samgrosser

Hi and sorry not to have appeared till late this evening - my husband's working nights at the moment (he's a nurse) and as it's school holidays me and the little one are staying out of the flat during the day to give him a bit of peace and quiet! But I'm delighted to be featured author this month along with Kerri. Wow, your story about getting published Kerri sounds like an author's dream! My story's very different and I think a far more common tale. I spent about 2 years writing Another Time and Place during which time I sent it to a manuscript assessor (I was living in Australia at the time and manuscript assessment seems to be much bigger there). She made some very valid and useful suggestions and after rewriting it yet again, I started sending it out to agents and publishers in England. Australian publishing tends to be quite aggressively Australian and as my book has nothing to do with Australia at all, I felt I had a better chance in England. I had a fair bit of interest. Most agents ask for the first three chapters in the first instance (which gets a bit expensive from overseas) and several then asked for the complete manuscript. One publisher passed it on to a senior fiction editor for a second reading. But ultimately no one wanted it. This went on for 3 years or so until it got to the point where I was more or less ready to give up on it. Then I gave it to a friend to read (Jo Riccione, who's had some success with her short stories and who is a very critical and insightful reader) and when she'd read it we sat down over a bottle of wine and brainstormed about what I could do to make it better. The changes weren't huge. Basically one of the main characters (Mrs Pilgrim) needed more development to make her more complex, and as I rewrote with this in mind I tightened and refined everything else as well. Then I arrived in England without my printer which was still on a ship and started sending the manuscript out by email to the places I could find that would accept it in that format. Macmillan New Writing picked it up a couple of months later and I was bouncing off the walls for weeks. Sam

I agree that the supermarkets aren't the threat to the independents - like you say, their range is far too small - I think though that we were comparing their selection and prices with that of charity shops. And while you're absolutely right that Waterstones, Borders, etc face the same threat from Amazon, they are big enough to counter it by demanding huge discounts from publishers, and huge fees to get books onto the front tables, where sales are assured. I read in The Times a while ago that it can cost a publisher up to £30,000 to place a book on one of those tables. (And publishers only tend to invest that kind of money on authors whose selling power is already established) As for the second hand dealer issue, I'm no expert on the book business; it just seemed a shame that a bookseller who's traded very successfully for a great many years might not be around for much longer for whatever reason. I think that's what the thread was about, wasn't it?

My local charity bookshops charge

Leaving aside the charity book shop issue for a moment, I think it's a little rough to condemn small businesses as being "poorly run" because they lack the financial clout to demand the same discounts from publishers as companies like Amazon and Waterstones. Independent bookshops don't keep prices "artificially high", they charge the cover price, and they offer a personal service and an eclectic selection of books you don't get anywhere else. I don't define that as "poorly run."

The closing of the independents makes me really sad - the trend of the international corporation seems to have infiltrated all walks of life. I'm rebelling in a small way - avoiding the big supermarkets when I can, shopping local. But it isn't always easy. I still try and buy a lot of my books at the wonderful Clifton Bookshop in Bristol which has been there since my childhood and I had the launch party of Another Time and Place there too. It was wonderful. A while ago I had a long chat with the owner of another long standing Bristol bookshop - this one a second-hand bookseller on Cotham Hill (the name escapes me for the moment) and he said that it was the charity shops that were doing him in. They don't pay staff, they don't pay for books - how can he possibly compete? I think it was really unfair of Oxfam to open a bookshop right next door to him. I understand that charities do important work, but if they're putting small businesses under, than that just doesn't seem right to me.

Just wanted to say that I gave up on Vanity Fair (too many characters called Crawley, too confusing) and read Regeneration. What can I say? I thought it was the best thing I've read in ages - warm, intelligent, insightful, absorbing ... I've just got parts 2 & 3 of the trilogy from the library and have just started on The Eye of the Door. I'm not sure I'm going to like it as much but it's early days...

Thank you

Regeneration by Pat Barker - warm, intelligent, utterly engrossing. And I know that somewhere on the forum there's a thread about it, but I can't seem to find it. Help me, anyone?

