Recession?

Well, there is one, and we've done our utmost to succeed in the task of producing imaginative, different, and exciting books. Looks like up to end September 08 we succeeded.

Another profitable year, our accountant told me today. Turnover good, as high as last year (yes, you'll have to sneak a look at the records at Companies House to find out - it's a really good result for a small company but not the kind of thing that makes the front pages of the financial press). So I hope all you booksellers out there listen up and order more Marion Boyars books - front list AND back list. They are easy to sell - maybe because they are not genre books, and thus are desirable. Go booksellers - to your ordering stations!

Baffled

I'll admit it, today I am absolutely floored by the value systems used by the mighty in this world. We're supposed to admire Quercus for creating some best sellers, while not being able to pay their authors, and I see mention of them going back to investors for more money while spending huge sums of Stieg Larsson marketing. And incidentally, his partner of many years is not benefitting from his fame either, as his children refuse to acknowledge her needs. And our politicians are busy claiming for duck ponds and moats, and apparently are on suicide watch as their guilt surfaces - a wee bit too late.

One of the good chains is on its knees, and Books Etc in particular has always been good at supporting titles from independent presses, and so we have one large quality chain left. There is no way that all the good books to be published can be promoted in one chain, and yet there is no other way to sell any quantity of books.

We're enjoying fabulous publicity - Daily Mail and Evening Standard books of the week, Lettice Wilkinson of Charity Shopping will be on Robert Elms next week, and yet you try getting books into shops ahead of this publicity. It's not possible to do it. No. Or rather a deafening silence from the over worked key buyers. It's a real shame, and I think my idea of getting the large presses in the UK to buy Borders is not a bad one. At least the publishers would then have an interest in bookshops, and make sure, with sound editorial values, that good books got to be seen by the public, who, luckily, still love books. As we do here.

DAILY MAIL HEALTH BOOK OF THE WEEK!

Wow - we have a HEALTH BOOK OF THE WEEK in the Daily Mail as of 12th May! The choice and review is by a doctor, no less than Dr Thomas Stuttaford, the former Conservative MP for Norwich South. Maybe he is a friend of Victoria Cator, who is one of the cooking duo Victoria & Lucinda, of Flavour of the Month, published by us last summer, and who also hails from Norwich.

Anyway, here is the glorious review by Dr Stuttaford, who is also pictured in the Mail - he looks like just the kind of chap you would want for your family GP. And no, that's not him on the blog - that's our author Rosy Barnes, who is also in the news at the moment. Although I am sure that Rosy would have made a lovely, symapthetic doctor if she had not developed an interest in experimental drama, art and literature which seems to have rather diverted her career away from medicine or anything else sensible (next thing she will decide she wants to be a publisher - the least sensible thing of all...).

I can affirm that all of us in this office followed the advice of Dr Carole Hungerford, our author of THE GOOD BODY GUIDE, while editing and after. So we snack on fruit and dates in this office, take vitamins and we're actually all pretty healthy. So it works - buy the book on amazon or via our own web site, using secure PayPal which takes all credit cards. It's a bargain of a health book, and you will not regret it.

DAILY MAIL HEALTH BOOK OF THE WEEK
'Orthodox doctors and their patients will have few worries about accepting her general advice on diet. Those who have fallen prey to illness may need the support of wise words of doctors from Harvard, the BMA, or the Royal Society of Medicine. If, however, the reader is keen to keep out of the doctor's surgery and hospital, they could follow this lifestyle plan.' Daily Mail Dr Thomas Stuttaford, former Conservative MP for Norwich South and doctor for over 40 years

And other news - coming up on June 20th - author of Sadomasochism for Accountants will be taking part in an event for debut authors - Borders Book Festival, Melrose, Scotland, Harmony Marquee, Saturday 20th June at 3.30pm. All you Scottish literary types - get yourselves over there and learn how to break into the book shops with your first novel. Sadomasochism for Accountants is presently on sale through WH Smith Travel and I spotted a good pile in Terminal 3, Heathrow, on my way to New York.

