Slaughter by write

The Independent on Sunday 22nd June 2008
Two years ago I interviewed Ian Rankin for this newspaper. In the middle of a wide-ranging discussion he said something he may have since come to regret. “The people writing the most graphic violence today are women,” he told me, then continued, “They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting.”
The comments caused a furore in crime writing circles worldwide, but Rankin was not the first I had heard make this claim, he was merely the first to go on record.
“Oh, that was you,” US crime writer Karin Slaughter says when I mention the comments to her. The look she gives, half-ironic, half-knowing, makes me feel like a naughty schoolgirl. Hers is one of the names raised by anonymous critics who regard relentless detail of rapes through belly buttons or with knives, or of women buried alive, as unsuitable for fiction. It is an unease Slaughter has cultivated since her 2001 debut Blindsighted with books that live up to her name, petrifying readers with every crunch of bone and spatter of blood. read more

June 23, 2008 | 1 Comment | Published Articles, Celebrity Interviews, What Authors Need To Know

Surviving a drowning

The Independent on Sunday 18th May 2008
Richard Mason has advice for struggling novelists: be careful what you wish for, because it may drive you mad. It is advice based on bitter experience. Looking handsome and relaxed over breakfast at the Groucho, he is now 30 and a long way from the fresh-faced, eager-to-please author of The Drowning People I met over 10 years ago at one of the more upmarket book parties. His debut had just been snapped up for a stellar advance amid much publicity, making him the first of a brat pack of Oxbridge writers that included Zadie Smith and Hari Kunzru.
But while his Penguin stablemates were reasonably mature twentysomethings able to manage the hype created by their fat advances, Mason, 18 years old and in his first year at Oxford, seemed uncomfortable with the expectation the hype placed on him. “The whole experience left me thinking about that Aristotelian injunction, ‘Be careful what you ask the gods lest they grant it you’,” he says now. read more

May 19, 2008 | 1 Comment | Published Articles, Celebrity Interviews, What Authors Need To Know

The Friday Project and the Rules of Dating (or how to spot a lasting relationship)

I have been thinking for a while about how to address the issue of The Friday Project’s spectacular collapse. I don’t want to get into specifics about the company itself. I have seen the published figures, and from before Christmas things were said to me that made me think this was a shaky operation. I have also spoken to many disgruntled authors and my heart goes out to them.
There were a number of issues that made me rather suspicious of the hype around TFP and, unlike with less “media-friendly” but impressive operations like Snowbooks, fear that some of the coverage, especially in the trades, was failing to look beneath the surface of a company that promised much but when it came to chart performance delivered relatively little.
As I say, I am not going to talk directly about TFP, but think it is worth writing about what one should expect from a small publisher and the warning signs that may signal less substance than style. I am going to call them The Rules of Dating. Some of this may have been useful to TFP authors, some may not. I hope all will be useful for authors being wooed by new set ups in particular. read more

April 23, 2008 | 23 Comments | Blog, Publishing

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Cue Entertainment April 2008
There is a point in Warner’s Leonardo DiCaprio-produced shock doc The 11th Hour when the shots of lonely polar bears, tumbling icebergs and burning oil fields – obligatory in documentaries about global warming – are in danger of overwhelming the viewer. As one environmentalist after another lines up to tell us we are not just in the final minutes before annihilation caused by rampant consumerism, but the final seconds, it is tempting to give up hope, climb into a Porsche and head somewhere idyllic but, thanks to all those greenhouse gases, doomed.
Just in time the documentary’s final third notes we may not be doomed. In fact, if we actively pursue more sustainable business models we may even have a future for the home entertainment (HE) industry as well as the planet. Though usually associated with excess, the HE sector is not immune to the green message and in the past 12 months everyone from filmmakers to retailers have displayed a growing commitment to sustainability. read more