I just gave up on Vanity Fair (I got about half-way) for exactly this reason. There are so many characters in it called Crawley that I just kept losing track of who was who, although other parts of the novel about other characters I really enjoyed. I guess books with a lot of characters need a lot more concentration than ones with a few and I suppose it depends if you think it's worth the effort. Also, it's sometimes easier to engage emotionally with a book where a few characters feature more predominantly, and for me, that's one of the most important aspects of my enjoyment of a novel.

I haven't read Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - though it's on my TBR pile, but I think it might be what you're looking for. Here's a link that will tell you more. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/08/reviews/woolf-dalloway.html

Well, good luck!

And I thought of another one in the middle of hte night - PG Wodehouse books are all set in the 20s.

I really hope you get to do your full A level. What will happen if they don't offer it? Will you have to do other subjects instead? btw, what a great selection of texts.

I'd never heard of Pat Barker until recently - she's had quite a lot publicity because she's got a new novel just out. I picked up Regeneration at a charity shop the other day and when I eventually finish Vanity Fair (loving it, but short, it ain't), I was planning to read it next. Interestingly, a couple of people have mentioned her to me in the last few days as well worth reading. Bagpuss - will you have to read the whole trilogy as part of your course?

I agree. I think it's a lousy title for a novel - it sounds like some right wing Republican tract.

I read Hitler - my part in his downfall when I was a teenager. I thought it was hilarious and quite brilliant but I'm afraid I can't remember exactly how "suitable" it was. I also remember being really into Alistair Maclean novels when I was about 13, which might appeal to him. Good luck in finding something that he likes, and keep us posted.

A lot of Evelyn Waugh's books are set in the 1920's, and Nancy Mitford's books (can't remember any titles off hand - it's been a while) are also set during that period.

I used to get a lot of reading done while I was breastfeeding - he'd usually fall asleep afterwards too ...

I usually read while I'm having lunch which is all right if it's a lunch I can eat with one hand (cheese toasties for example) but if it's a messier sandwich, needing two hands to hold it together, then I have to put down the book on the table and flatten it open by balancing something along the top of it - I've found that my pencil case is just about the right length and weight to hold most books open. Other than that I read just about anywhere, lying down, sitting up, standing up while waiting for the kettle to boil, the washing to finish etc etc, right hand, left hand, both hands together (that's when I remember what my Alexander technique teacher used to tell me!). I used to read a lot more lying on my tummy but now it hurts my neck if I do it for too long, which is a shame.

Third person present tense can sometimes work - in The English Patient for example, where it's used sparingly - but generally, I agree with you; I think the writer has to have huge amounts of talent for it to be anything other than very annoying.

That's one of the reasons I always worry about seeing the film of a book I like, because once the film image is in my mind, it tends to replace the much more impressionistic picture I had from the book. The other thing I do which is weird, (and irritating), is I don't imagine things necessarily consistently. For example, I might see a house as looking a particular way in one scene, and then different in another.

Interesting point. My mother always says she doesn't like books written in the first person. I've got no preference - some of my favourite books are written in the first person (A Farewell to Arms and Jane Eyre spring to mind) but like you say, I think it takes a lot of skill to do it well. I've tried writing in the first person and find it incredibly difficult - not so much because of the limited perspective, because I think the format largely makes up for that limitation by the reader's intimacy with the narrator, but because I find it very hard to make it read like anything other than a diary. The first draft of the novel I'm working on at the moment was written in the first person, because I wanted to see if I could do it. It was all right, but not that great. I've now rewritten it in the third person, with 3 different perspectives, and it's a much better novel for it. So I guess it depends on the needs of the particular story, and the skill of the writer.

What a shame you didn't get into it - it's one of my favourite all time books! But beyond the beauty of the language it is hard work and I'm sure there's a lot of it that went completely over my head. Maybe one to come back to then.

Books don't often make me cry, which is strange, because I'm absolutely useless with films and cry at the drop of a hat. But one book that did have me in tears was Melvyn Bragg's The Soldier's Return. It's absolutely the most moving book I've read in ages.

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