Jack Myers and Virtual Worlds

Another man who is unafraid to bang his own drum (see Wednesday) is Jack Myers.

A recent press release, in connection with his new book, describes Myers as editor and publisher of Jack Myers Media Business Report, the web site JackMyers.com, and MediaVillage.com. The latter is 'the online community for intelligent TV fans'.

His abbreviated c.v. tells us that Mr Myers was identified as one of the 1,000 Most Creative Individuals in the U.S by Who's Really Who and is the recipient of the George Foster Peabody Award; he has won the Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival, and has been nominated for both an Academy and an Emmy Award. Myers has consulted with more than 200 leading media companies, agencies and major global marketers on media and marketing trends.

More importantly, perhaps, the Myers Emotional Connections Research Studies, launched in 1999, are said to have emerged as state-of-the art standards for measuring audiences' emotional connections with media.

Now, if you've been reading the GOB for long, you begin to see how I might be interested. Myers has recognised a point often repeated here, to the point of tedium, namely that fiction and drama are all about creating emotion in the audience.

Moreover, Myers has recognised that the same is true of much else in the modern media, even when said media appear to be dealing with established fact. For example: watch any modern TV news bulletin in the UK, and what you see, as often as not, is not news as such, but some form of gossip or speculation deliberately dressed up in such a way as to arouse emotion. I doubt whether news bulletins anywhere else in the world are much different these days.

Even more to the point, Myers has picked up on the new phenomenon of virtual worlds, and the fascination which they hold for young people in particular. Do I need to say that fascination is an outcome of emotion? Wow, that was terrific! say the participants in, say, Secondlife. Wouldn't mind some more of that. This is an emotional reaction.

Arising out of his studies of emotion, Myers recently authored a book, in co-operation with Jerry Weinstein. Entitled Virtual Worlds: Rewiring Your Emotional Future, the book itself is interactive and 'virtual', in the sense that it allows readers to submit contributions to a 'reader-generated novel'; successful contributors may even take a part share in the royalties.

The book argues that 'Virtual Worlds and enhanced social networks allow people to explore and experience new universes, while expanding their emotional range and depth, changing the nature of communication, and creating different identities.'

This, I somewhat reluctantly agree, is true. I also agree with the authors' view that 'a growing number of young people are spending unprecedented amounts of time in a virtual existence. Virtual Worlds are becoming an embedded part of our culture and the implications for every aspect of society are unimaginable.'

Whether this is a healthy situation or not is open to question, and I for one have reservations about it. But even those who are violently opposed to these developments need to recognise that opponents aren't going to get very far by standing up and shouting, 'This ought to be stopped!'

For me, much the most interesting aspect of Jack Myers's numerous enterprises is his research into audience emotions. You can find the titles of some of his reports on his web site.

If you do click on the titles of these reports, you find, not surprisingly, that getting sight of his research findings costs money. For example, a copy of the Myers 2008 Emotional Connections Research Studies will cost you (or your company) $120,000.

Myers's press release states that Myers is a Board Member of the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University, and serves on the Dean's Advisory Board for the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University. This suggests that he is working with some pretty respectable academics.

All of which is fascinating to me. I have thought for at least forty years that there was considerable scope for linking up audiences to some form of data measurement device(s), and finding out what exactly happens to human beings, physiologically speaking, when they watch a deeply moving or exciting play or movie.

We already know some of this, from observation of our own reactions and those of other audience members. For example, in a suspense movie, people's hands sweat. In a comedy, people laugh, and rock backwards and forwards. In a tragedy, I have heard it said, a side to side movement can be observed in the audience.

Such physiological research can be supplemented with psychological research, through the use of questionnaires and interviews.

The holy grail of all this, of course, is to identify the triggers of emotion, so that various emotions can be produced pretty much at will. Find the answer to that, and you will make a fortune. Even better, or worse, depending on your point of view, those who control the levers of emotion can sweep themselves into positions of leadership and influence in politics, religion, and the arts. No trouble at all.

Don't we live in a wonderful world?

M.J. Rose's new book

You don't get anywhere in this business by being backward in coming forward. Hence I am not altogether surprised to see what the Mistress of Buzz and book marketing, M.J. Rose, has to say about her new novel.

What she says, basically, is that if you read her blog regularly, and absorb all the free info and help for writers that it contains, then the least you can do is go out and buy the book. Think of it as paying your dues.

This works out at roughly $20 a year, so I can't say that I disagree with her, but the blog is not called Buzz, Balls and Hype for nothing. And it's the balls bit I'm thinking of first.

Entitled The Reincarnationist, M.J.'s new book is suspense, takes place in NYC now and in 1884, and Rome now and 391 (AD). M.J. says she's really proud of this novel. It's her first BEA Buzz book, her first Booksense pick (for September), her first starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, her first review in Entertainment Weekly, and more to come according to emails she's had.