Massive fan gets to meet the author

I am just back from sales conference in New York, which was fun, buzzy and full of interest. After my presentation, I was walking near the village, and saw that Laila Lalami was giving a talk at Barnes and Noble on Avenue of the Americas near Washington Square. I went along, and she read from her first novel, Secret Son, and yes, I did speak to her and got a signed copy. She is Moroccan, and so is interested in reading our July novel, SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU by Luis Leante, about the Sarahawi people, who are still living in the Saraha desert, over 200,000 of them in tents. This is one of the humanitarian overlooked issues in the world, and there is a good chance that the book will bring international attention to the plight of these people, since at the moment the Sandblast charity in London are the only ones who are working on helping these people. (Go to the Sandblast web site, www.sandblast-arts.org - even if it is just to hear the music which is wonderful.)

So, I saw someone whose work I love, got a signed edition, first of course, and also hope she will want to review Luis Leante's prize winning book in due course for its American publication in January 2010. And 2010 feels like it is quite soon now.

New York was at its best - sunny, people in restaurants on the sidewalks, lots of good humour, culture and amazing art galleries and people to talk to at the conference. What could be better - hopefully it will mean better sales for the front list also.

Tonight we kind of have a 'works outing' - to the Putney Theatre to see Twelfth Night, directed by Ian Higham of Nick Hern books. Rebecca suggested to me that I may like to try for a part, as they have an ad. on their web site.

Now, when push comes to shove and I am on holiday in a lovely French house with twelve people who happen to have brought along twelve photocopied sets of Habeus Corpus by Alan Bennett, I will take a part and do my best not to sound too ridiculous. But to willingly put myself on the stage in front of perfectly well educated, upstanding members of the community is just a step too far. I once worked in a product design consultancy, and was told that my boss, John Boult, liked dressing up in drag for Am Dram. Whenever I came in to work, and saw him at his desk, in my mind he was still wearing a blonde wig with bright red lipstick, not trying his hardest to gain design commissions from serious blue chip companies like Mars or Crapochino plastic coffee capsules. So I think I'll stay off the stage.

We've spent three days at the London Book Fair, and the talk of our stand was the happy taking on of the Maia Press by Arcadia Books. Jane and Maggie will still continue to find fabulous books, edit and design them, and they had a very fruitful six years working as a partnership.

We were on the Central Books stand this year, and it was good to be with old friends and meet new people there. We were rushed off our feet with meetings, and hopefully the enthusiasm with which our books were greeted by Waterstone's will turn into good orders. We had particularly good feedback for CHARITY SHOPPING by Lettice Wilkinson, which will be stocked in the UK Travel section for all those holidaying in the UK this year, and for ALCHEMY ARTS - a new guide to fashion and home style using recycled materials. I have always re used things in our home, and indeed in this business, although it is quite thrilling to be able to afford to use new envelopes and not to print manuscripts out on the back of old sales sheets.

And I cannot sign off without reference to the small 'International Incident' that occurred on the Central Books stand. The stand furniture is an eclectic mix of coloured tables made of metal that are assembled each year by Central staff with a screwdriver before the fair. A meeting was going on just in front of the stand, and one table was sagging rather alarmingly as the lady leant her behind on it, threatening each second to transfer further weight to a rather unstable surface. A member of one eminent publishing house applied first a gentle massage (not noticed) to her posterior, then a gentle prod with two biros simulatenously on each buttock, (also unheeded) and then he gently began removing the table from beneath said behind. Which eventually registered and moved off the table of its own accord. This happened with an audience of around three, and I admit I had to stifle my hysterics up a whole aisle on my way to the next meeting. I am glad to say I arrived composed.

Being in the same room as writers....

After ten years of running a publishing house, I have found myself in the same room as many authors I admire. And of course, I have shyly looked across the room and done nothing.

So who are these people? Emma Barnes at Snowbooks has a great blog on Audrey Niffenegger's advance for her second book. The Time Traveller's Wife came into my horizon at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I met her US publisher, David Poindexter, of MacAdam Cage and it was his last appointment of the fair. He had just sold it to Chatto - damn, I said. I love a good time travel story.

