A few years ago a schoolteacher went on a creative writing course at the Arvon Foundation. She worked hard. She has worked hard for several years since on her first novel. Her name is Diane Setterfield and she is a client of my own agent. Her first novel is called THE THIRTEENTH TALE and it has just become the Number 1 US Bestseller, it has been sold in 30 countries and it will make her a multi millionaire.

Recently, Marie Philips, who works part time at my favourite London bookshop Crockett and Powell, went away for a few days to revise her novel, GODS BEHAVING BADLY. She worked on it night and day. She had submitted it for the Long Barn Books first novel competition but it wasn`t shortlisted, not because I didn`t feel it was good -though it needed revision - and deserved to find a publisher, but because it just wasn`t right for my publishing house. Some things aren`t. I wouldn`t have published ULYSSES. But Marie has just got a great deal from Jonathan Cape who will publish her novel in hardback, with Random House`s paperback arm, Vintage, doing that.

Now neither of these women started out with any especial advantage/contact in the trade/membership of whatever Old Boy network people believe operates in publishing. They just wrote good books, which they sent in to agents and/or publishers - and the books got them what they deserve.

And yet I still hear the whingeing voices. It`s not fair. Nobody wants first novels. Nobody wants to publish unknown writers. Nobody can find a publisher unless they have an agent and nobody can get an agent. They only publish books by their friends. We don`t stand a chance. There`s a conspiracy against us.

Oh for God`s sake. I just watched POP IDOL. I don`t watch the early audition rounds. Too much lack of talent. Too painful. Too embarassing. But about now it gets exciting. And time and time and time again I watched people who had worked themselves into a state of collapse say how much they dreamed of this, how much it meant to them, what they had done to get this far... no whinges Not a single one. Just determination. Hard work. Talent. And guts. The pop music business is the most egalitarian there is. No OB network. Everyone gets a chance if they go for it. Whether you like the music or not, you have to admire the ambition.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, the well publicised story of THE THIRTEENTH TALE and the book which will get a lot of attention next year, by Marie Philips, will convince all those who believe there is no chance of first timers finding a publisher. Or an agent. Or both.

Beause all that agents and publishers are hungry for is good books. Write one that is good enough. That`s all you have to do.

 

The October newsletter has just gone out. It has lots of news about Long Barn Christmas titles and about competitions and special offers. You get it by e-mail and if you would like to have it and to go on the mailing list for future issues - once a month, NO MORE and we never give your details to anyone else - please e-mail sales@longbarnbooks.com with your details.

I have spent an hour of a very rainy afternoon trying to make space in the bookstore for new Long Barn Books. In the process  I have separated out a pile of NEW books which have some faults.. i.e. they are slightly bumped or creased at a corner or they have been returned by Waterstone`s with the 3 for 2 sticker still on .. which they are not supposed to do. They they still do it.

There are probably a dozen or so copies of the following books and if you would like a free copy just ask. First come and all that...I`m afraid they are mainly by me - sorry.

THE EXTRA LARGE MEDIUM by HELEN SLAVIN

THE BIRD OF NIGHT..me

GENTLEMAN AND LADIES.. me

I`M THE KING OF THE CASTLE.. me

It has been a very good sort out and there are two huge boxes for the Oxfam bookshop as well. Not to mention a pile of empty cartons for the bonfire.

When it stops raining.

 

 

 

Note to students studying THE WOMAN IN BLACK and STRANGE MEETING.

There are now questions sent in by students and with my answers up on the relevant sections...look at the side bar to find the place.

If you want to comment please do.. but you will have to REGISTER first.

 

 

 

Plumbers. Carpenters. Decorators. Men strimming in the garden. Men mowing in the garden. Men chainsawing dangerous branch off tree in  the garden. Sorting out the deal for the Long Barn First Novel award.

