the blog of Tielserrath

Why it pays to get all the information

2007-07-04T03:42:00.000-07:00

I came across a book recently that I wanted to review for the mag. It was published by...let's call them Star Press. they had a nice website, with an email contact page. Now, I do as much as I can by email, but I do like to have a postal address. But Star Press didn't have one. What it did have was a small link to another company - let's call them Genre Umbrella Publishing (GUP).

Fair enough; after all, several small presses have imprints - Arcadia is a good example. So what was GUP's postal address?

There, in very small print on the contact page: Simon and Schuster House.

Nowhere else was it mentioned that these were imprints of a major publisher.

So does it matter? Well, it does to me, because I'd look pretty stupid when someone wrote to me saying I'd been conned into printing a review of a Simon and Schuster book in a magazine dedicated to independent presses. It also makes me wonder why they didn't advertise it as 'an imprint of S&S' - after all, since when were major companies coy about advertising themselves? What are they afraid of?

And am I being unnecessarily cynical?

...I'm still not sure.

Independent Bookshops

2007-06-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

I went to an independent bookshop today. I'm not going to name it, though I'd like to. I went in to (briefly) talk to the proprietor about the magazine, and leave some flyers. I also wanted to buy a book. The encounter went something like this:

Tielserrath: Hello, I'm looking for a book and I can't find it on your shelves. I wondered if you had it or could order it. it's called The Book of Dave.

Proprietor: (blank look) The book of what?

T: The Book of Dave. The latest book by Will Self.

P: I've not heard of it.

T: Well...it's been all over the broadsheets. It's the current Guardian Book Club Book.

P: Oh...maybe I think I know the one you mean. What was it again?

T: The Book of Dave.

P: (looks on computer) Here it is. I can order it. It will be here tomorrow if I get some more orders today, otherwise it will be here on Saturday.

(pause while address details written down)

T: I also wanted to show you a new magazine that we're launching and give you some flyers and an invitation to the launch party.

P: (glance at invitation) Oh, that's a bit far away.

(It's about 20 miles.)

T: Well, we'd be pleased to see as many independent booksellers as can make it, because we are going to feature an independent bookshop in every magazine. The feature in the first issue is about an independent that's successful and expanding, and I think that's fascinating because people are so pessimistic about the future of the independents. Anyway, I'll leave a letter and some flyers-

P: Oh, there's no point in leaving flyers. People aren't interested. They won't pick them up. I'll take a poster.

T: We don't have posters at the moment. We'll have them once the magazine has been launched.

P: Well, I won't stock any unless I've had a free copy to look through.

T: (wonders if the same applies to the books she stocks. From the look of the shelves, this may be the case.) Well, I'll pop back after the launch with one, shall I? (Departs with relief. Never has pouring rain been more attractive than staying in a bookshop.)

(NB On a previous recce I had identified this woman as the proprietor.)

I don't think it's unrealistic to expect the owner of a bookshop to keep up with the new releases from major UK writers. Especially as nowadays newspapers can be accessed for free on the internet. I would have thought that knowing which books were being featured in reviews or book club supplements would be important, as those are books people are likely to come in and ask for. In fact, isn't doing this an automatic part of the job description if you are selling new books?

And the flyers...I didn't type out the brief pitch I made for the magazine, but I did make it clear to her that this was a magazine whose main aim was to help iondependent bookshops sell more books. I thought the point of flyers in this situation was that as customers buy books, the bookseller says, 'Oh, by the way, there's a new magazine just out which I think you might like. I'll give you one of these (tucks flyer into book) so you can read a bit more about it. Let me know if you'd like me to get a copy for you.' With luck, the bookseller sells a magazine, and as a result of that sells more books, too. Everyone happy. The old win-win situation.

When I entered this shop I was upbeat and enthusiastic. I was met by the attitude of 'you're wasting my time and I'm not interested'. Throughout, I was the sole customer; I was not preventing anyone else from getting attention, and there was no sign that a stocktake or anything else of importance was in progress. I waited at the till for five minutes before anyone even noticed I was there.

