The week after

So, we didn't win, kuñardocz. I say we, and really I mean the esteemed author, you know, the one with the talent. The rest of us are but remoras, but we were, and are, remoras with vision. We have his backlist, so there's a happiness in that, and he's a nice, nice man, which is a relief, if I'm being honest.

The party, you ask? The party, to use a cute Britism, was ace. I don't need to tell you about it because this upbeat Kiwi reporter has done it in their national press - have a look. Most of us nursed the Booker of all hangovers, with fresher-like side effects and inefficiency to beat the band all the next day.

But we have moved on! Both Chinatown and Foolish Mortals pieces finally came out, though not in my preferred form, the mice made a disappearance, and some fun was had with friends and visitors, some of which involved takoyaki. Stellou of the East, well versed in these things, swore blind that these were octopus balls, and yes, it was normal that they still be moving. She swears that this has something to do with bonito flakes dancing in the heat, but she's clearly not to be trusted. Me, I think it was tentacles, but hey, I ate them anyway.

Aside from such minor concerns, I've been plotting for the future. I'm thinking of setting up an international, multilingual publishing services agency in the relatively near future, for which I'm seeking advice, requests for types of services needed, freelancers looking for work, that sort of thing. I've received some good feedback so far, and I'm planning to have a bit of a planning sesh soon. If you're interested and I haven't been in touch with you already, please do comment here and we can chat.

That said, I must stress that this plan is not going to be put into effect now; we're talking a year or two from now. Meanwhile, I have reason to believe that my working life will change rather dramatically, so I won't do anything but put the wheels in motion for the agency plan quite yet.

There's this book, see...

...and my office is a little bit excited. I have done little over the past weeks but put through ever more editions of this gorgeous item, but it will all pay off tonight, by damn, or so we hope. Please cross your bloggy fingers for Mister Pip!

It’s a hard knocks life: the longest short piece ever published

Me, I’ll write just about anything, on any schedule for anyone willing to pay me and print it, preferably with a by-line, but shit, let’s be honest… I don’t even care about that.

So far, this tactic has served me well.

The problem with this, and with being junior in these things in general, is that it is extremely difficult to know when exactly to say ‘no’, and when to say ‘wait, wait. You want that when??’. Or alternately, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about Futurist German fiction / physics / the state of Vanuatu today’.

This was my situation when given Foolish Mortals by Jennifer Johnston. You see, I’ve only read one of her other sixteen novels, and that was insufficient for the task at hand. So I did some research, read some lit crit, read past reviews (bad form, I know, but I wanted the critic’s perspective), I hit up the family expert on these things for information, the lot. As you would. As you would, particularly when stuck for time. I then squeezed it into the original 800-word limit – big mistake. This is not the kind of review I usually write (it’s relatively more important than my standard tiny thing that no-one reads), so why I thought that this was going to work, I don’t know.

It didn’t.

Rewrite number one: with the suggestions of Bogglingly Kind Editor, worked in all manner of detail on characters, places, specifics, and as full a critique as I could manage of how this novel sits within her oeuvre to date. Can I do this? Can I, Hell. I can’t remember the last time I wrote 1,000 words on anything, except here of course, but that hardly has to be coherent. It was an ungodly mess.

Rewrite number two: also probably a mistake. Sent Rewrite 1 off to the family expert, presently situated on the east coast of the U.S. That, folks, means a time difference, and resulting lateness to submit on my end. I have never, ever, ever been late to submit any written work to anyone. It also entailed her having to edit extremely quickly, which is unfair, which created a contagious panic. What’s more, the family expert is (obviously) much more able for this than I am, and could do this standing on her head.



Submitted, now at 1,200 words…






…aaaaannd returned.

Rewrite number three: now cut back down to close on the original 800 words. Picture added, Herself in the glasses, no doubt, though just a grey rectangle in my pdf at the moment. Also, text is now ‘lopsided’ as the Bogglingly Kind Editor kindly put it, from the cut. I’ll be rewriting it this weekend, which is not what I wanted to do atall, though I am now more terrified than ever to get it wrong.

More to the point, despite kindness, I am quite sure that the BKE will now never give me anything of this length / placement ever again, which is extremely depressing.

Bespectacled Chinaphile, are you reading? Brace yourself for your début!