This last week of golden September has not been the most peaceful here in the wilds and fastnesses of Gloucestershire.  But, Monday sees the SP off to Sicily, then Finland, then Romania, then Moscow and my bathroom finished - huge new cupboard, new heated towel rail. decorated throughout. Bliss. The garden is put to bed for the winter and although a huge box of bulbs came yesterday, planting them is a lovely peaceful, QUIET job for our Greek gardener. All will be peace. I plan to spend the mornings getting that cross-bow business sorted out and visiting Simon Serrailler`s sister and family in Australia where a Crisis Looms, the afternoons on my Cistercians in the 12th Century MA Module essay. I would usually say that three of the evenings have an hour taken out of them by the essential telly - Holby City, Tuesday, The Bill, Wednesday and Thursday, the only telly I watch, but if The Bill doesn`t get back to form soon I`ll have an extra two hours a week reading time. Two episodes this week were spent mainly in Bucharest on some wild goose chase and I really really hate it when my favourite programmes abandon their natural habitat and go off at a tangent like that.

So next week promises well for some long hours curled up with a good book. Here is the pile so far. But I have no doubt more will be added daily.

Leonard Woolf. by Victoria Glendinning.

Authors in Context. Virginia Woolf by Michael Whitworth.. and no, those of you doing the course do NOT have to read this too, it`s for your tutor to make notes, digest them and pass them on pureed form onto you.

The White Cities by Joseph Roth. Reports from France 1925-1939. The only Roth I have not yet read.

Gathering the Water by Robert Edric. Doesn`t matter about Booker, I have  had such glowing reports from the dove grey one and others. Mind you, I think I am a saint for reading it. Robert Edric was someone  to whom I gave a leg up in his early years, by reviewing ecstatically, providing quotes and generally talking-up but as we know, kindness never pays and my reward was a absolutely stinking review for my first crime novel from him in the Guardian, the sort of review no one ought to be allowed to publish. It was vitriolic. Oh, I am not saying that he should have lied and pretended to love the novel if he didn`t. Absolutely not. But silence is golden in a number of circumstances.

I was going to list GET A LIFE by Nadine Gordimer but on inspection I see that the younger Border Terrier has taken it into a corner and pretended it was a rat, to serious effect and I am not buying another copy. So it will have to be a soothing Victorian novel. The DGR is sooo right. Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness and the nights drawing in make one`s mind turn to the 19th century novel, as to cocoa. I am undecided. I think re-reading my favourite Dickens would not be trying quite hard enough, I don`t feel very Trollopian in the Palliser or Barchester senses, I re-read Middlemarch last year and Daniel Deronda too and that`s me so far as George Eliot is concerned. I need some suggestions. Now there`s a challenge. 

 

 

Let me tell you about a little girl I know  we will call her Katie. Katie is nine and lives in a delightful small market town in the heart of one of the most beautiful areas of England. She has her own bedroom, there is a garden, she goes to a Church of England state school which has high placings in the league tables. She has plenty of friends and both sets of grandparents, together with various uncles and aunts live nearby.

Katie`s parents have been divorced for 2 years. Her father has since run through three other women and fathered 2 more children. He is also a bankrupt and does not see Katie. Her mother is hard-working and well supported by both the State and family. They are not rich - but by comparison with many, they are not poor either.

Katie came to my house recently and while I had to talk to her mother, I asked if she would like to look at some books - there are masses for her age here, both left over by my own two girls, and new ones which come in for review and so forth.  I found her half a dozen and she sat looking at them. She said she 'quite liked' books. I asked if she went to the library. We are lucky - we have a small but excellent library which is especially well-stocked for children. Katie lives a few hundred yards from it. She could walk there on her own or with friends, quite safely. And it is free. Her eyes lit up but she said 'No.' I asked if she had ever been to the library. 'No.'

So I suggested to her mother that she might take her to join.I stressed that it was totally free. 'Oh no, we`d forget to take the books back and then I `d have to pay.' I suggested that maybe she would find Katie was keen to go quite often to change her books, so that would not be a problem.

'No.'  Katie`s mother said. ' I couldn`t be bothered and anyway, I don`t her to be that sort of child.'

'What sort of child ?'

'The sort that reads books.'

She didn`t let Katie take the ones that I had looked out for her, home.

'She doesn`t have time for reading anyway,' she said.

I felt incredibly sad for Katie. She, in my view, is a disadvantaged child - not because of things that cannot be afforded, not because of cruel treatment, not even because her parents are divorced - in this she is only like a lot of her classmates.  No. Because books, which might give her so much, are denied to her by a mother who doesn`t want Katie to be the sort of child who reads them... who looks with suspicion on reading. Katie is disadvantaged by parental attitude. How do you change that ?