Oh yes, and there's a booktrailer done by Vidlit, an interview done by Expanded Books, and a podcast where Carol Memmot from USA Today interviews the author. Links to all these on the book's web site.

Those are the buzz and hype bits. A lesson in how to do it.

Something from the weekend

Phenix & Phenix is a firm of publishing publicists based in Austin, Texas. Their main web site contains some interesting information for published writers and for those who wannabe: they report, for instance, that their self-published client Sherrie Mathieson is about to published by Random House. Which is a nice encouraging story for first thing in the morning -- though note, please, that it is a non-fiction book. Ninety per cent of publishing is non-fiction, a statistic often overlooked amid all the razzmatazz.

More to the point, perhaps, Phenix and Phenix staff have just started a blog. This makes available further chunks of free and valuable information for writers. See, for example, the piece on how to get ink in a publishing trade journal; or how to prepare for a radio/TV interview.

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Fancy yourself as a graphic novelist? If so, go see what is on offer at Random House UK. Jonathan Cape, the Observer, and an outfit called Comica are putting up a prize of £1000 plus a full page in the Observer, and, presumably, an entree into the graphic-novel biz.

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Martin Goodman has thoughts on being reviewed, and much more, on his blog.

The reviewing policy on the GOB, by the way, is that I only review stuff that I can be reasonably enthusiastic about. Occasional exceptions are made for heavily hyped books which, imho, don't really deserve to be singled out for a big push, but have been, nevertheless.

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Linda Kelsey has some really interesting thoughts on how you not only have to write a book, but sing and dance for it as well.

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Puzzling, isn't it? C.S. Harris reflects on how she feels When Bad Things Happen to Good Writers. The reflections come in part one and part two. (Link from Chap O'Keefe n Misfit Lil.)

You enter this business at your own risk, folks. And nowadays you have no excuse for not knowing what you're letting yourself in for.

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Well, dammit, here's a pretty good offer. Novelist/playwright Susan Hill also runs a publishing company: Long Barn Books. The company's web site now offers a couple of blogs, and the new one contains information about how to submit a proposal for a book (The Quest, 28 August). Not many companies make it that easy. Agent not required. Non-fiction, on the whole, preferred.

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There's a lot to be said for niches these days. Find a niche market, write for it, collect books within that sub-genre, blog about it, and so forth. Either for fun or profit, or both.

One such niche is occupied by Paul Taylor's blog With Sword and Pen. This focuses on first edition and collectible books pertaining to the American Civil War.

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There are blogs, and blogs. Although I'm reluctant to give it publicity, here's one which rips off posts from other blogs (including one of mine), without credit, and uses them to encourage readers to click on the ads and links. (Tip-off from Debra Hamel.)

Technically, it seems, these things are known as spam blogs, or splogs. More on Wikipedia.

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Bat Segundo interviews an awful lot of writers, in more or less hour-long mp3 formats. Among the more interesting subjects recently are SF novelist William Gibson and the controversial date-rape theorist Katie Roiphe.

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Hotel St George Press is an unusual enterprise. It is is both an online, literary and arts quarterly and a new, experimental imprint of Brooklyn-based Akashic Books.

The quarterly features original fiction, artwork, short films, music, soundscapes, spoken word and secret histories; all of these occupy carefully designed rooms in an ever-expanding virtual hotel.

More recently, there are books. The first book, published in April,was not unreasonably by the Hotel St. George cofounder Aaron Petrovich: The Session. (Scroll down to the foot of the page.) This was was released in April and attracted good reviews. Now (well, October actually) there is The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales, by Alex Rose. Judging by the extract, this is an intriguing mixture of pseudo-science and well informed flights of imagination. Probably an acquired taste, but some people are certainly going to admire it.

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On Thursday nights, four English guys get together in the pub and, over a few beers, decide how the world really ought to be run if it was done on sensible lines. And they invent new products that people really do need but no one so far has had the wit to manufacture. Then they write to the good and the great and explain what's what. Then they publish the results. Allegedly.

See more on the Thursday Night web site. Dovegreyreader likes the book.

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Bear Parade, dedicated to non-profit literature, has just published Compassionate Moose, by Mazie Louise Montgomery.

This is another one which is a bit of an acquired taste, but Mazie has a voice all right. And just think: twenty years ago, the author of this book would have had to xerox a few copies, staple them together, and stand on the street corner, handing them out to people who were too shy to say no. Now she can get it on the web and weird guys in England can read it. And tell other people about it in India, and South Africa, and New Zealand. This is what's called progress. Don't underestimate it.

Compassionate Moose may not be the one which takes off and spreads faster than Ebola, but one day something will. From wholly outside the mainstream hit machine.

Pete n Di

Mrs GOB and I went to London last week -- a rare event. Having an hour to spare, we wandered through Kensington Gardens.

The Gardens are the site of two interesting memorials, of a sort. I suppose that top billing these days must go to the Princess Diana memorial fountain. You can see a photograph of part of it here.