A few months ago I was in New Zealand, visiting the potteries (among other things). At one shop, showcasing the work of several local artists, I identified myself as a part-time potter. I was immediately dragged around to the back room, plied with tea and cake, and given a tour of the premises. We talked about many aspects of pottery for around two hours; I spent quite a bit of money in the shop, and I felt I had met people who would be successful in their work, and give pleasure to their customers. They were open and enthusiastic.

It feels awful to come away from a business thinking that it doesn't deserve to survive. But there are a few independents in other market towns near me - it's a little further to travel, but I'll go a bit further to meet people who actually care about what they do. Or I'll buy the books in Foyles when I'm next in London.

So. I'll see what happens when I go to pick up The Book of Dave. Strangely, I'm not hopeful.

I gave up.

2007-06-25T14:37:00.000-07:00

Oops - forgot to say. I gave up on The Island. I went and read a Star Trek book instead.

book readings

2007-06-25T13:55:00.000-07:00

I've attended quite a few readings in the last three weeks. I'm not going to name specific events, but here are a few thoughts:

1. Set a timetable, let your audience know what it is, and keep to it. An audience gets unsettled if it doesn't know when the readings are going to start, or how long the break will be.

2. For the majority of readers, ten minutes is enough. Unless they have a story that needs to be told in full, and can tell it well, and you have comfortable seating for all your listeners, don't go beyond ten minutes. Keeping people standing still and silent for twenty minutes is likely to lead to someone fainting at the back of the room.

3. Keep the number of characters in a piece to the absolute minimum Rewrite the piece if necessary. Make sure it's clear which are the main characters, and try to remind the listeners of their identity at least once. Do not give characters more than one name; in a book readers can flip back and reidentify them, but during a reading they can't.

4. Try to keep to a single plotline; don't have too many changes of scene; think carefully about paragraphs of description - are you painting a picture or boring your audience to sleep?

5. Don't mix poetry and prose unless you really know what you're doing. Poetry, strangely, can suck the power from a piece of prose.

6. The reader must be above the eye level of the audience, even if only by a few inches. They have come to see someone read; otherwise they would have stayed at home and listened to the radio or a podcast.

7 Prepare your introductions, learn them and speak directly to the audience. DON'T read from a piece of paper. 'Tune' the introductions to your audience. And try and balance them if you have several readers. Listing twelve publications, an award and a degree for one person, and then introducing the next by saying 'she lives in Hounslow and likes cats and this is her first short story' is not fair. If you have to, put this information in the flyers that you hand out at the event, and then keep the introductions brief for everyone. NB - Do not give out a flyer of mini-biographies and then read from it as the introduction. What is the point of telling the audience what they've just read?

7a Tell them how many readers there are going to be, so they can plan a getaway.

8. Make sure your readers have their papers in the right order. Losing your place while reading because you haven't clearly numbered the pages is an insult to your audience. Haphazard scattiness in this situation is not endearing, only irritating.

9. Funny is good. Plot-driven is good. Ask yourself - what do I want my audience to remember of this story by tomorrow morning?

For more about book readings, see Kay's blog:
http://writingneuroses.blogspot.com/2007/05/choosing-material-for-reading-its-not.html

However, despite all this book readings are fun. If nothing else, you can convince yourself you have some association with the literati, and sometimes seeing famous writers in the flesh is fascinating - not so much for the way they read, but for their behaviour before and after. And you never know...you too may end up on a sofa getting pissed with John Banville.

Disappointment

2007-06-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

When there's a buzz about a book I'm always curious. Is it a marketing buzz, or is it a genuinely good book that has surfaced from the mass? Captain Corelli's Mandolin was a good example; I held back for a while, then read de Berniere's trilogy before going on to Capt Corelli, which I felt afterwards deserved the hype.
Sadly, though, I'm more often doomed to disappointment. I managed page 1 of The Da Vinci Code (like reading The Sun newspaper, with lots of big, exciting verbs), and to this day have resisted Angela's Ashes.
So when I heard about Victoria Hislop's The Island, I hesitated. In fact, I more than hesitated. I wondered if she got published on the strength of her husband's profile rather than any innate merit in her work. I eventually started reading it two days ago.

I was right.