Well, I did not have US $ 100,000 for the advance, and I do not have a few million for her second book, but I did spend time in the same room as Audrey Niffenegger. It was at the award ceremony for The Victoria & Albert Illustration Prize - we had won a prize the previous year, but for this one we were invited as one of our children's book was in the running. She won a prize for her illustrations on witches (yes, she is an artist first and foremost, not an author). I can confirm she is a deeply serious, artistic woman, who I would never have dared to go up to. Heigh ho.

Then J. K Rowling was at a Bloomsbury 5th anniversary disco for their paperback list. She was sitting quietly near the bar. Much as I would have loved to get my children's editions, signed, I did not have them on me. And this was before Harry Potter was famous, so she would have signed. That would have paid for their university educations. Heigh ho the second time.

Well, that leaves Hubert Selby Jr, our own author. I can confirm that he was in fine form when he visited London in 2002 for Waiting Period. He signed all my books, which I have kept in a safe place at home. As I was his taxi driver, party provider and publicity person, I think I deserved them!

Catheryn

We had a pretty good postbag today, with all kinds of publicity. The Evening Standard had CHARITY SHOPPING and the thrift lifestyle as BOOK OF THE WEEK in their Homes & Property section on March 4th. Thanks you, Katie Law! The Scotsman Magazine had an article by Gaby Soutar featuring Lettice Wilkinson's Thrifter address book - our lovely authors favourite shops in Edinburgh. And the Sunday Times are asking for a quote following an announcement in 'the house' by a Scottish minister on thrift. Is it possible that the Scots people are being told NOT to be thrifty - well Lettice will soon tell them that thrift is not only good for your pocket, but it uses up all those excess items, and contributes much needed money to good charities - a thrifty economy.

Then Sadomasochism for Accountants continues to make us smile - Birmingham Life has a great summary - 'This has to be the most unlikely romantic comedy (because that's what it is) but why does that have to be a bad thing.'
Bring it on - Jennifer Anniston as Belinda and Hugh Grant as Luda....

We also have a new book and a new author, Tamsin Omond. Tamsin is writing about her decision to become a full-time climate activist, and her discovery that prison, fear of arrest and the whole notion of sticking your neck out and becoming famous is something that takes a lot of courage.

Bit like running an independent press in a recession.

Bravery takes all forms.

It's now been a week or more since we said farewell to Kit Maude, who tackled just about every task that publishing contains in his year and a half at Marion Boyars. He is flying to Buenos Aires tomorrow, for a new life in the sun, and in a different economy (a better one than we are currently enjoying) and a different industry. Something tells me that Kit's love of books and publishing is not entirely gone and we will see his name now and again, on various web sites, book blogs and discussions of the finer points of Cortazar. I've spent some of this morning updating Onix and uploading it to various FTP sites, quite fun really. This was one of Kit's tasks here - to put information onto Onix for the entire, comprehensive Marion Boyars back list.

Feel free to sign in and blog here, Kit! We want to know your impressions of the new city. I know it will be better than the Jubilee line!

Catheryn, Rebecca and Alice

The upside of not getting to the office

We are in the middle of what the BBC4 news just called a 'weather event'.

Last night as I drove Arthur Boyars, 83, home, I found the Fulham Road already full of parked buses - not just a few - around 15! That's one blocked artery. I found a passage through to his house and back, and arrived home around 11.30pm declaring it rather unsettling to realise that even the Germans cannot make brakes that work on tyres covered in snow. It wasn't snowing when I set off.

Today, I am listening to Dave Cohen taking about time management. Dave - would you like to write a book? Dave was president of the Union at Brisl Uni where I was and let me take over the whole union building for the first 'small is beautiful' Schumacher lectures.

And as for work - well, I have found an excellent set of instructions for making e-books from InDesign documents which I am pretty sure I can do.

Dave - hope you obsessively google your own name. Patrick sends his love also.