Actually the memorial isn't so much a fountain, in the ordinary sense, as a water feature. It is positioned on a slight slope, and takes the form of an approximate circle of concrete -- but concrete tarted up to look like some kind of low-grade marble. A considerable volume of water rises from underground at the top of the circle, but doesn't shoot up into the air. Instead, it moves away sharply, both left and right, rippling over a variety of cunningly shaped ridges and hollows. Then, at the bottom, the two streams meet, and the water disappears again, into an underground drain.

The fountain is quite an intriguing piece of park architecture, but quite what it has to do with Princess Diana I really don't know. Comments about it being both fast and wet would, I suppose, be quite inappropriate.

As mentioned here a while back, there are already more than 200 books about Princess Di, so when is someone going to produce one about the fountain? Or did I miss it?

More important than such frippery, however, is the far older, and, in some quarters, far more famous, statue of Peter Pan. This was erected in the park, at the expense of Sir James Barrie, in 1912.

I have several times previously mentioned Sir James Barrie and his disturbing story about Peter Pan: notably when I agreed with the eminent critic Amanda Craig in describing it as 'terrifying'. The story emerged in several versions, early in the twentieth century, but it soon became a hugely successful stage play, with a prose version to match. The edition that I have is the Everyman edition of the version of 1911, which was originally published as Peter and Wendy.

Here, to be more forthcoming, is the full note of what I scribbled in the back of my copy of Peter Pan after I had finished reading it -- well, re-reading it -- perhaps ten years ago:

Terrifying. Appalling. It is the confusion of mother/wife role, in Wendy, which is so disturbing. The story does not so much reveal, as give a horrifying glimpse of, the author's dreadful confusion of mind. Painful to contemplate. It is the embodiment of the fear of maturity -- the dread of adult responsibility -- of having to take command of one's own life.

Not the best quote for a book cover, really, is it?

Anyway, from 1904 onwards Peter Pan was famous, and the Kensington Gardens statue was commissioned by Barrie from Sir George Frampton. It took a year to create, and was erected overnight, with no opening ceremony; it was said by the Times to a gift to the young children who played in the park -- no doubt carefully supervised by their nannies.

But just look at the bloody thing. I mean, it's all right as far as it goes. Quite charmingly done. But what the hell are we to make of it -- and of the subject's progenitor?

Official sources tell us that the topmost figure of Peter himself was modelled -- loosely -- upon some photographs of six-year-old Michael Llewellyn Davies, taken by Barrie, with the boy wearing an outfit which apparently represented the author's 'ideal vision' of his character.

But, I repeat, just look at it. The boy is wearing a dress for a start. Did you ever see anything more androgynous in your life? (And it is traditional, please remember, for an actress to play the part of Pan on stage.)

The base is populated by quite a number of figures and animals. The animals are mostly unexceptionable rabbits, and squirrels, with a few mice and snails. The figures are said to be fairies, and indeed they obviously are. But am I alone in finding their wings much more insectivorous than is usually the case, and consequently slightly sinister? They remind me of flying ants -- not my favourite creature.

What I found really worrying, however, was the topmost figure, the one whose head reaches almost to Peter's knees. This figure is larger than the others, and although identified as a fairy in an authoritative source, you could certainly be forgiven for mistaking her as human.

In either case, what in the world is she doing? She appears to be staring up Peter's skirt, as if anxious to ascertain whether he is wearing any knickers; and, whether he is or is not, she appears keen to identify his gender. As well she might.

Perhaps I am taking this all too seriously. The statue is probably harmless enough. And judging by the rubbed areas, where many generations of hot little hands have stroked the bunny rabbits' heads, I dare say that most children emerge from viewing the thing without any great harm done.

But I do wonder about the sculptor, Sir George Frampton. Was he just a bit of a bumbler, with a talent for sculpture, who produced the Pan statue, pretty much to order, in return for a fee? Or was he, as at least seems possible, a much more thoughtful man, possessed of a keen insight into Barrie's personality? And perhaps, just perhaps, the man had a sense of humour.

Note to self: read him up. But this might prove difficult, I find. A man at Leeds has done a PhD thesis on him, but there's no full-length biography.

A handy starting point for Pan studies in general is the wonderful Terri Windling's essay, which has a useful bibliography at the end.

Everybody's at it

The Guardian (link from booktrade.info) reports (as I imagine do most other papers) that quite a lot of Brits want to be writers. Well, hell, it looks so easy, doesn't it? And they all make so much money.

YouGov, a well known opinion-sampling agency, asked 2461 people about their ambitions in life. Almost 10% of Britons aspire to being an author, followed by sports personality, pilot, astronaut and event organiser on the list of most coveted jobs. (Event organiser?)

More women than men yearn to write, while those aged between 35 and 50, and those over 50, were most likely to dream about getting published.

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We were talking about westerns last week, and if you're interested you might like to look at Saddlebums, a new website dedicated to that genre. Opening gunshots: an interview with Brian Garfield.