It's awful. Written with all the style of a GCSE english essay assignment, full of exposition and unbelievably clumsy hopping between points of view. She gives the reader no room for their own imagination, character motivations are explained to the nth degree, and she clearly has no concept of showing a pivotal scene rather than telling you after it's happened. It's a great pity, because she is giving a picture of a fascinating place and time, but fails to live up to it on every page.
Will I finish it? I want to believe that there will suddenly be some amazing change, that I will see why people think this book is wonderful. But I don't think it's going to happen. I'll give it one more go tonight. (It's almost unheard of for me to take this long to read a book. And I'm only 1/3 of the way through).

If you want a good lit-lite book try The Officer's Daughter (Portobello) or Loving Mephistopheles (Peter Owen). I can't guarantee you'll love the story, but at least you'll be reading something by someone who really knows how to write.

And it's gone!

2007-06-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

...to the printer, at least. I missed the deadline by about 48 hours, thanks to a computer crash that took seven hours of (saved) work 40 minutes before I was due to send it off. Followed by a dozen crashes over the weekend as I tried to get the thing finished. Anyway, the magazine is out of my hands now, apart from a check at the printers tomorrow afternoon.

All that's left is getting letters and invitations out to the various important people I'm hoping will come to the launch. I went to the local wine shop to see about ordering a couple of cases of wine, and the woman nearly hugged me when I said I thought I'd do better buying from them than from Tesco's. So had a very nice time discussing the realitive merits of sauvignon vs quality rose, summer reds, Pelorus (the wonderful NZ Cloudy Bay fizzy and no, I'm not having THAT at the launch). But the nibbles will be from Marks and Spencer to make up for it.

And in amongst all this I mustn't forget about issue two...

More small presses are coming on board. I think you can tell the presses that are likely to succeed; they're the ones that bite your hand off at the chance of reviews, advertising and general networking. It also helps to have a communication that gives some idea of the person at the other end. Email is possibly more helpful here, though handwritten letters can have the same result. There's something horribly stiff about a typed letter, and it somehow causes a retreat into formal language (and I'm as bad as anyone else at doing that). But you can't send a handwritten letter to a broadsheet editor and expect to be taken seriously. The best you can hope for is that you will spark a less formal email contact and get on with business in a more relaxed way.

It's quite surprising what people will do. Last week I received a pack of review material. There were a couple of 'arty' notebooks, a book of 'children's questions', about 10-15 art postcards, and two books of 'art' crosswords. No accompanying letter. Nothing to identify who they were from. On a close search, there did seem to be a common denominator small press/writer, but it required going through the fine print in each book and teasing it out from among the swathes of sponshorship logos. I was a bit annoyed - firstly, this is clearly not reviewable material (postcards?) for the magazine. Secondly, whoever sent it couldn't be bothered with the courtesy of identifying themselves. Thirdly, this had all been produced with lottery and arts sponsorship, i.e. your money, and I do believe that anyone taking sponsorship has a duty to make the effort to spend it wisely.

When I receive review copies, they are logged onto a book list on the website, so that publishers can check that they have arrived. They are then logged out again when a reviewer requests them. I need to keep this data anyway, so it's a simple courtesy to those who are spending their (often very small) budget sending me books.

I have no idea how to log a handful of postcards and notebooks onto the list, nor how they should be reviewed.

Home news - Bosie sprained his ankle and was on three legs yesterday, but a night on my bed seems to have fixed him. One very cute mouse swapped for a piece of chicken (Lucy is easily persuaded) and deposited in the woods. Back to work tomorrow; a morning surgery in Bognor. Now I'm off to check some wine samples. I wouldn't want to serve anything at the launch that I wouldn't drink myself, after all...

The NHS

2007-06-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

I had to mention it eventually. Here's a link from Dr Crippen's blog. Please, please read it. Then perhaps you'll understand the total, utter disaster this new training system has created:

http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2007/06/scum-of-british-medical-profession-name.html

As several of them say, what more could they have done to make themselves employable?

I was there, some years back, on the exam treadmill. Take one example - a part 1 exam (most postgraduate medical exams have 2 parts)

£2400 on courses, £600 on the exam.
Worked full time throughout revision (minimum 48h a week, often 56 or more.)