Stockhausen Immersion Day

There is a new series of Stockhausen concerts in London and on the radio. The author/compiler of Stockhausen on Music, Robin Maconie, who interviewed Karlheinz Stockhausen over a period of years, will be in conversation with Robin Worby on 'Hear and Now', Radio 3, this Saturday and next, 22.30 to midnight. The BBC Symphony Orchestra performed Inori at the Barbican.

Written in 1973-74, Inori is based on prayer-like gestures interpreted on stage by a mime and a dancer. The expressive movements, performed by the two silent soloists and drawn from a variety of religious practices, are mirrored in the response of two orchestral groups.

For those who like peaceful sounding music with the odd jolt to the senses.

Catheryn

More photos. The middle one is a gentleman enjoying being a woman with a beard - he works for the World Wildlife Fund as an aviation expert. Then you can see Laetitia Rutherford from literary agency Mulcahy Conway, myself, and senior editor here, Rebecca Gillieron, with her fine hat.

The top one is a lady who also has a fine hat, who was being interviewed by the press. I saw a lot of cameras from the BBC (mainly focusing on the string quartet), and microphones labelled LBC radio, so I hope you have caught the press coverage whereever you are. I was glad to read of Emma Thompson assisting Greenpeace in buying land at Sipson, the village which will no longer exist if the third runway is built. I also dealt with the last remaining aga desire in me reading George Monbiot on the fact they contribute five times more carbon to the atmosphere than a conventional cooker. Perhaps my fifteen year old upright gas cooker with the enamel rubbed off is really going to be considered retro and cool rather than just well used!

Catheryn

This evening, Rebecca and I went to the Climate Rush peaceful protest at Terminal 1, Heathrow, against the building of the third runway. We emerged from the tube and had to negotiate a cordon of police men and women, some of whom were in good humour. We easily located the demonstration, hearing a string quartet start up. In fact, we followed a girl in a long skirt carrying a violin and a wicker basket from the platform on the Piccadilly line into the Terminal 1 building. She seems to know where she is going, we thought.

The demonstration quickly picked up momentum, with singing, whistles and flags being waved. There were many men with whiskers and top hats, as well as women with red sashes, hats, boots and gloves. There was a lot of cheering, clapping, and general noise making (the elderly couple next to me asked who we were clapping - to which I responded, we're just making ourselves heard.) Trains not planes was one refrain. Tamsin Omond was hoisted onto someones shoulders and we cheered her power of inspiration and organisation.

I took a few photographs - of a World Wide Life man with a beard, who described himself as an aviation expert, John from Greenpeace in the top hat with the whiskers and beard, and a gentleman who told me he was a Christian from Beckenham, Kent, who thought planes were not good for the land which we all shared.

I also asked for a photo to be taken of Rebecca, literary agent Laetitia Rutherford and myself. Hope you like the red flower....I live under the flight path and hope we can all moderate our use of airplanes. I, for one, have never failed to book a flight to a destination I wish to get to and at a price I can afford, and so I do not see the need for more planes in the air - that is my retort to those who say that 65,000 jobs will be created which will further pollute an overcrowded airspace.


Catheryn

The New Year is thoroughly upon us now. A couple of nights ago I did something which embarrassed me hugely at the time. I felt guilty for not going to a Christmas Eve party next door, as we had family arriving that evening from Switzerland, and as I approached my street, I thought I saw the host in his car returning from work. I wound down my car window and greeted him a Happy New Year - saying I had not seen him yet, very brightly. Then I realised it was the man who lived opposite in the side road, not in my street - and we've never met. Aargh - would he think I was a mad woman - no - he was delighted, and wished me a very good year too! The only memory I have of this man is that when he first moved in a few years ago, he took a cab home most nights. One day, said cab reversed too smartly, and went through the garden gates of the house next door. I rushed over and said, there's a black cab in your garden. There was, dear reader, there was. And a very shocked cabbie, who was fortunately not injured.

May you all get to know your neighbours by whatever means, and have a good New Year.