My favourite quote: 'I don’t agree with those who say, “Isn’t it terrible what Hollywood did to your book.” Hollywood hasn’t done anything to my books – the books are right over here on the shelf, untouched.'

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Mark Watson is reportedly a well known UK comedian, though he wasn't known to me until he appeared as the author of A Light-hearted Look at Murder. The publisher is Chatto, which normally means literary.

Watson is a man, I now learn, who made a bit of a name for himself by performing stand-up comedy for 24 hours non-stop, at Edinburgh. Then he came back the next year and did 36 hours.

Not surprisingly, a man like that has been getting some coverage for his book. One reader tells me, however, that he found it disappointing. A case of don't give up the night job? The Times, however, thinks it's 'Packed with brilliant observations and sharp one-liners'. See what you think.

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In the US, Little Brown are publishing a debut book by Valerie Trueblood, a woman of sixty. Hope for the oldies yet, it seems. Seven Loves is the story of the seven loves in one woman's life. It moves back and forth in time, from her childhood to her eighth decade, and it 'weaves together the strands of an ordinary life made extraordinary by the complex passions that drive it.' And all like that.

Not for me (it looks a bit lit'ry, for one thing), but mature ladies might be pleased if you bought it for them. And it never hurts to make a mature lady happy, believe me. They are more grateful than most.

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The Book Depository has a new look.

Personally, I am always less than happy with front pages which are packed with information; they look overcrowded to my eye. But if I knew anything I would have got rich in the dot.com era.

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Americans are at risk of libel too. And even if they're bloggers. One case getting some airing currently is summarised on Galleycat. Some theorists hold that it's a publicity stunt, but I bet it doesn't feel that way to the blogger concerned.

So far, I have had only one mauvais quart d'heure with a lawyer, and I must say that I would prefer, on the whole, by and large, taking one thing with another, not to have any more.

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Question: What's the top-selling sex manual on Abebooks this year? Answer, a Christian guide to 'new' approaches to sexual intimacy in marriage. 'New' in this case means 1981, when the book was first published.

Also in the top ten are four Taoist books. Secrets of the East or something. Why is abroad always racier than home?

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The Everyman's Library is republishing (UK and US) some of Dashiell Hammett, with an introduction by James Ellroy.

Hammett is a famous name in crime fiction, but I never quite got on with him myself. Several of his novels were filmed, notably The Maltese Falcon, but Red Harvest I found ridiculous, and I came to the conclusion that he owed at least some of his fame to mixing with the right set. He was sort of married to the playwright Lillian Hellman, which can't have done any harm.

However, Hammett did behave bravely and honourably in standing up to McCarthy. He refused to betray his friends -- see Forster on that -- which got him blacklisted.

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According to the web sites which measure these things (don't ask me how), about 5 per cent of readers of this blog are based in India. And such readers might well be interested in a new print on demand service: Cinnamon Teal.

India has 18 officially recognized languages, hundreds of dialects and sub-languages, and many cultural differences and varying ideologies. All of which gives special relevance to the concept of print on demand. Of course, Cinnamon Teal offers the same service to those outside India, since most projects can be handled over the net. The company claims to offer a service similar to that of Lulu.com, but significantly cheaper.

Cinnamon Teal, by the way, is a division of the online bookstore Dogears Etc.

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You may perhaps have noticed a comment from Siobhan Curham the other day. Siobhan is a writer whose first four books were published by mainstream publishers, Random House and Hodder, but now finds herself reduced (or happily released?) to publishing her own. She has a web site where you can read all about it.

Denise Mina: The Field of Blood

Denise Mina's The Field of Blood is as impressive a novel as I've read in some time. It is not always, however, a lot of fun to read. And it is saved from being just another unpleasant slice of life by the fact that it is a crime novel: this gives the book structure, and purpose, and renders it ultimately satisfying. The literary version of the same material would be just plain distasteful.

The Field of Blood was published in 2004, being by my count the author's fifth novel. It was identified on publication as the first in a series, and book two (The Dead Hour) came out in 2006, while Slip of the Knife has just appeared.

The principal character in Field of Blood, and in the series, is an overweight young woman called Paddy Meehan. When we first meet her it is 1981, and she is eighteen years old, working as a copy boy (sic) on a Glasgow newspaper. She still lives with her family, and has ambitions to be a journalist.

However, this is Glasgow, and it's 1981, a time and place in which sexism and religious bigotry were the order of the day. Furthermore, Paddy comes from a working-class Catholic family. The family has no expectations of her, other than that she will marry her fiance, Sean, and have children just like any other woman. And the newspaper is staffed exclusively by hard-drinking men who regard her as part of the furniture.

The opening chapter of the book describes the murder of a child, by two other children. This fictional crime is clearly based on a real-life crime in Liverpool, which you can read all about if you've the stomach for it. My stomach is medium strong, but I didn't find this happy reading, and I wasn't sure that I wanted to continue with the book. However, continue I did, and it pretty soon had me gripped tight.