Bad writing, good writing, big decisions

Please, please stop what you're doing and read what is now likely to reign as the worst poem ever written in the English language, as reported here in the Guardian. It was unclear from the article who exactly decides the prize-winner or how, but clearly, they're not wrong.

I'd say read it over your coffee break, but it's so laugh-out-loud bad that it might be inadvisable.

Better still is the good-humoured rant devoted to it in the Guardian blog, in which readers wrote in their least favourites and duked it out amongst themselves.

A propos, the Bespectacled Chinaphile was ranting last night about the Poetry Society Café hitting him up for a £1.50 membership fee with his latte; seems to me he should pay up and see if he can't best them at their own game if these are the results of their labours. Not only is the BC not a poet, he's also not a spook, so really I'm a bit disillusioned. That said, we're now going to be freelancing for the same paper, which is quite exciting, though this is but one of a list of absurdly impressive credentials for this all-singing, all-dancing son of a publisher.

Next day, back in my favourite Brity daily, and charming Andrew Motion, (one of whose poems appeared in the aforementioned blog, *eek*) wrote the warmest piece I've seen in 'Writers' Rooms'; he seems to have actually cared about its writing, given it some time and made it count. Others, like Famous Seamus in the same column, have catalogued their bits and bobs, though I love that the boards of his desk were 'polished by the soft shiftings of a century of student schoolmistresses' - yeah, because that would help you focus. You can hear the gabardined bums scoot.

Mum, on her annual pilgrimage of the faithful to the Dublin Theatre festival, reported back that all is not well, that much of it was uninspiring and stale, and that the focus on the working class and immigrants is worthy, though a few pieces that examined something a little closer to home for the audience might be just the ticket - New Ireland needs a kick up the arse, and this was not the Festival to do it. That said, Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street was a success. I saw it here in Kilburn at the Tricycle and thought it extremely moving, though weak in places, and so ran most of the reviews. Karl Sheils is a powerful one; I realised that I'd seen him in Beauty in a Broken Place (Abbey), This Lime Tree Bower (Project) and indeed in Intermission - but will someone tell me, is he Brush's son? Also - Radio Macbeth was reported as being thought-provoking on language and expression, so I'm sorry to be missing it.Meanwhile, back at our lovely flat, the kitchen has been ripped up to dry out a leak from next door... long story short, we're looking at rubble, loud, hot machines and eventually, builders, a process that will last until the end of February. This is a major drag, and seriously unfortunate time-wise as it covers the winter months, the ones during which you'd most like to be comfortable at home. No one's fault, and the wonderful landlady has continued to be helpful, supportive, and hand back large chunks of the rent.

This is all well and good, but it's hard in that, sorry, it's another thing that just hasn't turned out as I'd hoped. Granted, I don't need a lot of encouragement in this arena, but really, we have to decide what's going to happen next before I lose me marbles entirely. No need to skip town just yet; I'll give it a year and a bit, as planned. I need a good location, hence photos on this post from our August trip to Brussels. Brussels is a definite contender, a city where they do, at least, have a sense of humour: I do need something to look forward to and plan for, and we're going to work on where we're going next and for how long. Initially, I thought it enough to be somewhere lovely and potter along in our next phase, but maybe that's just not true. I should probably plan to be doing something engaging, and that needs forethought, particularly if you're looking to do it all in a second or third language. Really, I think it's time for me to go home, but I'm up for fantastic master plans, too.

Answers on a postcard to parkbench.

Reviewing Dublin

So last week, I packed up and rocked out all happy-like for a few days at home. Flying at lunchtime on a Wednesday, let me tell you... why have one seat when you can have six?

Arrived to an office with a view across the Green and on to the Dublin Mountains (I can't even know where to start on that one) a humus wrap and a smiley Brendan, friend and fearless editor of the Dublin Review and the resulting Dublin Review Reader. The launch of the Reader was my excuse to come over, but God knows I don't need one. I can't imagine how pleased he must have been, and how mortified to be lauded by the likes of Colm Tóibín. Mortifying, but deserved. All the great and the good were there, but better still, it was a pleasingly young crowd to boot. Finally met Claire Kilroy, who's as lovely as billed by our own good selves here, and naturally by many more important people. Met a girl whose family house we once rented, which was extremely surreal. The whole thing got a nice write-up and photo in the paper (shout if you need help with the link).

