Well not exactly everything but these Closeout merchants are always economical with the truth. What I mean is I am having one of my periodical book dispersals. I have been so caught up in Simon Serrailler and the Case of the  ..well, you wait and see that I lost the use of my limbs so I decided to clear out the little room next door. This little room started off in our lives here as the Younger Daughter`s bedroom. When she moved down the corridor it turned into my study only I don`t really use a study so it became another book room with some huge cupboards in which I keep stationary and pens and spare printer cartridges and the Sylvanian Families House complete with animals and furniture. You know the sort of cupboard I mean. The bookshelves house my collection of 600 plus Ladybird Books, all the books I have used for my MA in Theology - shelf after shelf, abandoned once a module has been completed. So that`s done with Genesis then. St Paul ? Been there, done him. I`m now onto the Dissertation part so there`s a large collection of obscure books on  medieval Cistercian monasticism. Otherwise, the shelves are an odd random mixture - one whole bookcase just became a dumping ground for stuff that didn`t fit in anywhere else. I keep the foreign editions of my own books in the Big Cupboards too.

So, I bought 20 of those extremely strong and useful hessian bags from Tesco and off I went.

I dispose of my unwanted books in a number of ways.

1. I sell the best on amazon. Textbooks and academic books cost a fortune so it is good to get back something and they sell very fast.

2. Oxfam Bookshop. Hospice Bookshop.

3. The shelves in my doctors' surgery. They sell hardbacks for £1, paperbacks for 50p and I often pick up a bargain.Money goes to buying equipment for the surgery which the poor doctors on their annual pittance, can`t afford.

4. The Village Hall bookstall at the monthly Sale and Coffee Morning. They only like paperbacks, crime, romance and popular books. Cheap as chips.

5. NEW BOOKS. These go to the library. Gloucestershire Library Service is pretty good and hasn`t slung out all the books to make way for Seaside Arcade Games and other frolics, so I like to give them all my brand new books. They`re jolly glad of them and they snatch at any of my own books translated into foreign languages like Polish. The Poles borrow a lot of books apparently. Good.

The piles get sorted into the hessian bags and lugged downstairs. Oh look at all that lovely empty shelf space !

I keep meaning to go through the hundreds of Ladybirds for duplicates and sling them out, or trade them but every time I start there arrives a Person from Porlock who seems hell bent on ensuring that I never get this particular task done.

But I have pruned the paperbacks ruthlessly, the secateurs have been through the M.A. stuff and snipped away a bit and Gloucestershire Libraries are going to be very pleased when they get the big pile of Simon Serraillers in  French, German, American, Polish, Dutch and a language I do not recognise. Serbo-Croat ? Urdu ?

It`s just the Sylvanian Families House Complete with Animals and Furniture I seem to be stuck with.

...asked J.K.Rowling in the American court.

The case of JKR v EVDA (Eric Van der Ark) is an intriguing and somewhat confusing one - the waters of the case started out clear but have got muddier as the NY court hearing has progressed but the basis of the complaint is that EVDA has taken chunks of JKR`s books and reprinted them wholesale in his Companion to or Encyclopdia of, the Harry Potter books - i.e. he has gone way beyond what it is universally regarded as an acceptable amount of in-copyright text to  reproduce ( or nick ) for your own purposes. Everything else would seem to be irrelevant so it does boil down to JKR`s question, 'Are we the owners of our own work ?'

The murky ocean of copyright law is one into which I have barely even dipped my little toe. Is there any difference, copyright-wise, between matter on the internet and matter in printed books ? Because it is the internet which has changed everything forever and made the work of the copyright police well-nigh impossible.

JKR has approved EVDA`s fan website on which his companion to all things Harry Potter is based. Perhaps it is very different from the printed book. But it is  also relatively easy to bring a case against a printed book and, if successful, to have all copies destroyed. Still, two wrongs do not a right make and if EVDA has indeed nicked very large chunks of JKR`s work and simply reproduced them for his own purposes, including the making of money, then he is in breach of her copyright whether he puts his work up on the net or publishes it as a book. None of this has absolutely anything to do with JKR`s fame or money, it is simply to do with her claim to own the copyright, within the law as it stands, of her own material. So, legally perhaps a little less murky than we thought.

