK Border’s bookshops are teetering over the precipice of administration and that the company has been struggling to even raise enough cash to keep itself open long enough to cover the crucial Christmas period.

It’s difficult times for everyone at the moment I suppose, book sellers certainly aren’t alone in their financial woes, but it does feel like every time I cast my eye over the headlines or have a look at a few publishing blogs I find more disasters have befallen the industry.

Is it really a sector that’s been hit harder than others, or is it just the one I pay more attention to? I don’t really know and to be honest I’m too depressed by it all to delve deeper and try to find out.

Today’s task: to spend at least half an hour being grateful for my copywriting job! It may not offer much in the way of artistic satisfaction but at least it’s keeping me going comfortably.

Weekend task: at least one new short and edits to another.

Year’s task: make it to Christmas with a smile.

Why shouldn’t stories be sad?

People sometimes question the worth of sad stories in comparison to uplifting ones, or deplore the fact that a lot of creative fiction deals with some of life’s less savoury aspects, but personally I think that fiction is the ideal place for as much misery as you can handle.

I don’t need to write about happiness and I don’t need to read about it. I find it where I can in my real-world and love it and appreciate it and treasure it as best I can, but I can’t preserve it. To do that would kill it; bleach its wings and stifle its intoxicating flickers.

So I leave happiness free by not trying to write but, conversely, write about sadness to let it out of the cages our minds build for it. Once the sadness’s are gone, once they available to be pawed over by all and sundry, their claws are blunted.

I read well-fondled sadness’s to exercise my empathy, to feel the stretch that reminds me that feeling something for strangers, fictional or not, is what gives me everything else.

Novellete

I love The Onion’s Noveller, if only I could chuck out 75,000 words a day!

Prose girl enjoys comic convention

At the end of last week I was wondering whether Ink and I would make it to the Thought Bubble convention in Leeds and today the droop of my eyes and the fuzzy nature of my thoughts are reminding me that we totally did.

I’ve never been to a comic convention before but (despite that fact there were loads of people there and I’m awfully antisocial sometimes) I really enjoyed it. In many ways it reminded me massively of the book and film festivals in Edinburgh, both of which I’ve worked for a few times over the years, mainly due to the general buzz of anticipation and the strange (and often small) divides between the creators, the staff and the public.

One thing I really enjoyed about the whole experience was the way I was honestly left with the impression that the comic world is an inclusive one. Every talk I heard had encouragements and well as warnings and every person Ink spoke to about arty stuff was happy to give a little of their time, all of which was greatly appreciated.

Not being very knowledgeable about comics didn’t stop me from finding the talks generally interesting, there are many crossovers with prose fiction after all, and it’s inspiring to listen to people who are inspired no matter what medium they are working in.

People I most enjoyed talking or listening to included Keiron Gillen, Andy Diggle and Frank Quitley (who I enjoyed talking to for quite a while with no idea who he was!), all of whom are awesome and talented as well as friendly. I kinda want to go to another one now…

Thought Bubble

Art-boy and myself are thinking of a last minute trip to Thought Bubble comic con this weekend. It looks like a lot of fun and I’d get a chance to catch up with one of my best buddies, so fingers crossed it’ll all pan out!

Enid Blyton, brilliant or boring?

Following the BBC4 biopic on Enid Blyton (which I missed but will have to look out for on iPlayer) the writer has been the subject of not a few reports and blogs in the last few days. She’s certainly a writer that provokes strong reactions one way of the other.

I have to say I was an ardent fan when I was younger, from the Secret Seven to Malory Towers and St. Clare’s I consumed them all greedily when I was at primary school. I couldn’t tell you exactly what age I was reading them, but I do know that an anthology of Famous Five books was the first ‘grown up’ (i.e. not picture book) writing I read. (I was excited enough to go running through to my parents room in my pyjamas when I realised I could read the pages, so I must have been pretty damn young.)

From Blyton I moved on to modern stuff like the saccharine Sweet Valley High books, Point Horrors and other elective choices such as the Just William books, the James Herriot series and most of Dick Francis’ back catalogue.

Most of the people that level charges against Blyton complain about her simplistic writing style and the fact that a lot of her sensitivities are at odds with the more PC ones we hold today. In fact, when I read The Faraway Tree as research for a writing job a few years ago I balked at some of it. But it’s for children, and in my opinion children need to read all types of texts and be exposed to all sorts of influences so that they can create their own value system and I don’t see why Blyton shouldn’t be one of them.

I’m really curious to know the childhood influences of anyone willing, care to share?

First draft sticky fingers

I feel quite lost now that I’ve finished editing the first draft. It’s not like I don’t have plenty of work to do (oh man, so much work to do) but I promised myself that once I’d typed up the first major round of changes I wouldn’t touch it until after Christmas. It’s proving hard.

I keep trying to stop myself by imagining the book in a variety of stupid guises. For example, the book is a delicious cake that I am desperate to ice, but if I take it out of the oven too quickly it will sink in the middle. Or, the book is a room I want to decorate but if i do it before the paint is dry… yadda yadda. I’m starting to worry for my sanity.

On the plus side, I have three short stories on the go at the moment and am planning an off the cuff visit to a comic expo in Leeds at the weekend. See? I’m in a good mood really.

Well, whose fault is it then?

Last night I met up with some writer buddies so we could do our regular evisceration of each other’s babies (ok, I mean crit each other’s works in process) and a decidedly pessimistic air hung over our secluded table. It was nothing new, nothing we haven’t all been hearing for years, just another conversation about the viability of literary fiction in the market.

Guardian writer Stuart Jeffries today questioned whether Waterstone’s has become a bane rather than a boon to publishers. The book selling chain has attracted a lot of criticism for its capitalist take on the business but hey, it is a business isn’t it?

Far be it from me to restrain myself from bitching and moaning about celebrity memoirs and mindless ghost written ‘novels’, but I can’t deny that, if they make money book shops are going to sell them. I do, however, have sympathy for the argument that it’s unfair of major bookselling chains to expect payments for accepting stock and even bigger payments for including said stock in promotions.

I feel sorry for Tim Waterstone, the founder of the shops who once lead what was seen as a force for good in the book scene. The thing is, it’s not exactly a pattern specific to literature – something starts making money, the big guys move in with their eye on the prize and less so on the stock/product and then the start-up is seen to have sold out. It’s just the way it goes, isn’t it?

Is it the collapse of the NBA agreement that didn’t allow for the discounting of books (for the noble reasoning that publishers should be able to fund lesser selling literary works) to blame? Is it the supermarkets that should be railed at for providing us with books alongside our bogroll? Or is it the fault of every one of us that buys something ’safe’ rather than challenging or who scours the shelves for the cheapest possible price without considering how they are cutting into the authors/publishers/editors/agents means of survival?

Writing is

Writing is: cold cups of tea, tippy tappping fingernails, a lump on the ring finger as though married to the damn act, coffee of indeterminate ages, cafes, a crick in the shoulder, early mornings late nights and snatched moments, messy desks, always running out of ink, an indulgement, an inspiration and ever growing piles of paper.

For me anyway, for you?