After staying up until five (fine choice), I then met the Ex, who thought my state hilarious because it's usually his. Later, in the same coffee shop, I met the only editorial staff member of New Island press. Sorry, did you follow? The ONLY editor or editorial anything for a list spanning history, memoir, travel, lit crit, women's studies and fiction, thirty strong per year. Thirty. Now, as she modestly said herself, some are in series, many are rather straightforward... but I know a few people on this more monied side of the publishing waters who might learn something.

She explained that, of course, they don't have plans to expand, but I would have fallen off my chair had she said otherwise. She did suggest that I freelance on copy-editing and the like - I can't imagine that one could make a living like that, but what, as I ask myself daily, do I know. I think a better plan might be to convince an existing house to give me reign to do a fiction list, and dammit, Janet, I still want to do the MPhil in Literary Translation at Trinity (TCD, not Trinity, Dublin... we are not an Oxbridge outpost, dahlink). I can't get enough of their webpage and how it bears the practical, approachable, multiple-hat wearing mark of my favourite professor, Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, who fosters the kind of interdisciplinary view of academic study seen in American degrees with none of the accompanying bullshit. But clearly, he's an interdisciplinary kinda guy.

I then toddled down to Wicklow and thought too much. Dangerous, female and generally ill-advised, thinking too much, particularly about the unknowable, vaguely near future is completely exhausting. The whole mid-week weekend left me shaken and wanting to relocate home to Dublin for good, now, and I don't know what to do. It's hard to have a night of the kind of working life you want with a combination of people you've known and loved for years and people you'd love to get to know, and then get back on the plane, alone - I do wish that the Bearded One had been with me. As people like to remind me, I have an interesting job with great potential on a good and growing fiction list in an old, famous publishing house, I've landed some great reviewing gigs, I live in a bustling city with lots to do that's also close to home, I'm coming on for four years with one of the best men on the planet who is kind, intelligent, adoring and adored. After one of the worst years on record, we have made a happy heap in a cheap, beautiful flat in a leafy bit of the city, 20 minutes from work, rented to us by a wonderfully warm publishing grande dame. Friends from all over regularly fill the house. To welcome me home were white peaches and pomegranates in the fruit basket, and a pastel de nata from the Portuguese deli.

PDG, right? Right.

Still, bring on November '08 and the decisions that it will bring.

Moonwalking in Chinatown

So, funny as, yours truly has reviewed two whole plays for a paper. Oh, yes, P. Bench, theatre reviewer extraordinaire. I've been going long enough, and I know what I like... and I know a bad play when I see one, but does this qualify me? Probably not.

At any rate, the more recent of the two was Moonwalking in Chinatown put on by the Soho Theatre on Dean St.

Basically, it's textbook (oh, yes, I read one) promenade theatre, toodling as it does through the real, live streets of Chinatown with no less than four separate audiences, mobile crew and rotating actors in an hour-long show. The beginning needs work! HOT, people, it was hot. The wait was long. We stood on a landing looking at goldfish-like officeworkers who had no choice in the matter. There was no water, or air, and there were old people... ugh. And there's a bar, a NICE bar downstairs. Sort it out. Otherwise, on with the show, make a long story short, we were handed colour-coded tiles and led out under coordinating lanterns.

We were one with the actors, confused them for us, for passersby, for lunatics, whatever. The stage was shopwindows, supermarkets, smelly back alleys and beatific courtyards (yes, they can be) in the middle of high-priced real estate. It was a silly story, really, but they did a slam-bang job of it and we all learned a bit about things Moon Festival and Chinese.

But I'll tell you what we didn't come away with: a MOON CAKE, people. Come on. Is stellou the only one to provide?? Or am I going to have to haul my white, ill-informed beeehind down to Chinatown to sort the lotus seed paste from the cured ham? Because I can tell you, it won't be pretty. And how will I avoid the damn duck eggs? Where is that clever, bespectacled chinaphile? You know who you are. And I bet you know the real word for a chinaphile. So I went cakeless. Really, it would have been the perfect end to a fun night, but hey.

I commend the fine folks at Soho Theatre for putting it all together, t'ain'tabeen easy. Likewise, I'm impressed by the web gear for this show: a ‘moonblog’ which is cute, but could be a little rougher around the edges, along with mp3s of interviews, and some of the cast even announced their availability on facebook for chats after the show (soho bananaboy and duriangirl among others). This is exactly the sort of thing that theatres should be taking on: make it different, make it lively, and for Chrissake stop flogging half-dead donkeys up and down the West End.