But we come back to her question.  'Are we (authors) the owners of our own work ?' Within the law, and subject to its qualifications, and for 70 years after the date of the our death, the answer is, of course, yes. But in some other senses rather key senses, the answer is 'no'. 

Once I have published a book and it is out there, its content, its characters, its images, its message, whatever it may be said to contain, belongs to everyone who reads it. They change it. Reading is a two-way process, an interactive communication between author and reader. Until it is read by someone else, a novel is a dead thing. The reader breathes life into it by the process of reading. When you pick up my novel and read it you share in its creation, you participate in bringing it to life. Without you it has none. It is dead matter. Every reader CHANGES the text even though, paradoxically, the text remains the same. 

A novel is read. People have opinions about it. They envisage its characters for themselves. They write essays about it and join book groups to discuss it with other people whose opinions and images are all quite different. None of this has anything to do with me, the author, once I have not written but published the novel. That is the key word. PUBLIC-ation. After that I no longer own my own work. Let us suppose the novel is turned into a play or a film. Someone else takes over my story and my characters, breathes a different form of life into them, changes them in all manner of  ways. It is like having a child. While it is in your body and known to no one else, part of no one else but you, you could be said to own it. The second it breathes and lives an independent life, you no longer do. The child, like the book, belongs to itself and to every other person with whom it will interact. The analogy is not a perfect one of course but it serves.

Watching your child grow away from you, changing and being changed as it does so, is something about which any parent has mixed emotions but over which they have no control. In the end it is inevitable. If you don`t want it to happen, don`t have a child. If you don`t want others to change the book you wrote and make it part of themselves instead of part of you, write any number of them but do not give them to another soul to read and above all do not make them public - publish - them.

I am not suggesting that JKR doesn`t know all this - of course she does and the court case is about a much narrower area. But her question is a useful one for any author or would-be author to address. There are many aspects to this and I have thought about many of them over the years. But there`s always something new so this weekend I have been asking myself what my attitude  would be if someone some day proposed to publish a Companion to the Simon Serrailler crime novels, or what will eventually be the 'Gullywith books'. Would I  try and stop it. Allow it to go ahead provided it made clear that it was 'Unauthorized ?' Or would I decide to compile one myself on the grounds that it would be The Authorized Version. 

 Would I ignore anything on the internet because of the near-impossibility of having websites closed down, but, like JKR, object if unauthorized books went in print ? Would I check out how much of my material had been lifted into someone else`s book verbatim and only object if I thought there was too much  ? How much is too much ?

Well ? 

My American publisher Peter Mayer received a Lifetime Achievement award at the London Book Fair and said some pertinent things in his speech. He is a book-man to his fingertips - he knows a thing or two and he made a very good case for putting out of print titles back into print - to every reader who has not previously read a particular book, that book is a new book. The argument used for Print on Demand is that no book is ever out of print with POD. But there are many things wrong with POD, and setting aside the fact that each one is very expensive, that the digital print is unattractive and strains and eyes and the covers are dull, the most important one is that you cannot browse through PODs in a bookshop. If you know you want a title and find it is OP but available as a POD then you may (it`s a big may as yet) be able to order a copy. There may - I don`t know - be POD catalogues but if so, where are they ? How does the book buying public know what is available ? So many of the books I buy I know nothing about until I see them in a bookshop and the same goes for libraries. Browsing leads you to treasures, you become the reader for whom the old book is the new book because you have never read it. The conglomerates will point to the old system as being hopelessly uneconomic - storing 1,000 copies in a warehouse of a book which sells in average 100 a year costs... oh, you know.

 My own publishing company, Long Barn Books,  will continue bring some out of print books back into print if they are good and deserve to find those new readers to whom they will be new books. They sit alongside the new/new books very nicely.