Days I wasn't working - 14 hours of study.
Days I was working - additional 6 hours of study on 8-10 hour day.
Three evenings out in seven months.

From the age of 24, this is what it was like. I'd already come through a school where we had exams at the end of every term, and 4 hours homework a night. I got through 5 years of medical school and God knows how many exams. I did housejobs of 90-110 hours a week. I did four? five? of these postgrad exams.

The best year was the year after my housejobs. I buggered off to New Zealand, then Australia to work. It was the longest period of my life, since the age of 7, without an exam.

But I came back, and the treadmill started up.

What happened to my teens? My twenties?

The best years of my life. So they say.

And for what? A nurse with 38 days training can prescribe the same drugs as me. A nurse with 60 days training can see patients in A&E and berate me for arrogance if I say I don't think she can work at the level I can. Those coming up behind me are being employed on their ability to fill in critical incident forms, not their experience in actually caring for people. And for the first time in my career I get hauled into a consultant's office and dressed down for immediately starting to resuscitate a patient without asking permission of the anaesthetist. Who was five years my junior, standing in petrified, paralysed horror staring at a non-breathing 35 year old woman, but when he complained the next day his feelings were deemed to be of more importance than my trying to save her life.

There are so many times when I think I don't want to do this any more.

It's a tightrope walk as it is; one slip and you're up before the GMC, splashed across the tabloids. The joy was in the moments of helping, of making people feel better, occasionally even saving a life. Of easing suffering. But it isn't like that any more. GP's are just like Tescos and should be opem 24 hours. Nurses and paramedics do a better job than a doctor with two decades of experience, they tell me. Because all doctors think they're God. Because all doctors are arrogant. Only in it for the money. Greedy. Selfish.

Tell me, would you stay in a job where that was what everyone thought of you?

Countdown continues...

2007-06-13T09:33:00.000-07:00

Lucy brought me a mole this morning. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt; it was uninjured and cold, and I wonder if someone poisoned it and she found it. Usually she eats everything she catches, but not this. I'd never seen a mole close up before. Such amazing fur, like heavy velvet. Lots of teeth. And those spade like hands, big enough to grip my finger. Six toes on each back foot. I suppose it had spoiled someone's lawn. I had a mole in the garden of my last house. The molehills were very useful - quantities of soft, fine soil perfect for potting on seedlings. I like to feel we worked in tandem, the mole and I. He ate the quantities of earthworms that I shovelled onto the garden from my compost heap, and in return he was a veritable John Innes.

48 hours to copy deadline on the magazine. Two more reviews in today but no sign of the publisher interview, the one I really need. At least I've never bitten my fingernails. I'd be down to my elbows by now. But the barcode arrived, which was quite a surprise. I already had my backup plan for a barcodeless magazine. Now I'm thinking we ought to have mugshots of the team by the door of the launch. There will be so many people there that I won't recognise (I hope. It might just be me and a bowl of twiglets). And I'm knackered. I want to crawl into bed right now, but there's just too much to do. So I'm mainlining caffeine, and waiting for something to happen...

Countdown day 43

2007-06-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

I've been a day late all week; was a bit of a shock to discover that today's Thursday, when I'd been so sure that yesterday was Tuesday. Anyway, having reoriented myself I spent the morning fielding phonecalls and emails about the magazine. There seems to be a bit of buzz starting - emails from interested publishers, and calls from two more reviewers who want to come on board. Four parcels of books, too. I should have done this years ago. Going to a bookshop has always been my equivalent of going to a dealer on a street corner, the growing excitement, the heady feeling of being surrounded by books, the rush as I take my choices to the till and they bag up these new-minted packages for me. Now it's like the dealer has started visiting me - for free!

Which of course adds a small problem. I then have to give these books away to reviewers. Particularly difficult today, when someone requested one of my favourites - On the Overgrown Path, from PS Publishing. It was about Janacek, and that sort of thing is always hard for me to resist; I've just also read Doubting Thomas, from Peter Owen Publishing, a superb novella about Caravaggio. Anyway, I parcelled up Overgrown Path and sent it off, and I expect I'll get over it eventually. Today's shiny new collection helps alleviate the pain.