MacNeice 100 today

It's been another long, not-so-great day, so let's have a bit of this.



Dublin

Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.

This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades -
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

The lights jig in the river
With a concertina movement
And the sun comes up in the morning
Like barley-sugar on the water
And the mist on the Wicklow hills
Is close, as close
As the peasantry were to the landlord,
As the Irish to the Anglo-Irish,
As the killer is close one moment
To the man he kills,
Or as the moment itself
Is close to the next moment.

She is not an Irish town
And she is not English,
Historic with guns and vermin
And the cold renown
Of a fragment of Church latin,
Of an oratorical phrase.
But oh the days are soft,
Soft enough to forget
The lesson better learnt,
The bullet on the wet
Streets, the crooked deal,
The steel behind the laugh,
The Four Courts burnt.

Fort of the Dane,
Garrison of the Saxon,
Augustan capital
Of a Gaelic nation,
Appropriating all
The alien brought,
You give me time for thought
And by a juggler's trick
You poise the toppling hour -
O greyness run to flower,
Grey stone, grey water,
And brick upon grey brick.

-- Louis MacNeice

Dorma Pavarotti

Today, Luciano Pavarotti died. Every paper bore his name, and every radio station woke us up to his voice.

But here in London, the Italians got it right, as Italians are want to do. I was flying on my bike, thinking about Florence, and I heard it.

Today was the day that ice cream trucks blared Nessun norma as they did their rounds.

Shortie of the Week

It's been a while, but in the interim, American author Grace Paley passed away. I must admit that I never read loads of her work, but then, what I don't know would fill a room... for although A.M. Homes is not my favourite, Dan Schneider seems a bit harsh on the Laura Hird site. Homes did at least a twofer on Paley, here in 1998 and in the Guardian yesterday.

But we're democratic here at Parkbench, so go on and look her up yourself for your short fiction reading this week. Her greatest hits include 'Goodbye and Good Luck' (a popular title for her obit in lots of papers) and ‘A Conversation With My Father’. Really, she seems to have been a sweet, introspective, thoughtful type of woman, as suggested by this charming interview - somewhere in there the suggestion that we should have known more of her and her writing, though I suspect that at 26 I may be exactly the wrong age to have been introduced to her work in American highschool.

But most wonderfully, do please go and listen in to the writer herself through the links to past interviews and discussions on NPR in the States - nothing does it like audio.


Alternately, read the single most astonishing collection of short fiction of recent years - Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan. I was thrilled to have met her last Christmas, and she gives off those eerie waves of genius. That's all there is to it. I hope someone lets me review it, and I will do so here soon.

Brief escape

So, I forgot to tell you - we went to Scotland. Glasgow, then Edinburgh, just at the end of the Festival. There were trains, plates of butterfish, mussels, opera singers, mimes, shops, friendly people, and one tiny, warm, blue hotel room. There was a very intriguing traditional pastry - a rhubarb pastry, to be exact - with plain, thin pastry, filled with stewed rhubarb.

There was also a concert- the Smashing Pumpkins, to be precise, and the Bearded One went to a higher place. Markets in the sunshine selling pretty dice, smelly soaps. Amnesty campaigners dozing in the breeze. Understandable, cause or no cause.
And vaguely amused old ladies watching a Canadian street performer exhaust himself for money.

Such an amazing wee hollyday.

And, I got to catch up with an old friend, an opera singer, as ever... and sometime pool shark, as ever.

Irish Publishers, learning to compete?

As part of an ongoing debate about Irish publishers' birthright to the Irish market, hackles were raised a while back by CLÉ president, Tony Farmar, with this article in the Irish Times. Should you not have a log-in for the IT, I'll quote the salient points in italics.

-The average European country publishes four times as many titles per head as we do. In terms of titles per million of population, Ireland is actually the weakest performer in the whole expanded EU.

- Unprotected either by language or distance from Britain, fewer than one in five literary and general books sold here are Irish-published. As far as books are concerned, Ireland is still part of the British Empire.