Meanwhile, the recession we are talking ourselves into, the global economic horrors, de blah de blah seem to have had little impact on the LBF, which reportedly was buoyant, visitor numbers up, deals being done, the Prime Minister popping in and the Minister for Culture (yuk) patting our industry on the back. (When that happens, when politicians start cosying up to us, we really should be worried. Books and writers, even some publishers, have always had an anarchic bone or two running through them and they should never allow themselves to get close to politicians. Except in a good way.) People have stopped buying clothes they don`t need and are re-learning that if it works you don`t need a new one. The price of food and oil has made even the things we DO need cost twice as much. But books are apparently recession proof. We buy them long after we have stopped buying everything else. Well good. I`m not sure I subscribe to the theory but I`m not going to argue against it.

I am reading Simon Gray`s The Last Cigarette, his third volume of  memoirs/diaries which began with The Smoking Diary. There are some very funny things and some very daft things and some very moving things and the parts about the present are much more interesting than the parts about his, to the reader though I am sure not to him, rather dull childhood.  For a writer, every new book read should ideally provide something to admire and preferably to envy. I need to become sick with envy and jealous rage that the author of the book I am reading wrote a certain line or paragraph and I did not. Here, from Simon, is today`s cause for a fit of jealous r. It is so very simple and unflashy and packs a punch which gets stronger every time you read it. All the best writing is simple, all the best writing yields a little bit more each time. SG is on holiday in Spetses. It is a warm and beautiful evening and he has just finished a phone call with Harold Pinter who is desperately ill with throat cancer and in London.

'Anyway, there he is, in a place I can`t visualize even though I`ve been to it, and here I am, in a place he certainly can`t visualize as he`s never been to it, with the moon above and the sea below and the cicadas clicking their knees.'

I am absolutely furious with envy.

I have been reading him. Not his books because I simply can`t read horror, I get upset, it sticks in my head and I can`t un-know it. He is damn good at it though. No, it is the very revealing interview with King in The Paris Review Interviews vol 2 - a series all aspiring writers should have on their shelves. You learn something and become a better writer from every single interview. King says so many things that make sense - common sense, literary sense, all sorts of sense.  He is very good on the people who come up and tell you they wish you`d write more books like the one you wrote 30 years ago. 'There are people out there who would have been perfectly happy had I died in 1978.' (with me it is 1971.) 'You try to grow as a writer and not just do the same thing over and over again.'

King was mighty unpopular in some literary-snobbish quarters when he was awarded the National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He gave a speech defending popular fiction and got yet more flak from the litsnobs. I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories but there is truth in what he says about the literary establishment - and in this country that means the ACADEMIC literary establishment rather than  just other writers -trying to retain superiority and exclusivity by stipulating what is and what is not good literature, or literary fiction. 'The keepers of the idea of serious literature have a shortlist of authors who are going to be allowed inside and too often that list is drawn from people who know people .. who come up through certain channels of literature. And that`s a bad idea. It`s constraining for the growth of literature.'

He then makes an extremely pertinent point - and it is pertinent not just to writers but to critics. King says, 'It all goes back to this idea, held by a lot of people who analyze literature for a living, who say, if we let the rabble in then they`ll see that anybody can do this, that it is accessible to anyone.'  Indeed indeed. I like the idea, as a book blogger as well as a writer, of being one of the rabble.

One more thing he says that still makes sense to me, even though we have just had a lot of people at the London Book Fair trying like mad to prove us wrong - people who should know better. King mentions e-books - and therefore, e-readers, and there is a huge pressure on us all at the moment to subscribe the idea that e-readers are about to make the book obsolete.  He calls them 'these little gadgets that let you read  a book in your hand, where you push a button to turn a page.'  And then he says simply, 'I never liked the idea and most people don`t.  They want to have pages.'  Let me put that more emphatically and hope some of them out there are listening. THEY WANT TO HAVE PAGES.

e-readers will have their place and I am not a luddite. I love my laptop. But I also love my notebook and pen. The e-reader is not the same as, say, the i-pod. No one was in love with gramophone records, 78 rpm, and then with CDs. It was the music they played that was the entire point. There is nothing physically delightful about a CD and they are a pain to store. But there IS something physically delightful about a book - and indeed often physically beautiful. I even find something delightful about a newspaper. This morning it was foggy and the SP suggested I didn`t need to go out as I could get my daily fix of my daily paper online. Indeed. But you see, I like a newspaper, just as I like a book. I will skim the latest headlines on my laptop but for a proper read, I want a paper. And for the other sort of proper read, I want pages. I want a book. As Stephen King says. Good man, Stephen King.

