Thursday roundup

Let us see if we can provide a number of links and pieces of information without getting distracted into long discussions.

Jason Sandford is trying to trace a lost poem.

Bearparade has published The Living and the Dead by Noah Cicero, whose last book, Burning Babies, was reviewed here about a year ago.

The Looking Glass Wars, a story about Alyss of Wonderland, is now out in the US and being heavily pushed by Penguin, who have given it its own fancy web site.

Nicholas Clee, former editor of the UK Bookseller, and Hot Type columnist in the Times, has started a blog about cooking.

Tonto Press is inviting submissions for a new short-story anthology.

Danielle Steel says that she's doing 'more commercial things now', including offering a new perfume called Danielle. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)

There's a new imprint called Quiver, which offers books for for couples wanting to take their sex lives to the next level.

The new BBC TV series Robin Hood is turning out to be a disappointment, I fear, but if you're up for a Robin Hood novel then Andrew Fish has a brand-new one for you: Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow.

Econometric forecasting can help you to calculate the publication date of your as-yet-unagented novel.

Screenwriting guru Robert McKee is going to be in London again: 10-12 November; after Tel Aviv and before Toronto.

Don Swaim has lots and lots of audio interviews with writers; but you need Real Player, a program which in the past attracted a great deal of criticism. (Link from Fancyclown, who has just moved from his old place on Blogspot, which, he says, no one ever looked at.)

Should you have an MFA degree -- you lucky thing, you -- there's a conference for you, this very weekend, in New York City.

Should you be short of stuff to read, the Top Author Blogs site has a list of blogs by people who write.

Speaking of author blogs, David Salvage is a highbrow novelist and also a psychiatrist, and he has a blog too.

Merisi has views (and pictures from Vienna) on the question of writers in coffee shops; and she points out that, in a New York Times article (you have to register), the Starbucks chain says that it might get into the business of publishing new authors.

Insofar as there is any serious money in publishing, it's made out of textbooks and other boring bits; and the Sunday Times describes just how valuable such publishing companies can be.

Sacha Baron Cohen has written a book about Kazakhstan, but American publishers are terrified of its rude pictures. (Link from booktrade.info.)

Abebooks has news of a haunted bookshop. Ooer missus.

'Banned in Boston' used to be a great line for selling a book, and now it's Banned by Borders. Aury Wallington is a former Sex and the City writer, and her novel Pop is frowned on in some quarters, because, for a Young Adult book, it's a bit too, um -- aw gee this is so embarrassing -- explicit. OK? There, I said it. Lots of blogger comment, e.g. on Bookslut and Galleycat.

One way to write a poem painlessly is to do a search on Allmusic, as Martin Rundkvist did, and claim the result as your own.

Ian Brotherhood's hard-edged debut novel, Bulletproof Suzy, was inspired by a piece of Glasgow graffiti. A launch party takes place on Friday 27 October 2006 at 6 p.m. at Waterstones (formerly Ottakars), Buchanan Galleries, Buchanan Street, Glasgow. Firearms must be left at the door.

Robin Tamblyn was mis-named here as Russ Tamblyn a while back (must be a name from my distant past), but he's the author of King of Hollywood, a 'darkly comic tale of a gay Hollywood player's rise - and fall - from grace.'

Monsignor Quixote is a newish blog, described as 'A blog of UK literary news, aimed at film & television producers and journalists. Round up of relevant news from publishing industry and exclusives from UK publishers, agents and authors.' Definitely one to keep an eye on if you are aiming at the UK market.

Publishers Lunch reports that world rights to Teri Woods's originally self-published (1999) True to the Game, plus two sequels and two stand-alone street novels, have been sold to Karen Thomas at Warner, in a major deal, by Marc Gerald at The Agency Group. Decoded: 'major deal' means a sum in excess of $500,000.

Andrew O'Hara, of the Jimston Journal, points out that Flickr, a site for photographers, enables the use of a variety of Creative Commons licences.

You may be surprised to know that some people will pay $8,000 for a Stephen King book.

Ellen Simonetti is a former airline flight attendant, and she has just self-published Diary of a Dysfunctional Flight Attendant: The Queen of Sky Blog, and it looks like a lot of fun. It's fiction, by the way. Go to her blog for details. And don't miss the 'inappropriate' pictures that got her fired. And you can even listen to the phone call of her supervisor firing her. Now that, you have to admit, is pretty damn cool. I think this lady could go places.

Last: A commenter on yesterday's post refers us to a Washington Post review of UK journalist Eve Pollard's new novel, Jack's Widow. This review nicely illustrates the fact that not every reviewer is familiar with the conventions of the alternative-history genre. Furthermore, when such a novel features a character whom the reviewer revered in real life, he can get quite sniffy. Eve Pollard, I suspect, is tough enough to survive. In fact, I think Patrick Anderson had better avoid the combination of dark alley + Big Evie.