-There are four historical and structural reasons for this situation:
the powerful British publishing industry
Irish authors find British publishers difficult to resist
the radical shift of the terms of trade in favour of retailers
the Irish are reluctant book readers

Reading between the lines, from this I understand that Irish publishers don't know how to compete. Here, the President of CLÉ, compliments the Brits on their "honed marketing skills and deep pockets". Having seen a couple of truly unremarkable marketing and publicity campaigns by small Irish houses, and heard the moans of the smaller-circulation Irish press on their difficulties securing review copies, I wonder why CLÉ is not lambasting some of its own members for failing to make the most of what resources they have, or indeed, as an educating body, why they themselves don't endeavour to teach small presses how to hone their own marketing skills with an aim to, you know, making money, which they could then invest in future titles.

As for the Irish not buying books, 10% of books sold on the two islands are sold in the Republic of Ireland. Try that one on for size, population-wise. Ever see the clever Irish-themed tables at (UK) bookshop chains like Waterstone's and Hodgy Figg? UK booksellers, and increasingly Irish ones in city-centre Dublin like Eason's, Hughes & Hughes, Books Upstairs and the like, have come to realise that summer sales skyrocket thanks to... you guessed it, the Yanks buying books on holiday.

And every so often, we get a window into a displeasingly familiar way of thinking, with left-fielders like, "There is, of course, no knowing what unconscious Anglicisations are necessary to make Irish writings attractive to English tastes". Impossible to know where to begin with that one, so I'll leave it be.

In response to his own question, 'So what can be done?' Farmar comments,
The ideal structure of a viable publishing house is one that synergises the skills, interests and risks of different types of publishing. The hectic life of a Christmas best-seller sustains the long-term risk of "high art" literary publishing. Irish publishers are keen to develop more literary publishing, but this has to be done in the context of a healthily balanced set of activities.

Although the stories we tell ourselves in high literature are important, they are by no means the only way in which people's understandings and social capital are fostered. Not everyone has the mental stamina for John Banville or Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Less refined, more mediated books spread culture in its widest sense to a bigger audience. Books on such topics as local history, political issues such as "Boston versus Berlin", having a baby here, Celtic prayer, GAA, folk music, and our experience of cancer, are the "long thoughts" of a nation, for which locally published books are the uniquely appropriate medium.

Indeed. As someone who routinely scans Irish publishers' webpages for jobs, I can tell you that local history, health, the GAA and local and political histories are the mainstay of more than half of CLÉ's members, so that appears to be nothing more than back-patting - absurd, to my thinking, because this is Real World Business 101. I wish that I could comment on the sales of such titles, but I do know that they have absolutely no appeal for foreign rights sales. I would love to talk to someone in the know about rights sales in Ireland, as I know that they bring in a decent amount of income for publishers everywhere else in the world. I beleive that the expression is 'money for old rope', but maybe our situation is unique.

The promotion of a vigorous service by local publishers to local writers would seem to be an obvious responsibility of the Arts Council. However, the Arts Council's remit is to "literature", and it is unlikely that any possible widening of that term could include publications on looking after an elderly parent or proportional representation, however culturally useful they may be. We therefore need - as has been evolved in Canada, for instance - an approach to supporting publishing because of its wider contribution. Recently, Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist and poet ... has acknowledged the "dedicated nurturing" that Canadian publishers, supported by their Book Publishing Industry Development Program against a similarly "over-mighty neighbour", were able to give him and authors such as Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel, Carol Shields and Rohinton Mistry.

This is simply nonsensical. He says that he wants a widening of the terms of 'literature' as decreed by the Arts Council, and that we should look to the Canadians for an example. But what about that list does not say 'literature' to you? OK, Yann Martel is YA, but literary YA, and Carol Sheilds might be forced into 'women's fiction', but commercial they ain't. Literature IS art, that's why the Arts Council happily supports it. Commercial writing, as he outlines above, is the kind that makes publishing houses money and affords them the luxury of publishing literature. Looks like the Canadians have this one figured out just fine - why don't we?

He then goes on to compose a laundry-list of demands for the Arts Council, suggesting among other more sensible ideas,
privileging Irish-published books in public libraries and other institutions. The EU rightly sees books as the backbone of national cultural identity, and is prepared to allow otherwise iron rules, for instance in competition law, to be waived in their favour. In terms of literature, but particularly funding new literary talent and initiatives, I couldn't agree more, but folks, publishing is a BUSINESS. The people who run publishing houses must heed Farmar's advice and learn to balance what sells with what's art, and publish accordingly.