Six days to the copy deadline, 43 days to the launch. Anxious? Me?

2007-05-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've just come across this site:

http://uk.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PublicHomeServlet

And that awful question rears its ugly head again - why did none of these kids hit the headlines like Madeleine McCann? Some of them are babies, for God's sake! But of course, they almost all fit the wrong demographic. Too poor, too ethnic, too unphotogenic. Perhaps their families didn't speak good enough English. Families who are sitting at home now, wondering why their child never got this much attention, and thinking that maybe, if they had, they might have been found.

Visit the site and weep. Because really, if something bad happens to you, it really helps if you have had some good photos taken first.

Bank holidays

2007-05-28T02:32:00.000-07:00

What is it about bank holidays this year? All they do is incite the worst weather. This is particularly on my mind as Lucy is sitting at my elbow, loudly demanding that I go out there and turn the water off. I don't know why my cats think that anything outside the house is within my control, but every time the weather's manky they follow me around for several hours, wailing, until they've checked every exit to make sure that the same weather exisists outside each one. (Remember The Door into Summer?) Only then will they settle down on the bed, casting darkling glances my way. Sometimes the provision of food, shelter, warmth, strokes and medical care just isn't enough, it seems.

The magazine is starting to look like a real magazine. I won't mention the friend who phoned to point out that some of the current proof is in Latin (go on, I'm sure you can work it out). I've only misspelt one person's name so far, but then Kay's blog made me a little nervous:
http://writingneuroses.blogspot.com/

Oh, and I've become an avid freecycler. Go to Yahoo groups and see if there's one in your area. It's amazing what people can find a use for and much better than all those trips to the tip.

Spring cleaning

2007-05-21T03:14:00.000-07:00

You're supposed to do it when the weather's good, I know. But most of this involves clearing out the contents of my hard drive, so I think I can be forgiven. I'm also scanning decades of photos onto disc, and wondering if photographic paper is recyclable. Probably not.

big fat fantasy in progress

2006-02-19T06:58:00.000-08:00

Hell, I'd blog more often if it didn't take me 10 minutes to log into the site.

So, the novel is pushing 150 000 words, but there's a heart-sinking amount of rewriting to do. I think I've got enough material now to complete book 2; book 3 is still a bit sketchy, but I think allowing myself more time for narrative, especially the description, myths and so on that everyone seems so keen on will shove quite a lot of stuff from book 2 to book 3 anyway. A late invention of another thread to add to the complexity has thrown the writing of book 2 a little. I'll have to get on and kill off a few characters because it's getting a bit crowded in there.

I've had better days

2005-11-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

There are times when life seems unable to resist the temptation to rise up and bite you. There I am, wobbling into freelance life, thinking I might just about be able to make enough money to pay the rent, and wham—

My blood test results come back, and I’ve got Graves disease again. I am the one person in fifty who gets a recurrence. Not odds you’d bet on. Or maybe you would.

I wouldn’t.

So, it’s back to the rounds of GP, specialist, treatment and lifelong medication. I know it’s just chance, but it still feels like punishment. I’d forgotten that bewildered feeling after the diagnosis, where you forget for a while, and life is ordinary, and then you remember and it feels like a dream but it wasn’t. It’s real.

And on the great scale of pathology, it’s not much to complain about.

And in a few weeks it will have sunk in, and it will be part of me, just another thing that I deal with. But just now it isn’t, and there’s nothing I can do but wait.

must try harder

2005-10-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, the day job is gone at last, and i've hurled myself out into the world of freelancing. This should in theory, give me a lot more time to write. At the moment it seems to be giving me a lot more time than I anticipated. fingers crossed that that's only first night nerves, but at least the freezer's full.

And it has helped the writing, currently at cruising altitude of 4000 words per day (wpd), and the story is growing in the way a good dtory does, with characters taking their lives into their own hands, and me just being the scribe. suddenly my life is full of people, and i don't even have to leave the house (saves on petrol and booze).

but I must blog a bit more. it'll give me something to look back on when I'm published, and want to reminisce about life as a struggling writer.

heeheehee