Paddy, of course, begins to investigate the murder, prompted in part by the fact that one of the children accused of the crime is related to her fiance. In a complicated course of events, she falls out comprehensively with her family (and is sent to Coventry by them as a result), gets herself unengaged, loses her virginity, and very nearly gets herself killed.

She doesn't lose her Catholic faith, but that's only because she lost it years earlier, before her first communion. She goes to church to please her mother, who goes to church to please her husband, who goes to church to set a good example to his children.

Side by side with the story of fat Paddy Meehan, the teenage girl, Denise Mina tells us the story of real-life Paddy Meehan, a professional criminal who was nicely fitted up by the police for a murder that he did not commit. Eventually, after some crusading journalism and a 1976 book by Ludovic Kennedy, Meehan's conviction was overturned. Mina interviewed him when she was a law student.

As an evocation of time, place, and atmosphere, this book is, I am sure, the equal of any Booker shortlisted book, but it is also, fortunately, much more. Because it's a crime novel we have a good strong narrative thread, and we are spared the arty-farty fancypants bullshit.

We learn, of course, that children do not commit systematic, deliberate, and brutal murder without having first had some very nasty things done to them. The cycle, as is now well understood, is self-perpetuating.

Strongly recommended, but it's dark stuff. It remains to be seen how the series develops, but I will certainly be having a look in due course.

More on the author's web site.

A summer of smart publicity

Ian Rankin has been awfully busy this summer, and has generated lots of newspaper inches by a few well timed and well placed remarks. The cleverest thing about this personal drum-beating is that it all seems, superficially, to be about other people. But note, if you will, that I. Rankin Esquire, creator of Rebus, gets lots of mentions along the way.

First there was the Val McDermid business, noted here on Sunday. Wouldn't surprise me if Ian and Val cooked that one up over a couple of drinks.

Then there was his statement, made to an audience of 600 at the Edinburgh book festival, that his wife had seen J.K. Rowling back where she started out, namely, scribbling furiously on the text of a new novel in an Edinburgh coffee house. That one worked wonderfully well. See for instance, the Sunday Times.

All of that was smart enough. But hell, it doesn't stop there. The Rowling story turned out to be a double whammy.

When contacted by the Guardian, for further details of the J.K. goes in for crime story, Rankin revealed that he had made the whole thing up. And, once again, the headline is about Rowling, catching everyone's eye. But the picture is of Rankin. (Link from the Bookseller.)

By the way, I got thumped by a feminist commenter last week, for referring to Val McDermid as a big, heavy, butch-looking lesbian, all of which she undeniably is. 'I notice you don't comment on Rankin's looks,' said LizH, with an audible sniff, before flouncing off to check up on some other sexist blogger.

Well, OK, since then I've done some research. And I can now reveal (exclusively) that Ian Rankin is actually an albino dwarf. Three foot six in his Addabit shoes (as endorsed by Tom Cruise). Not many people know that.

Yes, I do realise that he doesn't look like an albino dwarf, in his newspaper pictures. That's because he uses a body double for his publicity photos and public appearances. You would too, if you had to stand on a box and buy several items from Max Factor every time you wanted to make a speech.

The joy of subsidy and other myths

You may have gathered that I do not approve of the subsidy of the arts from public funds. It's not a simple matter, but basically that's my view. Also, I am usually unimpressed by literary reputation.

It is always, I suppose, heartwarming to find people who agree with me; but it is also distressing, frankly (especially for a sensitive chap such as myself, who has led a very sheltered life), to discover the snarling, rabid hatred with which some people despise that which I merely (in my mild-mannered way) dislike.

These thoughts are prompted by a visit to The Lumber Room, where Elberry has posted a piece about literary fame. I particularly like the story about Yeats's response to being told, at four o'clock in the morning, that he'd won the Nobel prize: he opened one eye and said, 'How much?'

But what really catches the eye in The Lumber Room is the comment from one gravely disillusioned Canadian, which runs as follows:

Right on the mark. Living in Canada, where there has never been such an industry in the government support of “approved” fiction writers, I can assure you that the decision making process on all these awards is the same: it is an incestuous butt-fuck procedure.

The group that votes are always the same who have a personal stake in the determined “short list.” Either government supported “businesses” who do no real business, or a certain crew who give or are given government grants. It is all very disappointing.

I will give you an example of the government slash publishing industry in Canada. A few years ago, there was a large book selling chain, by the name of Sandpiper Books. Sandpiper was instrumental in the giving of numerous awards during the 1990s. Sandpiper also received most of its stock from two or three government sponsored publishing houses, one being Coach Hill Press, which continues to operate.

Sandpiper had a nice deal with Coach Hill. Coach Hill provided Sandpiper its stock absolutely free–accepting a cut of the sales, if a book actually sold. If a book did not, then it was returned to Coach Hill with no penalty. This remarkable financial situation was managed because Coach Hill Press received $10 million yearly from
the government to support “Canadian Literature.”

