NextRead

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Britain does not publish enough gay fiction
Gay books with the potential to sell to a mainstream audience are the only ones UK publishers seem interested in. We could and should do a lot better.

Two of the comments on this post included: ‘As a practising Geordie, I am always concerned about the lack of representation of Geordies in literature…’ and ‘For my own part, I’m deeply concerned about the over-representation of the Irish in contemporary fiction…’.

Now, from what I can tell being gay or writing about gay characters is not going to stop you being published nor is writing about being Irish, Scottish, Pink, Purple or being a clown. What is going to stop you is how attractive your writing is to a wider audience unless you are being published by a specialist/niche press.

Horror writing seems to be a niche, unless you’re Stephen King, who manages to cross from a niche market to the mainstream. Fantasy is more popular than Sci-Fi luckily both Fantasy and Sci-Fi have a wide and established fan base so you can’t really call them niche.

Poppy Z. Brite started her career writing about gay characters. Sarah Waters writes exclusively about them, and she is well received and rewarded. Alan Hollinghurst’s award winning Line of Beauty was converted into a BBC Drama and based around the life of a gay Conservative.

There is a whole list that I made on the above blog post of recent titles that don’t seem to support the argument.

I wonder if you can say that Black/Asian literature is niche with characters like Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, and Murakami Haruk being in the mainstream?

Does everyone need a writer who writes about them? And how can we support those writers who write about what might be considered under-represented?

Another question is from all this is how much of what you read should be about identifying with what you are reading and how much should be about escaping from it?

‘No, don’t touch that.’
I could hear the screams echoing up the well as I looked into the blackness.
I stared into the darkness not blinking, hoping that I’d see a light. Hoping I would see the shine of a torch. So I’d know that one or both of them had started to climb to safety. But instead, what came started as a rumble in the ground like a heartbeat getting faster and faster until its rhythm filled my ears and it was joined by the sound of nails scrapping stone.
And I knew it was trying to grip the rocks below me.
It was now coming for me.  

Tags: flash fiction

From the McSweeneys Monthly Newsletter:“As you may know, it’s been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney’s included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 — actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn’t hit right away, but it’s hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there’s really no way to absorb a loss that big.

We are committed to getting through and past this difficult time, and we’re hoping you, the readers who have from the start made McSweeney’s possible, will help us.

Over the next week or so, we’ll be holding an inventory sell-off and rare-item auction, which we hope will make a dent in the losses we sustained. A few years ago, the indispensible comics publisher Fantagraphics, in similarly dire straits, held a similar sale, and it helped them greatly. We’re hoping to do the same.

So if you’ve had your eye on anything we’ve produced, now would be a great time to take the plunge. For the next week or so, subscriptions are $5 off, new books are 30 percent off, and all backlist is 50 percent off. Please check out the store and enjoy the astounding savings, while knowing every purchase will help dig us out of a big hole.

Many of our contributors have stepped up and given us original artwork and limited editions to auction off. We’ve got original artwork from Chris Ware, Marcel Dzama, David Byrne, and Tony Millionaire; a limited-edition music mix from Nick Hornby; rare early issues of the quarterly, direct from Sean Wilsey’s closet; and more. We’re even auctioning off Dave Eggers’s painting of George Bush as a double-amputee, from the cover of Issue 14.

This is the bulk of our groundbreaking business-saving plan: to continue to sell the things we’ve made, albeit at a greatly accelerated pace for a brief period of time. We are not business masterminds, but we are optimistic that this will work. If you’ve liked what we’ve done up to now, this is the time to ensure we’ll be able to keep on doing more.

Plenty of excellent presses are in similar straits these days; two top-notch peers of ours, Soft Skull and Counterpoint, were just acquired by Winton, Shoemaker & Co. in the last few weeks. It’s an unsteady time for everybody, and we know we don’t have any special claim to your book-buying budget. We owe all of you a lot for everything you’ve allowed us to do over the last nine years, for all the time and freedom we’ve been given.

Once this calamity is averted, we’ll get back to our bread and butter — the now-legendary Believer music issue is already creeping into mailboxes everywhere; Issue 24 of our quarterly is in the midst of a really pretty silkscreening process; and in July the fourth issue of Wholphin, our DVD magazine, will slip over the border from Canada, bringing with it some very good footage of Maggie Gyllenhaal and a Moroccan drummer who messes up a wedding in an entertaining way. And then a couple of months after that, we’ll publish a debut novel from a writer named Millard Kaufman. This book is exactly the kind of thing McSweeney’s was created to do: The novel came through the mail, without an agent’s imprimatur, and it was written by a first-time novelist. This first-time novelist is ninety years old. It was pulled from the submissions pile and it knocked the socks off of everyone who read it. Millard may well be the best extant epic-comedic writer of his generation, and he stands at equal height with the best of several generations since.

Whatever you can do to help in the coming days, we thank you a thousand times. We’ll keep updating everybody on how this is going over the next few weeks; for now, pick up a few things for yourself, your friends, for Barack Obama. More news soon — thanks for reading.

Yours warmly,
The folks at McSweeney’s”

Interview: Owen Sheers - Independent Online Edition > Features
Owen Sheers says Second World War plans for a British resistance provided inspiration for his début novel.

I don’t know how this slipped past the radar but it did. Owen Sheers, whose debut poetry collection, The Blue Book, was very warmly received and whose debut non-fiction travel memoir, The Dust Diaries, won Welsh Book of the Year, has just released his debut novel, Resistance, into the world.

I haven’t read all the interview as I didn’t want it to spoil my enjoyment of the book but the phrase that did interest me was Owen described Resistance like this, “This is an alternative, imagined story; it’s retrospective science fiction.”