April 21, 2008 | 5 Comments | Published Articles, Investigative Journalism

Look away now

The Deal: The Official Magazine of the London Book Fair 2008
When it emerged in 2006 that O J Simpson planned to publish a book about the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her companion, Ronald Goldman, there was uproar. Media commentators, booksellers and librarians joined the victims’ families to roundly condemn If I Did It as cynically cashing in on a notorious crime. Faced with a PR disaster, HarperCollins dropped the book. Judith Regan, the editor responsible, lost her job and Regan Books, her imprint at HC US, folded. But in September 2007 If I Did It appeared in bookshops with the kind of worldwide PR only notoriety wins.
What happened to make acceptable in 2007 a book deemed a pariah 12 months earlier? Goldman’s family won rights to 90% of its profits. read more

April 16, 2008 | No Comments | Published Articles, Investigative Journalism, Publishing commentator

Freedom Writers

The Deal: The Official Magazine of teh London Book Fair 2008
When they came for him at midnight in September, Zargana had expected it. After all, the Burmese poet, filmmaker and comedian had been here before. He had been imprisoned twice before for daring to defy the brutal Burmese military dictatorship - once for impersonating the then head of the government, a performance that delighted the thousands crowded into the Yankin Teacher’s Training College Stadium.
After each previous arrest he had been tortured. He had also been threatened before release. The authorities had left no room for doubt: if he did not keep his mouth shut, worse would happen. But Zargana is not a man to keep his mouth shut, and had continued to ignore the threats and took his life in his hands defying bans on performing in public and talking to foreign journalists. He became the ‘loudspeaker’ of the people, articulating the anger and impatience of his compatriots eager for an end to the years of brutal oppression. read more

April 15, 2008 | No Comments | Published Articles, Publishing People

Eastern Promise

The Deal: The Official Magazine of the London Book Fair 2008
‘The average British publisher probably doesn’t think of the Arab World as a region in which they can make a lot of money, but that is not true,’ Suzanne Joinson, literature advisor (Middle East, Near East, North Africa and South East Europe) at the British Council, states emphatically. ‘It is an enormous market. It is something like 220 million people.’ The myth about the money to be made from publishing in the Arab world is just one of many Joinson and The London Book Fair hope to demolish at the LBF 2008 during which the Arab world is the market focus.
‘We are focusing on the 20 countries and two states that constitute the Arab League and have Arabic as their official language,’ Joinson explains. ‘It is incredibly varied, and the population of many of the countries in the region is very young – 50% of Yemenis are under 15 and in some countries 70% of the population is under 35. It makes it incredibly vibrant.’ read more

April 14, 2008 | No Comments | Published Articles, What Authors Need To Know, Publishing commentator

Still not in full colour

The Author, spring 2008
Before Christmas HarperCollins UK and TRA released the results of a survey into reading habits among black and minority ethnic (BME) readers. I looked at this survey with interest, because four years ago this year I edited In Full Colour, the first report into the representation of BME employees within publishing. It was a nice way of asking: “Why is book publishing so white?” The answers made uncomfortable reading. HarperCollins’s findings were a barometer of success for initiatives co-ordinated by the Arts Council’s Decibel project in the wake of In Full Colour. It was a chance to see whether publishers and booksellers had been shocked out of their Guardian-reading complacency by the depressing statistics and in-depth interviews in the report. read more

April 3, 2008 | 4 Comments | Published Articles, Publishing commentator

From the archive: Ignore rejection slips: DIY is the route to go

Sunday Telegraph 11th September 2004
Do-it-yourself publishing has become the new route to success for struggling authors.
Several have recently won lucrative contracts from the biggest publishers after proving the worth of their books by first printing them themselves and selling them in local bookshops.
The falling cost of self-publishing means that authors whose work has been turned down by literary agents or publishers are now able to prove that their books will sell. read more

March 18, 2008 | 2 Comments | Published Articles, What Authors Need To Know, Publishing commentator

Wake up call

I think our cat Syb has been moonlighting for the movies. Enjoy…

March 14, 2008 | 1 Comment | Blog, General Discussion

Always blame the mother?