Catheryn

Turkish theme

We have received a lovely three page review of the three books by Latife Tekin - what a lot of threes. Hannah Adcock has reviewed them in the Edinburgh Review, in a round up of Turkish literature which includes many of the major authors, of which Latife Tekin is one.

Latife is a well known author in Turkey, but many in the UK have yet to discover her wonderful books which throw a window on a Turkey that the ordinary tourist can only guess at. I spent my honeymoon in Istanbul, and was so impressed with the country, the mosques, the stillness of Istanbul late at night, and the bustle of the day, that it seemed an obvious choice when it came to publishing translations. The fact that I started doing this in 1999 when Orhan Pamuk was relatively unknown was a blessing - my mother had published Berji Kristin, and next in line was Dear Shameless Death, but I was happy to then publish Elif Shafak and Maureen Freely. And I've had a great time doing so. A lot of crazy tours with all three ensued.

We've just received permission to put these lovely reviews up on this site - thank you, Hannah Adcock,and Brian McCabe, editor of the Edinburgh Review.

Et voila! (God knows what that is in Turkish - someone could let me know....)

Catheryn


Dear Shameless Death
Latife Tekin. Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne. Introduction by
Saliha Paker. Marion Boyars. isbn 9780714530543. £8.99

Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills
Latife Tekin. Translated by Ruth Christie and Saliha Paker. Preface by John
Berger. Introduction by Saliha Paker. Marion Boyars. isbn 0714530115. £7.95

Swords of Ice
Latife Tekin. Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne. Marion Boyars. isbn
9780714531359. £7.99

Latife Tekin is one of Turkey’s most influential contemporary authors,
appreciated by legions of fans worldwide and distrusted by certain members
of the Turkish bureaucracy. She reputedly said, after having her microphone
turned off at a Turkish arts festival by a bullish town mayor, that ‘writers are
the consciousness of their country, their people.’
She’s obviously a determined woman with a social conscience but she’s also
an original and talented writer. Her subject-matter is the underprivileged on the
margins of Istanbul society. She manages to make these communities central to
her story, rather than depicting them as sociological case-studies or intellectual
sideshows. As John Berger writes about Berji Kristin, ‘A shanty-town becomes
the centre of the world, holding the stage and addressing the sky.’
The novels under review form a trilogy, loosely bound together by
Tekin’s attempts to find a voice to describe underprivileged migrants and
their attempts to integrate successfully into city life. Tekin started writing
Dear Shameless Death, in 1980, a few days after the military coup d’état.
She was twenty-three and wanted it to be ‘a razzle-dazzle novel, a book
full of sound and shimmering light, whichever way you looked at it.’ She
succeeded. It is expansive, full of rural superstitions, myths, fairy tales and
idiosyncratic characters. The first part, set in a small Anatolian village is
particularly fantastic, populated with djinns, a fair-haired and malevolent
witch and ‘donkey boy’, all of whom the child protagonist, Dirmit, believes
in implicitly.
Based on Tekin’s own childhood experiences, it is a fascinating mixture of
extraordinary imaginings fused with the commonplace details of village life.
The narrative gains tension when the action moves to an unidentified city,
clearly based on Istanbul. Dirmit’s family, particularly her parents, struggle
to cope with the demands of this alien place. Her mother repeatedly takes to
her death-bed as a way to ensure that the family does not fly apart. Reality
intrudes as Dirmit participates in a left-wing teachers’ protest and her father,
Huvat, is led into the thick of a violent student demonstration by a blackbearded
hoja. Dialogue is scarce, although often pithy (Dirmit’s mother
does a good line in insults), whilst Tekin develops and then drops narrative
threads with dizzying speed. The novel owes more to oral tradition than
conventional dramatic frameworks, for good reason. After Tekin announced
she was to write a book about ‘the village’, her elder brother arranged a
gathering of villagers, then migrants in Istanbul, so that they could tell their
stories and contribute to this ‘collective novel’. Dirmit provides a muchneeded
focus point. She develops from a creative, confused child to a wild,
poetic adolescent, in conflict with her family but also linked by the chains
of blood and love. Dear Shameless Death is an impressive, imaginative novel.
It is also a gift to Tekin’s family and village neighbours: a remembrance of
their lives.