And as ever-on-the-ball Eoin Purcell points out, it's only going to get worse in terms of the British Invasion, but the subject was closed for the moment as far as the Irish Times were concerned - my letter to the editor, below, wasn't published.

"As a recent (and hopefully short-term) Irish expat working in the British publishing industry, I share Tony Farmar's frustration with the state of Irish publishing in his article of June 20, 'Is Irish publishing on the edge?'.

I would, however, like to point out the exodus of home-grown authors to Britain is not the only drain of Irish publishing talent. In addition to the 'obvious advantages to being published in England', it is short wonder that Irish authors are so sought after by well-established UK presses when the ranks of these same institutions are increasingly filled with young, talented Irish staff.

When in 2005, armed with an honours degree and considerable relevant experience, I found myself unable to find paid employment of any kind within Irish publishing, I relocated reluctantly to London for a graduate trainee scheme. There I joined the Society of Young Publishers, where I was surprised to be greeted by their large Irish membership as part of an ever-growing circle.

Apparently, I was not alone, and most had left when confronted by the financially strapped, closed world of Irish publishing.

I am proud and indeed relieved to have since secured a full-time editorial position in one of those prestigious publishing companies to which Mr. Farmar refers. I enjoy my work and benefit from working on a challenging and diverse fiction list in a highly respected publishing house, but I look forward tothe day when I can return to apply my skills to the works of Irish authors. I hope that publishing houses in Ireland heed Farmar's advice, but that they also attack the task of developing their lists to balance literature, commercial fiction and domestic non-fiction with titles of international interest, which might help to generate profit through improved sales of foreign rights. Furthermore, the industry must address its continuing failure to publicise, market and distribute their books effectively abroad.

Then, rather than bemoaning the success of their British counterparts, Irish publishing might welcome home experienced Irish staff and create suitable publishing houses for our great Irish literary talent."

Periodic Plump for Independent Everything

It's that time again, time to rant and rave about the neglected glories of small, independent presses. I am, of course, not alone in my ranting - when am I ever? tschaah, never - as witnessed by the fine folks at Branching Out, a resource for reader development. What peaked my interest is their Independent Press of the Month page, in which they present a well-informed page on whatever press has taken their fancy. This month, it's Peepal Press, which specialises in Caribbean and Black British writing.

Admirably, particularly because the independent presses needn't be integral to their programme, Branching Out also makes a point to highlight the functionality of the press' website, which is extremely important; the LEAST a small press can do is set up a decent, functional and hey, attractive website. It's a small investment, and one that small Irish publishers would do well to make. Some, like Maverick Press with their myspace page, have led the way, along with Liberties Press, but so many others have fourth-rate websites or none at all.

Likewise, while we're cleaning house on all findings indie, I've finally found an independent Irish bookseller online, which I intend to use for all gifts etc. going home. It's the web branch of Dame Street's Books Upstairs in Dublin.

With the sad closure of Greene's Bookshop's city centre shop in Dublin a while back (not dead and gone, though, they've moved to *gack* Sandyford, have a look at their websitehere), something should also be done for those who prefer to purchase in the flesh (paper?), there's this website listing of Irish independent bookshops Books Upstairs in Dublin.

Will keep up a list of interesting independent publishers and sellers in the lists to the right, starting with the amazing Snow Books/and their lovely staff blog. They're doing something very clever, bringing the bloggers directly to them rather than having to go out and find them. At any rate, hopefully I'll doing a better job on the indie list than I have of the short fiction posts, *blog guilt blog guilt*...