I read in the Daily Telegraph, reported by The Bookseller, that  there is yet another campaign, supported by authors, educationalists, politicians, to make books the centre of children`s lives, to promote literacy and the value of books and reading and the use of the imagination.

All sorts of things are blamed for the inability of children to focus on learning to read - mainly  target/exam-focused schooling, endless tests and the ubiquity of computer games and other electronic distractions.

But faced with attitudes like that quite unashamed one of Katie's mother it is going to be an uphill struggle to get children not so much to learn to read, but to make the enjoyment of books and reading a lifelong habit.

I feel very very sad that Katie is not going to have the joy, fun, stimulation, diversion, and stretching of the imagination and widening and deepening of experience that books can provide and which so enriched my own childhood.

Here is the news for the shortlisted novelists. It was announced in today`s BOOKSELLER and PUBLISHING NEWS and represents something very exciting for the company and all those on the shortlist. Too often, if you are not THE winner, then you walk away with nothing, not even a rosette. But I was anxious that those on the shortlist but who were not chosen as the one - and only one - to be published by Long Barn next year, got something worthwhile of out the enterprise.

Now, they will. The major UK publisher SIMON AND SCHUSTER will read and have first chance to publish all the shortlisted titles.

It is very hard to get anyone - agents, publishers - even to read outlines of novels by new writers. Scripts can sit for months on slush piles before someone does a clear-out and simply sends them back unread. So the chance to be read and considered seriously by a major publisher is a rare one.

But there is more. Here`s the  Press announcement.

"Simon & Schuster is to publish the mass market paperback of the winning novel in Susan Hill's 2007 first novel competition. S&S will also have first refusal to publish all the shortlisted titles.

The winning book, to be announced next week, will be the only novel to be published by Hill's Long Barn Books in 2007. The shortlist is: The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan, Punjabi Moon by Natasha Mann, The Cleansing by Bill Rogers, Walking at Low Tide by Jane Taylor and Dr Erin O'Rourke by Shirley Williamson.

Susan Hill said: "I am a small publisher and can give a first novel my undivided attention with editorial advice, access to the market and publicity. But I am not a mass market paperback publisher. This is where Simon & Schuster come in, as major players who will help propel the first novelist into the big sales and promotions arena."

 

THE TITLE OF THE NOVEL TO BE PUBLISHED FIRST IN HARDBACK BY LONG BARN BOOKS AND THEN IN MASS MARKET PAPERBACK BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, WILL BE ANNOUNCED NEXT WEEK, BOTH HERE AND ON BOTH WEBSITES. THERE WILL ALSO BE A PRESS RELEASE ABOUT THE WINNING NOVEL AND ITS AUTHOR.

 

The present module for my MA has been more historical than the rest and I have spent a good part of the last few weeks living in the 12th century. I will not be so foolish as to say that I would love to have lived then - no antibiotics or dentists, no proper sanitation, no electricity, no PRINTED BOOKS. No deal.

But I have found thinking in historical mode a great challenge and very sharpening of the mental faculties. In order to remind myself about  the whole point and purpose and problem of history at all, I bought a superb little book in Oxford`s exemplary series.. A VERY SHORT INTRODUCTION TO... this one, by John H Arnold, is to History. It is very illuminating indeed because it admits that much of history is storytelling - and why not ? It makes the point that it is the balance between truth/fact and story which matters and needs to be maintained at all times. And then it proceeds to tell some fascinating historical 'stories' and to examine them, the  point of them in their context, what they tell us about the times in which they are set, how we separate their truth from 'story' . As the blurb says " He lays out for inspection all the ways  of recounting and exploiting the past through narrative.."  He does indeed and tells his story wonderfully well. You learn more about the point and purpose of history and its fascination as well as the history of History than from many a book ten times the length. 130 odd pages packed with treasure. I commend it to you.

There will be an announcement this week in the press and on my websites and this blog about a terrific development, to the advantage of the winning author, the shortlisted authors, and Long Barn Books  in general. I am sorry that this has been slightly delayed but it always takes longer to dot the i and cross the t than you imagine.