I heard on the grapevine, to which I have a special broadband connection here in darkest Gloucestershire, that a Very Famous Author of Many Dozens of Bestsellers said at  a dinner that she was absolutely sick of Publishers' Editors, and especially the young ones two years into the business,  thinking they knew how to write her books better than she did. I totally agree and if you knew the author in Q. so would you.

Now she is not a difficult lady in any sense and nor am I. I am happy to have my copy editor point out mistakes, discrepancies and blindingly awful paragraphs. I have worked with my Editor, one of the best in the business, for many years and if she makes a tentative suggestion as to a move that would enhance the book - and her suggestions are always tentative because she is polite - then nine times out of ten that is the move I make.

But some editors - it used to be only in the USA, but the tendency is creeping in a relentlessly slimy way over here - want to re-write the book. I have come to the conclusion that they do it not because they think it will improve it but for reasons 1. of simple Power and 2. Because they are failed writers themselves.  When my sequel to Rebecca, Mrs de Winter, reached my UK and about 20 European editors, there was the odd change and correction to be made and I am glad they were suggested. When it reached the US editor I got a TWENTY ONE PAGE FAX full of suggested re-writes. And when I say re-writes, boy, do I mean re-writes. There wouldn`t have been much of my original book left. The words 'flea' and 'ear' were applied.

My current US publisher is quite wonderful and no changes, re-writes or other power-moves have ever been suggested. Not one. And judging from the number of e-mails I get from over the pond, the punters like the result.  But alas, my US publisher does not do children`s books so THE BATTLE FOR GULLYWITH has gone to others.  All of which, so far as I can gather, belong to  either the Power or Failed-writer group, or even to both. If they do not like it, do not want to publish it, do not think it right for their list  or their readers or whatever, that`s fine. They should say so in as few words as possible. Usually two will suffice. No. and Thanks.  I am not offended, I do not require long critiques. I`ve been around too long for that. But do you know, they cannot resist going into Power mode even while turning Gullywith down. They start demanding re-writes even when they don`t intend to buy the bloody book. Here is just one. They said if they were even to think of considering it they would want ''an extensive line edit and language and punctuation ( and quite possibly plot and character ) would figure into that.'

Now spelling to accomodate those who cannot work out that theatre means theater and colour means color, are fine by me though I do think they are patronising their readers and I know my punctuation is a tad eccentric. People love me for it. Never mind that. But changes to plot  and character ? The famous author of  a great many bestsellers was SO right.

You can get a degree in it, did you know ? Nothing to do with burning numbers onto cattle, to do with Brands, as in Microsoft or Coca-Cola. But there have been very very few recognisable brands in book publishing - recognisable, that is, to the book buying public not to other publishers. Penguin is a brand we have known for donkeys' years. So were its sidekick brands, Puffin and Pelican. The old ( very old) Victor Gollancz yellow-jackets for their science fiction and detective story lists were a recognisable brand. People have bought both Penguin and VG for the brand because they trusted it but VG has long gone and Penguin is so changed nobody would recognise it as a brand any longer.

I think it`s fine that book buyers don`t care, nay, do not even notice,  who publishes a book if they want to buy/read it. In the same way, I don`t think they are a bit interested if an author they enjoy as, say, a crime novelist, decides also to write cookery books. Some of the crime readers will never buy cookery books anyway, and vice versa, some may buy both but are they confused ? Of course they are not confused.

As you know, I can nevr be pinned down for long as a writer but am constantly having a bash at new genres. Sometimes, the readers have a bash with me, as it were, sometimes they do not. 'I like your literary novels but I`m afraid I never read crime.'  Or 'I read crime but I can`t get along with those literary novels.' 'My children are enjoying your children`s book. I didn`t know you wrote anything else.'  So I have some overlap but a lot of compartmentalized readers. Because just as they do not notice who has published a book, readers probably do not often notice that a writer whose crime novels they enjoy also writes chic-lit. Or Guide Books. 