I wonder how genre it is going to be?

I’m reading it straight after Rant by Chuck Palahniuk.

Look for reviews of both soon.

An interview done at the Hay Festival - which I didn’t go to this year.

Matthew Kneale: ‘Writing novels is just like cooking’ - Independent Online Edition > Features
I begin to understand where the man who wrote English Passengers came from. He smiles, and offers another explanation. “I love cooking, and writing is like that. You think, ‘Ah, I’ll put a bit of that in, now that’s right’. You have a feeling that somehow it will make a good meal.”

You’ll have to make up your own mind on this one I think:

My Book Deal Ruined My Life | The New York Observer
So forget the American dream! Getting a book deal seems more like a nightmare.

Some First Fiction is included in the guardian:

Separation and reconciliation | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books
Catherine Taylor on The Separate Heart and Other Stories | The Girl’s Guide to Modern European Philosophy | Mirror, Mirror | The Pornographer of Vienna

The Separate Heart and Other Stories looks interesting - always nice to see a short story collection coming out and especially one getting positive reviews.

Some Crime Fiction gets looked at in The Observer

Headstones, hookers and Cuban hippos | Review | The Observer
Peter Guttridge on Twilight | The Unquiet | The Takedown | Dancing to ‘Almendra’ | I Predict a Riot

Oh and a list of books you’ve probably never heard of.

The Best Novels You’ve Never Read - Book Hunt 2007 — New York Magazine
Critics pick the best under-the-radar book of the past ten years or so.

I’m sure they was more but that’s all for now.

booktrade.info
Tesco will select one Random House Group title each month which will be featured in their stores nationwide, branded with Tesco Book Club branding.

BookTrade is a brilliant news site and I should have taken more notice before writing my post about Tesco’s Bookclub. Seemingly it’s not much of a club more a Random House Book-of-the-Month thingy.

Susan Hill’s blog :: I AM CROSS
Bear with me while I get it off my chest.The time a writer needs to win prizes is at the start of their career. A prize is always nice to have but it means most and does most for you at the beginning. People look up. You`re suddenly up several places on the long ladder.

This rant is continued here.

This outburst focuses on the non-inclusion of a début novel, THE GOOD THIEF`S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM (that Long Barn Books has published), in The Crime Writers Awards New Blood Dagger short-list

Now Susan, being it’s publisher, definitely has a right to be upset. And if  she’d had not  had a rant I wouldn’t be making this blog post and The Good Thief... wouldn’t be on my radar.

The trouble is that even though I do dip my reading into the crime genre and I do greatly enjoy the ones I read I don’t tend to let The Crime Writers Awards or any other award sway my reading that much.

I keep my eye on who won what just in case there is anything interesting but I don’t run out and buy award winners.

Saying that though - I’m always on the look out for a good read - any award winners I should have read?

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - books: Don’t lose sight of book designers
Whether you’re prepared to admit it or not, we all judge books by their covers. As Oscar Wilde said, “It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”

Here! Here!

 Richard and Judy. Tesco’s has a Book Club.

Tesco Book Club - Tesco.com
Our first ever Book Club selection is Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir – available now in store and online.

As a Book Club title, each month’s selection will have some fantastic bonus content in the book and even more great material will be available exclusively on this site. This month’s extras include a Q and A with Alison Weir plus details on our July selection so please bookmark www.tesco.com/bookclub to avoid missing out!

The world and his wife now has a Book Club so what makes Tesco’s one different? The only thing that I can think of is the amount of eyes that are going to fall upon that Month’s Selected Title, which will greatly increasing the chances of that title selling trolley loads.

This month’s selection is Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir. Somewhat surprisingly it’s a debut novel - though the author is not a complete unknown - she has written historical non-fiction previously and seemingly quite successfully - on Amazon she’s described as ‘our pre-eminent popular historian’. That’s told me.

Innocent Traitor really doesn’t sound like my cup of tea:

Lady Jane Grey was born into times of extreme danger. Child of a scheming father and a ruthless mother, for whom she was merely a pawn in a dynastic power game with the highest stakes, she lived a live in thrall to political machinations and lethal religious fervour. Jane’s astonishing and essentially tragic story was played out during one of the most momentous periods of English history. As a great-niece of Henry VIII, and the cousin of Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I, she grew up realize that she could never throw off the chains of her destiny. Her honesty, intelligence and strength of character carry the reader through all the vicious twists of Tudor power politics, to her nine-day reign and its unbearably poignant conclusion.

I have a feeling that the people that love her historical non-fiction are going to enjoy her re-telling of this story.

Next month’s selection BTW is also a by female writer in the guise of Kate Atkinson’s follow-up to Case Histories, One Good Turn. I’ll have to read Case Histories first.

There is a lot of ‘buzz’ about e-books and the revolution that it’s going to bring for both publishers and readers. I’m not convinced. Yes there are benefits. You can store hundreds of books on your computer and not have to worry about them taking up too much space. You can search the contents. You can buy a book and instantly read it.

The downsides are that you need power to read and some sort of electronic device to read from. You also can’t fold the corners down. You can’t scribble notes. You can’t show them off on book shelves. And for me the biggest thing is that they just don’t feel right. 

There are other problems – e-books aren’t tangible so you can’t put them on a shelf for someone to take down and buy. You can’t walk into a shop of e-books and browse. You have to click from one item to another and someone it doesn’t feel the same. You can’t spend ages choosing your 3 for 2 offer. And how do you put a value on an ebook? You never go out of print.

I can see one benefit of an e-book when it comes to textbooks when you’re only needing to focus on a specific chapter or section of information but again it’s sometimes easier t have it on your desk plastered with post-its and scribbles.

Give me a real book any day of the week.