This was nice for selected, approved writers of the Canadian establishment. It appeared, for the general public, that their books were important, as they were on the shelves of dozens of stores across the country. The writers could then pat themselves on the back, gather for important readings and apply for their grants, all with the appearance of being part of the business community.

In 1999 the government pulled three quarters of Coach Hill’s funding. Coach Hill, in turn, could not provide the considerable number of books Sandpiper needed to fill their shelves. Sandpiper went out of business within a few months.

It’s all crap. Every bit of it.

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Wanna make a bit of a splash? Get your name in the papers? Sell books? If so, make a provocative statement in a public place on a slow day for news, and the papers will love you for ever. Run with it for weeks, they will.

Example: Ian Rankin (creator of Inspector Rebus) did his best to generate copy with a statement made in an interview last year that women crime writers in general, and lesbians in particular, are more bloodthirsty than men.

'The people writing the most graphic novels today are women,' said Rankin. 'They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting.'

No one, it seems, took a lot of notice at the time, but Val McDermid is no sort of fool. Come her appearance at the Edinburgh book festival, she trotted out the Rankin quote and beat him up for it. Result: lots of coverage.

I don't wish to be rude or sexist, but McDermid herself is a big, heavy, butch-looking lesbian, as well as a very successful crime writer. If you think that description is rude, all I can say is that (a) she's made no secret of being a lesbian, and (b) I saw her on telly the other night, and she is big, heavy and butch-looking. I sure as hell wouldn't want to annoy her in a dark alley. But she is dead right, of course, when she says that Rankin is talking 'arrant nonsense'.

Try the Guardian. And some comments on the Guardian blog. Link from booktrade.info.

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June Austin is the author of Genesis of Man, a self-published non-fiction book mentioned here a while back, and she has been spending what seems like a huge amount of time and energy marketing her book. This is the only way, one gathers, to achieve significant sales, though unfortunately the expenditure of time and effort does not guarantee significant sales.

Anyway, June has been slogging away. Like any well organised author, she has her own web site, where you can learn more about her. She works through Authors On-line, which is a provider of services for self-publishers on a POD basis.

June's achievements will sound modest enough compared to those of any even halfway competent trade publisher, but will doubtless make a big difference to her sales. She has managed to persuade book distributors Gardners to handle her book on a sale or return basis, and she has had several reviews in magazines such as Nexus (circulation 100,000). The Self-Publishing Magazine has not only reviewed her, but asked her to write an article for them about how she operates.

How she operates, by the way, involves working her way through a list of Waterstone's and Borders shops, ringing them up, and asking them to stock her book. So far, 1 in 5 of the shops has agreed, and she has been asked to do signings and/or talks in two of them. She plans to start contacting universities shortly.

As I say, time and energy.

The book, by the way, is a sort of antidote to Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion.

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The BBC reports that staff in an Australian bookshop failed to recognise Stephen King, and when he started to sign copies of his books thought that he was a vandal, defacing the stock.

Well, hey, that's understandable, isn't it? Could happen to anyone. King is only just about the world's biggest-selling author. (Link from Publishers Lunch.) You and I, if we'd seen him at it, we would probably have thought he was just another four-eyed git too.

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CreateSpace.com, an arm of Amazon.com, has announced the launch of a new online Books on Demand service. The company is no longer charging setup fees for books, audio CDs and DVDs. As a result, 'Authors, filmmakers and musicians can now offer their works to millions of customers on Amazon.com, CreateSpace.com and via their own free customizable eStore without any inventory, setup fees or minimum orders.'

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Publishers Lunch tells us that a publisher has discovered the wheel.

In a letter to agents and authors, Random House Audio Group publisher Madeline McIntosh has put forward the amazing idea that digital rights management systems are no help to anyone and won't work anyway.

Now where have I heard that before?

More short reviews

Martin Rundkvist: Scholarly Journals between the Past and the Future

Academia is pretty big business these days. There are many more people earning their living as lecturers and professors than there ever have been before, and they all prosper according to the extent to which they publish the results of their 'original research'.

Sorry. Excuse my absence for the last five minutes, but I had to gather myself together after laughing uncontrollably. Tears dripped on to the keyboard and caused a temporary short.

Where was I? Oh yes, talking about the need to publish research. Yes, you see, academics need to write 'papers', of one sort or another, and get them published, preferably in reputable journals which are 'refereed' (as it's called) by world-class performers in that particular field of enquiry, such as physics or economics. The more papers they write, the more likely they are to get promoted, and the more likely their universities are to become prestigious, and hence rich and powerful.

You may think that's a crude overstatement but it ain't. Here in England, academics, and their departments, are actually subjected to periodic assessment, on a points-scoring basis. Money is handed out accordingly. If you haven't published much, your career withers and dies, your head of department will hate you, other departments will talk about closing you down and taking all your student places and badly used resources for their own excellent purposes.... And so forth.