Berji Kristin, the second part of the trilogy, draws on the testimony of
real-life squatters who crammed into fringe dwellings in the 1960s. Tekin
paints a fictional portrait of the community they establish on a refuse heap,
ironically named Flower Hill. They battle with authorities who demolish
their dwellings, are exploited by factory owners, get caught up in strikes
and see their makeshift homes being colonised by other neighbours keen
on ‘knocking shops’ and ‘hashish’. It is a sketch in miniature of civilisation,
glued together by rumour and always on the brink of collapse.
The novel contains a selection of personalities, often with interesting
foibles. Among them are Güllü Baba, the oldest resident, who is blind and
makes predictions, ‘so mysterious that nobody could understand them’; the
factory owner, Mr Izak, whose ‘reputation grew velvet and creamy [as] his
iron fist began to show’; and Lado, the gambler, who all his life sought the
answer to the question, ‘Who was greater, God, or the man who invented
gambling?’ Tekin draws strong, occasionally subversive, female characters
such as Fidan ‘Of Many Skills’, who teaches women to find pleasure in
lovemaking – although their husbands thwart their desires, because Flower
Hill is a male-dominated society.
The novel has sustained metaphorical depths, great if you like pondering,
but it can be hard work to read. It’s difficult to get emotionally involved when
there’s only a cool, clear authorial voice and no central protagonist. The last
few chapters featuring Lado are high-points, so it’s worth persevering.

Swords of Ice is a story about a would-be entrepreneur called Halihan
Sunteriler who saves a red Volvo from the scrap heap, imagining it to be ‘a
greeting from teknologi, the power that let him control enormous energies
with a tiny movement from his foot and guide vehicles that weighed tons
with the mere touch of a wheel.’ However, Halihan is daydreaming to think
that he can control such forces; the car is shown, ironically, as being very
much ‘in charge’. Instead of magically leading Halihan to successful moneymaking
schemes as he expects, it embroils him in disastrous extra-marital
affairs: ‘About ten nights earlier, when Halihan was on his way home, the
Volvo had suddenly turned into a side street, headed down dark alleys, and
of her own free will parked at the door of a night club called Bella.’
Halihan’s attempts to enlist the support of his friend Gogi and his
brothers Hazmi and Mesut in setting up the Teknojen company (purpose and
products unknown) prove divisive rather than lucrative. Family arguments
and suspicion rupture tentative understandings amongst this ill-assorted
group. Gogi is the most ‘cultured’ man in the neighbourhood and only turns
to business to please his friend; Hazmi has severe anger management issues,
whilst Mesut is dominated by his wife. ‘In great friendships even a hole as
tiny as an atom could spark off magnetic storms that destroy love and flatten
the soul to a silken thickness.’
The novel concludes with a scattering of poetic phrases, desperate and
beautiful. It is a perplexing book that manages to dabble with nihilism,
whilst retaining a delicate sense of humour. As Tekin aptly concludes in a
post-scriptum: ‘Writing! Faithful foe of the poor! I have used you to deepen
even more the enigma of our ragged lives.’

Hannah Adcock

Any women out there who have taken a career break for children or have been creatively unemployed - have a quick think and ring up the Pensions office in Newcastle. If you need to buy a few pension years, it is apparently cheaper to do this before next April. This may sound like a boring piece of information, but I was curious as my career has taken place in small companies - both publishers and designers (one is this one so I do know that the tax & NI has been paid over the past nine years! I wrote the cheques) and although I paid stamps when self-employed, I had no idea where I was.

To my surprise I found I had 28 years of contributions and I need 30, but I cannot get the state pension until I am 65 - and that's a long way off.

Blimey - 28 years of hard labour and I hardly noticed! Sucker for punishment.

Catheryn

USA USA USA

Jet lag - it seems to be something not worth fighting over as soon I will be back in the UK. It's
7 am and the coffee machine is heating up water for my oh, so British tea.