But publishers panic, especially in America and other countries than the UK. They say they have got readers thinking I am a writer of ghost stories and here I go, producing a crime novel ; the readers just won`t be able to follow. Oh please. Stop patronising your book buyers, stop assuming they haven`t the wit to follow if an author pops up in another genre. If Ian Rankin turned his hand to science fiction tomorrow, would you be confused ? No, I thought not. Unless he chose to write under another name, as some do. Joanna Trollope is also Caroline Harvey, writer of historical romances.

If it is all about the bottom line, then publishers should just say so and stop blaming the book buyer.  If it is about not liking one of my books in a different genre, just say so, I don`t mind. But stop telling me the public will be confused.

I was asked if I would do one of those occasional question and answer columns for a paper. When the questions came they were more fun to do than the usual 'What is your favourite colour/who has influenced you most?' but then the paper discontinued the column so I thought I would put them up here, it being the weekend. Nothing serious so don`t take them seriously.

What do you most hate about modern life ?

People who go on about hating modern life.

What kind of people annoy you ?

Grammar, spelling and punctuation pedants.

What drives you nuts ?

Pony tails on men. Long grey hair on women. Grey pony tails on either.

What do you watch on TV ?

The News. Coronation Street. The Bill. Holby City. Foyles War for Michael Kitchen. Judge John Deed for Martin Shaw.

Films watched many times ?

Oceans Eleven. Casablanca. Notting Hill. Some Like it Hot. North by North West.

What sport do you follow/teams do you support ?

Cricket. I support Yorkshire because I am a Yorkshirewoman and learned my cricket there. But much good does my support do these days.

Football. Manchester United. I have supported them since 1958.

Why ?

I was in Manchester in 1958 when the Busby Babes' plane crashed. You couldn`t not.

Sport on TV ?

Football. Nothing else works well on TV apart from Snooker, which I don`t understand.

What might surprise people to know about you ?

That I am a card-carrying Republican but that I greatly like and admire the Prince of Wales. Being a Republican should not be personal.

What trait do you most dislike ?

Meanness

Believer or non ?

Believer

In which case, does anything irritate you about other believers ?

Happy-clappiness and arm-waving. Fundamentalism.

What would you rather people today did not do, other than  obvious wickedness ?

Judge people`s characters by how much they weigh.

You are God. What sins do you find hardest to forgive ?

Cruelty to children. Cruelty to old people. Cruelty to animals.

What skills would you love to have ?

Playing the piano. Ski-ing.

What bores you ?

Having to sit through things.

One word to describe yourself ?

Uncompetitive.

What are you most looking forward to ?

The photographs of Wayne and Colleens wedding.

I wish I had thought of it but the term comes from a book I have been reading, HOW TO TALK ABOUT BOOKS YOU HAVEN`T READ by Pierre Bayard - and yes, I have read it. The title makes it sound like one of those How to Bluff  books but it is far more serious and scholarly, while being extremely readable and making a lot of sense.

'We might use the term 'inner library' to characterize that set of books around which every personality is constructed and which then shapes each person`s individual relationship to books and to other people.'

It is a complex argument and adds up to at least what Francis Spufford was talking about in his delightful memoir 'The Boy That Books Built.'

Clearly I am more than the sum of the books I have read - (though am I more than the sum of the books I have written ?  ) -but the books which have affected me deeply, which I have read and re-read, whole paragraphs of which I know by heart, whose scenes are part of my inner landscape will surely have gone a long way towards forming my imagination and even my character and personality. Would I be the same person if Alice in Wonderland, The Mayor of Casterbridge, To the Lighthouse, The Quiet American, Bleak House, Little Dorritt et al had not become so much part of me ? I don`t know.  I think Bayard takes the argument too far when he says 'we are the sum of our inner libraries' for that implies these are all we are and I do not believe that to be true.

What I am certain IS true is this.