What fun it all is. Hence it has been known for decades that academics need journals. Robert Maxwell was the first to recognise, at least forty years ago, that there was a market here. So he created lots of new academic journals, through his firm Pergamon Press. Academics insisted that their libraries should stock them, naturally. And then Cap'n Bob put the price up. And up. And up. And up. And sued anyone who objected for libel.

Which brings us to the collection of papers which Martin Rundkvist has edited, Scholarly Journals between the Past and the Future (ISBN 978-91-7402-368-8; and ISSN 0348-1433). This is a collection of papers delivered at a conference at the premises of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters and Antiquities in April 2006.

The main theme of this collection is the change, or potential change, from paper to online publishing. This has, as you will appreciate, substantial implications, not least for the publishers of paper journals. The publishers -- some of them -- have been making very juicy profits here for decades, and now it looks as if it might all go out of the window.

There are also massive implications for librarians. If everything, or even major chunks of it, is made available online, there will no longer be a need for miles and miles of shelving, as the years of thick, heavy volumes accumulate. Those who make a penny or two from binding 12 monthly issues into one volume will also lose out. And so on.

My guess is that we will move steadily towards the online model, and a damn good thing too. But whatever happens it will be necessary to maintain 'standards'. In other words, even an online journal will still need to be refereed by leaders in the field. Otherwise how will anyone know which journals are prestigious, and which researchers deserve to be given the most money to go on producing more and more papers, and pounding out research and...

What's that? Teaching. Oh yes. Somebody does some teaching. Somewhere. Can't immediately think who, but there must be a few grad students giving lectures. I think. Somewhere. Ask the Bursar.

Jim Kelly: The Skeleton Man

Jim Kelly first turned up about five years ago with The Water Clock, a crime novel which was reviewed here on 4 May 2004. I see that I also covered his second, The Fire Baby, on 11 January 2005. Another book, The Coldest Blood, won the CWA Bodies in the Library Dagger, and The Skeleton Man is actually Kelly's fifth. All of these books are set in the same place and feature the same detective.

The setting is the Fen country in the east of England. This is territory that I know well, but I can't say that I like it much. It is flat country, much of it reclaimed from the sea: treeless, featureless, and to my eye sinister. A ten-foot mound is a hill, and likely to be the site of a church. Houses are few, the people inbred and suspicious. Much of the land is below sea-level, and held back by inadequate defences (a bit like New Orleans); and even if you can't see it you are conscious (well I am, anyway), of the sea's presence over the horizon. As often as not the sea, when you do see it, is steely-grey and malevolent, like some cruel monster, just waiting to take back what it owns. (Last major flood: 1953).

Kelly's detective is a journalist, Philip Dryden, who comes complete with a wife in a wheelchair and a taxi driver as his Watson.

Right up my street then. In a way. But for the first 80 pages or so I wondered if Kelly was having an off day, because it was all a bit pedestrian and, frankly, dull. But then things perked up markedly, and from then on I had no complaints. The ending strains the old credulity a bit -- but hey, the main man's a journalist, right? And we all know that journalists will do anything for a story.

English crime fiction of a high order. And Kelly has some competition, because Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham set books in this sort of area.

This is a very nicely printed book, by the way. Royal octavo, 13.5/16 pt Garamond.

James Aach: Rad Decision

These are supposed to be short reviews, and we're not doing very well so far, so let's do better.

Rad Decision is a novel written by an author who worked in the US nuclear-power industry for twenty years, and it's about -- naturally -- espionage and disaster in the real world of atomic energy.

If you've got an uncle or a grandad who's a retired engineer, and doesn't read novels because they're arty-farty and time-wasting, then this might be just the thing for his birthday present. More details on the book's web site.

Rosemary Ingham: Where the Truth Lies

Hmm. Not sure that I approve of this one, in principle.

The problem is, you see, that I have always considered it bad policy to write a novel about an institution in which you have yourself spent time. Yes, yes, I know the old adage about 'Write what you know'. But I have always taken the view that it's much better -- not to mention safer -- to write pure fiction, if necessary doing lots of research.

The danger lies, you see, in our old friend the law of libel. I don't want to tempt fate, but it says on the dust jacket of this one (a Macmillan New Writing book, by the way) that Rosemary Ingham, now retired, was formerly the Head of an English comprehensive school (= high school, for Americans). And what's her novel about? It's about the head of a comprehensive school.

Isabel Lincoln, single parent of teenage children, has a tough job running a London comprehensive. Her Deputy may be plotting against her. Her Second Deputy shares her bed. And then there are problems with teenage girls...

All very skilful and interesting I dare say. An intriguing exploration of truth and falsehood, professional conflicts, and a lot more. But the modus operandi makes me nervous. No matter how carefully you avoid (you hope) describing real people, by changing their age, hair colour, gender, sexual orientation, people who knew you will still say: Oh yes, that's really a portrait of old Bloggins.