Fishies

Like most mere mortals with bad salaries and high rents, I live in Paperback Land. This means that I read all books (other than those I work on) a year after they come out, when they're cheaper, more colourful and more plentiful. If you have somehow, like myself until recently, managed to miss Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, you should know that it is indeed a book to be judged by its cover – and title. OK, so that's not the Yemen, but throw a girl a bone. Anyway, the book really does do what it says on the tin… of salmon. Schnar. A serious-minded fisheries scientist thinks that he might have to walk away from his career rather than get involved with a daft government-backed scheme to beat them all: taking Atlantic salmon to the wadis of the Yemen to please a rich Caledoniaphile (oh, yes) Sheik and provide a good photo-op in the Middle East for the PM. There’s a nice narrative sideline regards the bigger political machinations of the scheme involving a send-up of Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell that’s more Yes, Minister than West Wing, though it does get a bit bogged-down halfway through. Eventually, the good scientist, trapped in a loveless marriage he never realised was miserable, finds that his life lacks meaning and adventure. Soon, he is flying around the world to learn about holding tanks, cooling systems and how to trick fish into adapting to desert life, while dodging his increasingly enraged wife, a sycophant spin-doctor and a backstabbing boss. It’s charming and funny and really just a straightforward middle-aged picaresque. Highly recommended for some fun, easy reading. And of course you already knew all that, but Hell, no one reads this anyway!

Finally, we found a new joint

Much though we love our tiny piece of Kentish Town, we are moving up the road to leafier pastures. In an unusual but hopefully fabulous arrangement, we'll be enjoying our own floor of a little Victorian house on a hill, complete with private garden. Living room and bedroom, each with big sash windows, big and bockety kichen/diner, tiny bathroom with bath, and best of all, bricked patio garden with raised beds which runs the length of kitchen and bath and around the bathroom with a little pergola. The landlady, one-time publishing grande dame and now involved in human rights (!) lives upstairs. She travels a lot, as do we, so there will be relatively few weekends in which we're all there together. The catch is that there's no division between our space and hers, other than the stairs, but it's all very private, really, and others before us have done it for years at a stretch so it can't be bad. Here, look what I drew! And the best part of all this? We're still on all the same bus routes, all but one overland, and we're still even on the Northern Line. Oh, yes. And, it's £200 per week including all bills except for phone.

Shortie of the Week

I've been on me hols, hence the radio silence and the lateness of this post! So really it's ok...

After an epic tour of the American South, beginning with an unplanned but lovely overnight in Virginia, Hilton Head, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia and finishing up in Raleigh, North Carolina, I'm back and exhausted.

In honour of the highlight of my trip, this week's short fiction is Savannah native Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' (1955).

Shortie of the Week

The inaugural Shortie is short fiction from the New Yorker earlier this month: 'One Minus One', by Colm Tóibín.

Read Short Fiction, Dammit

I work in a publishing house on the fiction list, so I know, live and breathe the truth that short stories don't sell. It is true. It is indisputable. And I'll tell you something else: it's absurd. I cannot understand why, in our saw-it-on-my-RSS-feed, soundbite-luvvin' world that people cannot and will not get their heads around the short story. It is the ultimate in potted brilliance. It is the thirty-minute lunchtime workout, the Coffee Break Spanish, the breakfast-in-a-shake of literature. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. A double espresso with no time to stir the sugar, down the hatch, crumple the paper cup and move on, gets your heart racing and out into the world. How can it NOT appeal to commuters, new mothers, travelling salesmen, teenagers and those who love to read but haven't the time? It never ceases to baffle me.

So, in the hope of inspiring a little appreciation for the gorgeous morsel, the tiny square of sticky baklava, the perfectly round pork-pie that is a fine piece of short fiction, I'm going to go out there and find one every week and post it, right here. And just to keep up the visuals, I'll include a parkbench original to complement the broader theme of the work.

Watch! Next post coming up... now!

Want some dorky, book-related fun?

We all do. So, I read about it somewhere or other, and had completely forgotten about it until I started thinking about the Clutter Monster living on the lower floor of zee tiny abode. At home, you know, in a country where people appreciate books, second-hand shops in big cities thrive, and are run by pleasant people. Here, however, my charming, once-read review copies get sneers from snotty booksellers near Leicester Square who flog Italian first editions of Godot and spell Beckett's name wrong on the shocking price tag. I saw it. So, in lieu of lugging them back to Dún Laoghaire as I often do in exchange for dinner-money (bag of books = €10-15), I thought I'd set them free.

Book Crossing is an extremely sweet and seemingly very popular idea. I'm linking to it along the right-hand side here forever more. Basically, you sign up (no big deal), register your books (add the ISBN and they do the rest), and then leave 'Release Notes' describing how you set your book free. You could leave it on a café table or throw it onto a passing barge.