So, it's 7am and snowing in Minneapolis and at least I have my New York snow boots with me, and plenty of layers. I met one publisher in the lift yesterday who had come from Carolina, seventy degrees, and had not thought to bring a coat. I hope she found a thrift shop....

Talking of thrift shops, in my presentation yesterday of our front list for the USA, I managed a cat walk in high heeled purple suede shoes, a purple pencil skirt and a black top, total cost for the outfit was $15 / £ 10.75. My whole outfit came from a charity shop in Southwold, where Victoria Cator is a patron and fund raiser, Break (it gives breaks to the parents of disabled children).

Last night we had the sales conference cocktail party in a bar (there are never any cocktails, but a gin and tonic makes a good substitute). I met all our wonderful sales reps, and spoke to the academic marketing manager, Heather Hart, who is in charge of the new web site for academics and course adoptions. In the demonstration, I kept seeing our titles - in these economically strange times, a backlist comes into its own.

Now, back to my proof reading of THE GOOD BODY GUIDE - only 250 pages to go....the nine hour flight was good for the first half of the book. do I sound like an American yet? My joint nationality is also useful for my sales trips, though for the first time the official really did want to know the story of my life!

Catheryn

A trip to the coast

Last week, after over a year of editing, production, sales, publicity and other miscellaneous work we finally got to meet Rhyll McMaster. Who is lovely. As is her daughter with whom she was travelling. So lovely in fact that we decided that they could not stay in the 'grubby london' of Rhyll's novel a moment longer than she had to and so whisked her off up the coast to Suffolk. Specifically to the Ways with Words Festival in Southwold where Rhyll was to appear alongside Sadie Jones in the curtain raising event.

Southwold, which achieved fame recently as Gordon Brown's chosen location for his summer holiday, is a pleasantly grey seaside town with beach huts, stone houses and its very own brewery. Once there we met the wonderful Kay and Steven Dunbar. They founded and still run the Ways with Words festivals with that mix of easy efficiency, intelligence and genuine warmth that characterises the very best literary events. We also met the equally marvellous Rosemary, manager of the Orwell bookshop in Southwold, who runs the festival bookshop and who will forever have a place in our hearts for declaring our show card the 'best she had ever had.'

After being treated to an amazing dinner the night before, we reconvened the next day at the Tardis-like St Edmund's Hall (the size of the theatre is not at all apparent from the outside) where Rhyll and Sadie (who is also fantastic) gave a talk ably chaired by Kay. The topics included the melancholy fifties, the writing process, feminism, the unpredictability of readers' responses, (especially Austrian ones) humour, the probability that everyone 'knows a Redmond' and much mutual admiration. The audience, which had a pleasing number of people who had read both books, seemed to enjoy it and then asked some excellent questions. And then, far too soon, it was time to go back to grubby london.

But not without asking everything to vote for Feather Man at the Spread the Word competition please, please do!

Kit

Round ups

I expect that it's true of working in most small offices that one occasionally finds themselves feeling isolated and worried that nothing they're doing is making much of a difference. I think that this is especially true on Monday mornings in small publishers, when one scours the major book reviewing publications hoping that a title with your moniker at the bottom will jump out at you. Preferably with some kind words attached.

It's nice then, at the times when nothing has appeared, to get an email like the one we received today from our American publicist, the excellent Meryl Zegarek (info@mzpr.com):

Marion Boyars

Bold = New as of this report.

Feather Man by Rhyll McMaster – September 2008 (978-0-7145-3148-9)

• Literaturechick.com – September 29, 2008 – “An interesting and moving story that is reminiscent of works by Margaret Atwood and Harper Lee.”
• Genre Go Round – September 5, 2008
• Nashville Is Talking – August 15, 2008
• Monsters and Critics.com- “Abuse of any kind is challenging subject to write about yet McMaster manages it with a deft touch.”
• Literarily.com- - “McMaster is an amazing writer. Her prose is pitch-perfect- in the whole of this book, there is not an extraneous word. This story has a very substantial feel, due primarily to McMaster's painstaking character development. From the first page, the reader is truly inside Sooky's head, and comes to know her intimately.”
• ForeWord Magazine – “…Sooky’s unflinching eye and sense of humor imbue the book with complexity and vitality.”
• Medieval Bookworm – “What an interesting character study…I really liked this book.”
• Book Room Review-– “if you’re looking for a book with real substance and excellent character development, I think you’ll enjoy Feather Man.”
• IndieBound September Indie Next List
• ww.chikune.com/blog, and LibraryThing,