And if you make old Bloggins a villain, when in real life he was a pussy cat.... It's far worse. All one can depend upon, or hope for, is that Bloggins may not recognise himself.

The English playwright Ben Travers only once portrayed a real person in his plays -- an ex-Army man, Colonel (we'll call him) Smithers -- and it troubled his conscience. One day Travers was out walking and he saw the Colonel approaching him. His heart sank, especially when the Colonel demanded a word.

'Now look here, Travers,' spluttered the Colonel, 'I've seen that new play of yours, and I must say I take exception to it. Anyone can see that the military chappie in your play is based on Major Robertson, down the road, and I think that's going too far. Don't do it again.'

Travers promised, on his honour, that he never would.

Sheikh it about

Lori at Bonusbooks has been keeping an eye on the cowardy-custard behaviour of Cambridge University Press, mentioned here recently.

CUP, you will recall, pulped a book, apologised, and paid over some money. Why? Because a Saudi billionaire threatened to sue the arse off them via England's libel laws.

Not surprisingly, this has attracted some attention worldwide. Latest comment appears in the Weekly Standard. This retells the story, and quotes the two authors of Alms for Jihad, the book which has generated the row.

The book's authors are Americans, and one of them points out that 'the British and American libel laws are as different as night and day.'

The Weekly Standard's article also looks back at similar cases involving this same Sheikh of Araby. There are, apparently, at least 36 of them. Either this man is much maligned, and the innocent victim of a hate campaign, or else he's got something to hide. Um... Scratches head and thinks hard. Which could it be?

There is further discussion of this worrying situation on Hot Air. And there is also a really intriguing right-wing view of the affair on Human Events, which describes itself as 'Leading the [US] Conservative Movement since 1944'. The author of the article is a Mr McCarthy. No, you mustn't laugh.

Well, all I can say is that things have come to a pretty pass if the Conservative right-wing finds itself obliged to defend the liberal press establishment. In this case, the argument seems to be that the bastards don't deserve to be defended, really, but a chap with principles has to make certain things clear. And the conclusion?

It is crucially important to our development of a sound national counterterrorism policy that good-faith journalists are not silenced by Saudi intimidation. American courts ought to crack down on Mahfouz’s pettifoggery and make him feel the consequences of his litigiousness.... Moreover, the current administration or the next one, regardless of party, should be diplomatically pressing the Saudis to desist from, and the Brits to bar libel tourism directed at, American journalists.

Whether or not the American media deserve such protections, the American people surely do.

As a final comment, perhaps it's worth mentioning that those who (ab)use the UK libel laws on a regular and persistent basis, mainly to cover up things they don't want anyone to know, eventually discover that the effect is quite the reverse. Example: Robert Maxwell, a heavyweight bully who distributed writs at the least provocation. A few years of that, and people twig what is going on. What is more, they begin to poke around in your affairs even more intrusively. The outcome? Wasn't there something about a yacht?

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The Creative Commons blog alerts me to a new site where you can find short stories, and more, published under a Creative Commons licence. Titled Ten Car Train, the web site's mission statement tells readers that 'You should read these pieces in their entirety while at work or when someone is paying you to do something else.'

So far so good. However.... It seems that the web site's offerings are provided by a group of former MFA students, which may be a slight drawback, and I can see no immediate way for anyone else to post stuff there.

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Edmond Clay, author of the Eros and Psyche dialogue, points out to me a poem about the English language. Several sources on the web; here's one from Humble Apostrophe, a site which also has all sorts of other stuff about the language.

The poem is modestly amusing, but would be best employed, I think, as an aid to those who teach English as a foreign language.

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By the way, Keith Chapman aka Chap O'Keefe, the author of Misfit Lil, reviewed here Wednesday, points me to a few interesting bits and pieces.

Coincidentally to my piece about The New Intimacy, writer Candice Proctor/C. S. Harris has run a couple of posts on her blog: 'Are Book Trailers the New Blog?' (1 August) and 'Book Videos, Part Two' (2 August).

Keith also liked the Newsweek piece about Elmore Leonard, and his forthcoming Ten Rules of Writing, which should indeed be a fun read. Newsweek's favourite among the rules was: 'If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.'

Newsweek also went on to give Leonard's selection for 'My five most important books'. Among them was For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Keith Chapman adds that aspects of his latest Misfit Lil story, Misfit Lil Fights Back, were also inspired by Hemingway, in his case the famous short story The Killers; this was filmed in 1965 starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and Ronald Reagan.

Hemingway (wherever he is) and movie buffs won't recognize the characters or the setting in Keith's western, but some points of the plot situation confronting the unorthodox Miss Lilian Goodnight may be familiar.

For those who want to learn more about the Robert Hale western series, including info on the cover designs, there's an online bi-monthly magazine, Black Horse Extra. Try the Hoofprints section.