'It is far from evident, despite what you would expect, the writer is in the best position either to speak about his book or to remember it precisely... after we write a text and are separated from it, we may be as far from it as others are.'   Or indeed, more so, as time goes by. This is something I am always trying to make students understand. They are intimate with the book of mine they are studying now, I wrote it long ago and have long forgotten much about it. They bring to it a world of experience that I did not, their reading and the context in which they are reading, change the book I wrote. A text is a living thing, not fixed and static, it changes according to the way it is read, readers bring a different perspective to it every time. Think only of the way a character may look. My Heathcliff , my Mrs Dalloway, is not yours, nor does the character I described in a novel I wrote bear much resemblance to the one you see in your  mind when you read my book. But it is a hard job getting readers, whether students studying for exams or members of book groups, to see that they affect the text, that the text changes, that the author does not have 'the answers'.

I recommend Pierre Bayard`s book. It may surprise you.

If I had put this up on April 1st.... But sadly, it is not a joke. Stephen Mallattrat`s play, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, adaped from my novel, does well in countries which have a tradition of ghost stories in their own native literature and folklore. It doesn`t seem to matter to their appreciation that it is set in an early 20th century London of dense fogs and on a house at the end of a causeway off the English coast. But then, HAMLET is set at the Danish court in the 15th century. 

So WIB has an honourable history in Japan, where it  is produced quite regularly,  in Mexico City where it has been running for twelve years, and more recently on tour in India. When the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre announced a production for later this year, I thought the augurs were promising. 

This morning I had an -email from my agent.

'The Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center have been
forced to postpone until next year.  They
explain that "the Chinese government recently released a policy that prohibits any stage production involving ghosts and thrills.'

What kind of people are these ? Yes, I know, the kind of people who gun down protestors and operate a policy of oppression and brutality in Tibet. But the raison d'etre of a cultural policy banning ghosts and thrills in the theatre is truly hard to fathom.

One presumes HAMLET is also off the Chinese menu.

Please do ask any children you know who may be reading/have read The Battle for Gullywith to send in their stories, pictures, questions, reviews of the book and entries for the competition. The website has all the details - www.gullywith.com. This really will make all the difference to the website being a lively and interactive site or - a dead one.  I have had some already but we need more and as it is the holidays maybe they will have time.

I`m still waiting for the small versions of the pictures of the party to put up here - meanwhile just chat among yourselves.

You should have been there. I will have photos any minute but one person`s will not upload for me and Polly at the bookshop hasn`t sent hers. She is probably still lying down. A whole roomfull of children packed the floor - literally, though there were also some benches which were packed too - of Jaffe and Neale`s bookshop in Chipping Norton. Quite a few grown-ups came too. There were old friends and new, there were balloons and a fantastic picture of the Castle on the shop window; there was a cake to end all cakes with an edible copy of the book cover on top. It was huge and chocolate and arrived by post  in about 20 boxes. If ever you want a special cake either in an unusual shape or with a photo  or other image on top I recommend you go to www.caketoppers.co.uk. They did us proud and only crumbs were left.

After I had read  from the book and talked a bit there were questions, including some very good ones from members of the school book group, then while I signed away, people did the Treasure Hunt - sticking pins in a map of Gullywith and area - and hunted for marked stones in a bran tub.

It was the best book launch in the history of  book launches and I came home and slept for 2 hours. When I woke up I discovered that the bets I had put on the Grand National and associated Aintre races AGES ago and forgotten about, had all come in and I had won a nice wodge of sponduliks.

Anyone who knows the origins of the word sponduliks, please tell.

The Elder Daughter has been here helping re-the launch and she and I went out to our local pub and had  a slap-up supper courtesy of  Comply or Die.

I went to bed tired but happy and when I drew up the blind this morning outside my window was Narnia. The most magically perfect 3 inches if crisp thick untramelled snow in the history of the world.

It`s been that sort of weekend.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/susan-hill-the-story-of-the-night-804339.html

and do look at the Gullywith website. The boys at Pedalo have really excelled themselves this time. Here is the url

www.gullywith.com

 but if it isn`t quite live yet try

www.gullywith.com/draft/

and do tell any children you know  to send their stories and poems and pictures and enter the competition. The more the merrier.

Meanwhile, a reminder that the launch party is tomorrow, Saturday April 5th at Jaffe and Neale`s super bookshop in Chipping Norton, from 10.30. And I`ve just seen the special Gullywith cake and it`s wonderful !