All you have to do is tell eager bookcrossers where you put it. Did you leave it in a tree in Primrose Hill? On the 46A bus to UCD? Or did you pass it off to a friend? Dedicated souls are signed up to email alerts for areas they're likely to be near, so that they can even go hunting to see if they can beat random passersby to the book. Though you can pass off books to people you know, it is SO MUCH more fun to hide them in the wild! Ziploc bags are recommended, as are post-its on the cover declaring that 'This book is NOT lost! It's free! For you!' or some such enthuse... Then the curious passerby picks it up, and hopefully reads it, and logs back in to the website that bookcrossing.com has associated with that very book to say: 'Found your book! Love it / hate it / gave it to my sister / passed it on at the newstand of 4th and Delaware in Cheboygan, Michigan / on a vaporetto heading to St. Mark's in Venice'. So, ok, my books, though picked up, have not been reported back on, but I live in hope. And anyway, it's fun, and if you leave your books hidden in public, you feel like you're nine and on a treasure hunt, which is no bad thing.

Give your old books new life and send them on adventures. :)

Turkish Delights

A month on, much has happened. Job happiness has been further secured, I've turned twenty-six, made a small name for myself with a great London literary agent, and most importantly, been to a new city, a new country and a new continent.

Not sure what to start with, so I'll go with Istanbul and the, er, aforementioned Turkish delights. The Bearded One has nine months of Turkish under his belt, and neither of us had the least notion how popular this would make us. Everywhere we went, we met the sweetest, most enthusiastic people I have ever come across- certainly as a tourist. I was concerned about dressing modestly and the whole routine, and found that though I was wise to watch my Ps and Qs, we were welcome everywhere we wanted to go, and met and saw a whole swathe of Turkish society. The hotel, Hotel Turkuaz , was located in southern Sultanahmet, near Kumkapi and the Marmara coast in a neighbourhood that did not look like a likely tourist spot to say the least. Alive with the sounds (and smells) of stray cats like the rest of the city, and home to a politically but not religiously right-wing community, it was extremely poor, with most of the houses subsiding into the ground at distinctly non-right angles. It was a shame to see, because the hotel (which is indeed turquoise and not pink as it appears on the website- other photos are bang on) is a gorgeous example of Ottoman architecture, and there were a few others standing proud.It looks a little bit like Louisiana to me- tall and creaky, wooden, though tongue-and-groove, not clapboard, and full of curliques. It was run by the charming Maria, a cat- and turtle-loving Romanian. Nothing was too much trouble, though at times her advice regarding boring bits like ferry schedules warranted double-checking. The resident turtles, Fatima (pictured below) and Osman (camera-shy), oversaw epic and non-varying breakfsts in the chilly courtyard: eggs any way you like 'em, gorgeous, wet feta-like cheese, dried olives in oil, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, brioche, bread, butter, more cheese and jam. And as one astute elderly frenchwoman muttered on our last morning, 'Mais ecoute: il faut manger les crudités le matin, parce qu'on n'aura pas des autres durant la journée. Eh? EHH?' I got her, alright, with her little-old-lady subtlety. She was a legend: intrepid and nothing daunted, she was eating her crudités le matin AND learning Turkish at the age of seventy-five. But I digress: seeing the sights requires all the energy provided by our brekkies, so we took plenty of pit-stops along the way.
Beyoğlu is the place to be in the evenings, and check out the little boreens at the right-hand side at the base of İstiklal Caddesi, where the old tram terminates. We found a tiny, slightly dodgy-looking cafe, where the owner happily skipped up a death-defying ladder to settle us down in a tiny, cushion-filled erzatz loft for beers and 'cigar-shaped' cheese borek. No taps, no oven- just bottled Efes and gorgeous home-made food made, I suspect, that morning by the owner's mother and heated up when orders came in. Tasty, friendly and cheap. Live music started below, and a vacated table for two opened up, so were helped back down to reality to join the 12-strong crowd. Plates appeared out of the tiny kitchen, and that one amazing night happened, the one you always have in a holiday, the one that could never be reconstructed in the cafe that could never be found again. I'll leave the sights to speak for themselves, I guess, and recommend a great website on Turkey: pretty it ain't, but yer man's info is unparalleled for its accuracy and breadth, and we can thank the Turkey Travel Planner for a lot of our planning beforehand. We'll have to go back, as we could spend a whole 'nother week on boats seeing the islands.