The Streets of Babylon by Carina Burman – May 2008 (978-0-7145-3138-0)

• Literarly.com – Review and will post an interview with Carina Burman

• I Love a Mystery-August/Sept. 2008- “This is a tongue-firmly-in-cheek romp through London …this is the first in a trilogy planned for translation, and I look forward the lady’s return.”
• You Are What You Read- Sept. 9^th, 2008 “…the makings of an absolutely delightful ‘who done it’…This book was seamless.”
• The Washington Times – rave review, Sunday, August 17^th “Ms. Burman offers a hilarious version of all the wrong things to do in Victorian Londonm and draws the reader into the fun with her carefully proper writing style.”
• The Midwest Book Review- July 2008- “The Streets of Babylon is and excellent historical mystery that makes the time and place seem so alive…Carina Burman provides an exhilarating mid-nineteenth century kidnapped thriller..”
• Eclectica.com July/August 2008 rev.- “ There is a lot to enjoy in The Streets of Babylon, from the wonderful job Burman does of creating the physical and social atmosphere to the delight of her protagonist…I was quite pleased to discover the work of Carina Burman, with Streets of Babylon and look forward to more books with this wonderful character.”
• Medieval Bookworm.com - July 24, 2008 - “…A good time and pure escapism….an entertaining read.”
• Library Journal - June review - “…first volume of an engaging new historical trilogy”
• Genre Go Round Reviews.com – May 20, 2008 “An excellent historical mystery that makes the time and place seem so alive.”
• Kirkus Reviews- May 15, 2008 “…packed with Victorian flavor.”
• The Mystery Gazette- May 2008
• Reviewing the Evidence “The descriptions of the streets and alleys of the city are so breathtaking, one seems to be there. London of 1851 lives again.”
• Blogcritics – April 29, 2008 “The story takes us on a captivating trip back in time with interesting – and at times quirky – individuals, who quickly come to feel like friends.”
• International Noir Fiction.com-June 9, 2008

Which makes one feel rather better about life.

Even nicer is when one of our books is on the long list for World Book Day's Spread the Word
prize. Please, please do vote because if Feather Man isn't a book to talk about I don't know what is.

Kit

Spread the Word & Feather Man

Rhyll McMaster has just arrived here from Australia to do some publicity for Feather Man. It just happens to coincide with the long listing of her book by Spread the Word.

http://www.spread-the-word.org.uk/

So, please, please go to the site, register (it only takes a minute) and vote for Feather Man so that it reaches the short list! To date a good number of people have voted for books on the list, but it could be higher - no idea how many Feather Man has had, but we do know that the people who read it rate it very highly indeed.

The first chapter is quite hard - but only quite - to read and the book rewards readers in spades - language, plot (dastardly!), characters, and outcome.

Please go to the site - note it is spread - hyphen - the -hyphen - word not Spreadtheword which belongs to someone else (how glad I am that my mother chose to spell my name a slightly different way to everyone elses - I have not yet met another Catheryn despite there being four Catherine's or Katharine's etc in every class I was in, and as for mothers at school - zillions! For late fifties children, Catherine was the Sophie or Georgia of today....

And Rhyll will be at the Ways With Words Literary Festival in Southwold on Thursday 6th November, appearing with Sadie Jones who wrote The Outcast. So it will be packed and we hope lots of Feather Man will sell to people who have read Sadie's excellent book. Rhyll is also recording an interview for the BBC World Service on Friday evening, so look out for that - I am not sure when it will be broadcast but you will all be able to listen to it online next week, for sure.

Vote! Vote! Vote! Thank you!


Catheryn