We will be announcing the name of the winning book next week - just to steal some thunder from the Booker.

And everyone who visits the blog will have a very special opportunity t get a special copy of the winning novel.

As they say, Watch this Space.

BIOGRAPHIES.  I said not to read any yet, except when I suggest a single chapter. This is just a note on them. Some of you have the Hermione Lee which is joint top of this section with the Lyndall Gordon. But I will be suggesting a very short and I think excellent biography by Nigel Nicolson. It may be OP. I will investigate. But if so it will be time to try second hand as they`ll be very cheap. It was only £10 to start with, a neat little hardback. If you don`t have A WRITER`S DIARY, you will need it.

A ROOM OF ONE`S OWN. We will come to it eventually.

and JACOB`S ROOM. 

All for now. I have just bought some new VW books, and will be investigating.  But it`s important for you to keep clear minds and wash away all pre-conceptions about her so don`t even dip into anything else yet.

 

You`re all hopeless. Or maybe endings are just not so memorable as beginnings though it seems to me these were pretty memorable. Anyway, to put you out of your misery and stop you all searching through the bookcases, here are the answers.

1.TIGER IN THE SMOKE.. Marjorie Allingham

2. THE HOUSE IN PARIS.  Elizabeth Bowen

3. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS.  V.S.Naipaul

4. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE. Virginia Woolf

5.IN THE SPRINGTIME OF THE YEAR. I just forget the name of the author.

6. THE BIRDS OF THE AIR.  Alice Thomas Ellis

7.THE RADETZKY MARCH.  Joseph Roth

8.BARCHESTER TOWERS.  Anthony Trollope.

 

Now tell me they were all on the tip of your tongue.

Would people please let me know when they are ready for the next of this course ?

I plan to say something about the Part 1 and the books/reading for it, and then move on but I don`t want to rush anyone. There is no hurry. I will also put up a book list - so that you know in advance what I`ll be talking about and what you`ll need to get hold of from libraries/bookshops.  It will be added to over the course of the autumn/winter so you won`t have to get everything at once.

I won`t move on until everyone feels ready, so don`t worry those sitting at the back - which means you, Lynne and Philippa.

..Books you really must read. But let us begin with a story.

Twenty years ago, I began a stint as presenter of Radio 4`s Bookshelf. One  afternoon the most beautiful young man I have probably ever seen wandered into the studio with a canvas knapsack on his shoulder. I was interviewing him about his latest novel The Songlines, and his name was Bruce Chatwin. When we had finished, he loped off to catch a train to France and then, he said, probably Africa. I had not made much of The Songlines, but I had made a very great deal of another novel, which is his masterpiece. It is called ON THE BLACK HILL and it takes your breath away. It is the story of twin brothers living on the Welsh/English border in the Black Country, a story of country and farming life as it was, close-knit, hard, much visited by pain and death. Just read the opening page or three. You will not have come across prose like this in years. I suppose the nearest I can come to another writer as good is John McGahern.

But Chatwin did not write another book remotely like On The Black Hill, mainly because he did not write any two books that bore the slightest resemblance to one another.  You could not categorise him or pin him down. He wasa nomad, as a person, as a novelist. I think he did not quite receive his due as a writer because attention was focused on his person - which is how he liked it.

What the ultimate truth about Bruce Chatwin was who can say ? Perhaps there was none. He was a chameleon, who lived not a double but a quadruple, sextuple life. He made up stories about himself and you could not really believe any of them and yet - you did. But I inadvertently penetrated his life at a different point. We then had a small house in Stratford on Avon and when we were there, and I was pushing  the Younger Daughter up College Street in her pram, I often met a charming man who lived in a house higher up, and who always bid us good morning. One day, not long after the Bookshelf interview about The Songlines was broadcast, we met as so often, and he stopped me. "I think I should introduce myself.' he said, " My name is Charles Chatwin."  It was Bruce`s father. He had been a Birmingham solicitor and he was typical of his type and generation. I met his wife later, an elegant woman who had once been very beautiful. But as the parents of the exotic young Bruce, they did not fit - and it occurred to me that it was in order to escape the conventional, ordinary, unremarkable, polite Midlands Middle Class, that he has turned himself into such a colourful, nomadic, many-faceted, rareified character.