motherAnother day, another arrest in the case of teenager Scarlett Keeling in Goa: this time the suspect is accused of drugging, raping and murdering the 15-year-old, which suggests the local police have finally accepted the claims of Scarlett’s mother that the girl was murdered. Funny what a media campaign can do to change minds.
Meanwhile in Yorkshire, the media spotlight that fell on the disappearance of nine-year-old Shannon Matthews is rapidly fading. The story of the missing girl – unlike Madeleine McCann a year ago – has rapidly sunk from front page splash to inner page lead to also ran.
Instead coverage in both cases has spun into scrutiny of the lives of the mothers, their partners and where they live. The Mail bursts with indignation at interior shots of the caravans in which Fiona MacKeown is said to live with her “nine children by four fathers” – a fact repeated with the same salacious indignation by tabloid writers as the state of dress in which her poor daughter’s body was found. read more

March 13, 2008 | 4 Comments | Blog, News

Interview: Clare Morrall - the outsider

The Independent on Sunday 9th March 2008
“I am always drawn to the strange and the odd and the unusual – people on the outside looking in. I will never write a book about somebody having an affair with their next-door neighbour,” declares Clare Morrall. As soon as the words are out she looks embarrassed, as if she has been too forthright, too rude about rivals. “I don’t want to sound snooty about other people’s writing,” she adds hastily. “Other people can do the subject extremely well, I just know that I probably wouldn’t be able to.” read more

March 10, 2008 | 1 Comment | Published Articles, Publishing People, Celebrity Interviews, What Authors Need To Know

How can customer magazines pay their way?

Media Week 4th March 2008
Customer magazines have had a roller-coaster ride in recent months. As rival media experience the first signs of a slowdown, this sector has been booming: in 2007, a new customer magazine was launched for every working day of the year. Such unprecedented growth led industry body the Association of Publishing Agencies to predict that the value of the total customer publishing industry will pass £1bn by 2011 - an increase of 54% on the current market. read more

March 5, 2008 | No Comments | Published Articles, Investigative Journalism

How to win friends and influence a career

I’m busy. Isn’t everyone? It’s hardly a plea from the heart, though an excuse for keeping the site unfed for some time. One of the things that has taken up my time is teaching a module on the MA in Creative Writing (the novel) at Brunel University. The title of my section is The Novel In Society, but before you go all post-structuralist on me, I should warn you: this is a practical course. The aim is to equip the students with the tools to not only get published, but also to sustain their career - no matter whether they have an agent or how big their publishing house.
I really enjoy teaching the course. They are a very bright, talented and engaging bunch of students, and already a few have agents and offers, which is encouraging. read more

March 4, 2008 | 6 Comments | Blog, Publishing

Interview: Stella Duffy: Dirty Laundry

The Independent on Sunday 24th February 2008
Stella Duffy answers the door of her south London terrace covered in flour. “I’ve been baking biscuits for you,” she smiles as she heads down the narrow hallway. I scurry after her into an airy kitchen filled with the scent of spices. Cooking is a passion for the diminutive writer. “The thing about cooking is that you get applause immediately and, when you do what I do, even if you just write a piece for a magazine it will take at least two weeks to come out and a book takes years.”
In the case of her latest novel, The Room of Lost Things, the applause took even longer. The tale, which meanders through a ragged cast of south London characters, took five years to write. Or rather to rewrite. At one point, she exclaims, head in hands: “I have written this book so many times!”
The cause was a complex narrative and two reticent male central characters. “I had no idea what a stupid thing I was doing. I set out to write about two men because I thought it would be more interesting.” She laughs, refusing to take her struggle too seriously. “It didn’t occur to me that men don’t reveal their feelings as easily as women do. I had written three-quarters of the first draft when I went, ‘Argh! They’re not saying anything!’ And I couldn’t send them to the pub because one of them doesn’t drink. It took another four drafts to get them to talk to each other.” read more

February 25, 2008 | No Comments | Published Articles, Publishing People, Celebrity Interviews
« Previous Entries