We did not meet again until 3 years later. I was sitting in the romantically named Venom clinic at the Churchill Hospital,Oxford, waiting to get my desensitizing injection of which I was having a course. (They didn`t work but that is another story.) And out of a consulting room came a woman pushing a man in a wheelchair, a man so wasted and skeletal and ill that to look at him at all seemed shocking.  He came past me and said 'Stop !'  The woman stopped. He looked at me and started to talk about how he had been spending days in London buying beautiful objects, 'The most beautiful, beautiful things you have ever seen.'  It came out as a slightly fevered babble, but exotic, as beautifully phrased as ever, studded with extraordinary words.

It was, of course, Bruce Chatwin, in his last weeks dying of Aids. He never admitted as much of course. To die of Aids, as such a lot of men were then doing, would have been too common and unremarkable for him -and besides, it carried a pretty strong stigma. He had put it around that he was dying of a rare disease caught from eating an ancient egg in some exotic part of China. There were other stories. But I knew he must have AIDS because this, next door to the Venom Clinic, was the Aids ward.

The sight of his beauty so ravaged and destroyed, was terrible. It seemed the stuff of Greek Tragedy.

I never saw him again and I realised, after they had left, that he had totally failed to introduce me to the woman pushing his chair, and who I vaguely assumed was a helper but who I later learned was his long-suffering wife.

I met his parents quite often though, in the old way, walking up the street. They were always the same. After a while, Charles had to take to a mobility scooter, which he chugged along the pavement. He always stopped, we spoke of this and that - and of Bruce, of whom they were so inordinately proud, in a puzzled sort of way.

I suppose that went for most people.

Read ON THE BLACK HILL. It is a mighty novel. There is no book quite like it, though it owes something to Francis Kilvert, another walker among the Black Hills, another rather isolated, and ultimately sad figure. But you can get the measure of Kilvert. Bruce Chatwin was like quicksilver, a rainbow with a dark underside, a mercurial character who glittered and sparkled. And about whom the line 'Brightness falls from the air' might well have been written.

It`s a good job we`re not all alike. I have always kept the details of what I am writing, like the cards, close to my chest. I may amuse myself by dropping a little false trail here and there, even on this blog, but the moment I have said what a book is about, it`s dead - for me if not for anyone else. Most writers I know are the same. I don`t know why it should be, it just is. There is a more obvious reason for not Telling All of course - someone might nick the idea.

So I was somewhat startled to see what Kate Mosse put at the bottom of her piece on Debussy in The Guardian today.

" She is currently working on Sepulchre, a novel about tarot and the occult, set in the musical and literary worlds of fin-de-siecle  Paris and Carcassonne."

You do what you want of course, and if it isn`t a problem for Ms Mosse to talk about work in progress, fine. Only just think - someone pretty nifty could bag those ideas smartish and get their novel out first.

Not me. I`ve got enough on my plate, with DCS Serrailler and the case of the Missing Crossbow.

Not to mention the boys in the amusement arcade.

 

From where I sit at the table in my workroom, I look directly at the big old holly tree. Beneath it  are the clusters of small white autumn cyclamen, their petals lying back like the folded wings of angels. But in the last couple of days the berries have ripened all over it and are now studding it like blood red beads, more than there have been for some years.  It makes me sad to see it this year. Joyce, our housekeeper and friend, who looked after us all so well from the time when the Younger Daughter was at primary school, died in August. She always clambered up a ladder to collct some of the most thickly berried branches of the holly to make her Christmas wreaths. We miss her.

But when I walked the dogs this afternoon, it was as warm as July. I sat on my bench in the full sun and the t-shirt stuck to my back. This evening, I went up there again. The horses were having a mad moment in the next door field, the Shetland pony racing round and round, little hooves thundering, the others in pursuit. The trees are barely turning - there is just a faint shading of gold on the chestnuts, one or two reddening leaves on the cherries, nothing on the young oaks and pears and limes. A hare raced away. Collared doves cooed seductively. The swallows are still here and were diving and dipping over the lake.

But the sun is setting at seven and then it starts to cool quickly.  I start to look forward to the clocks going back and to the first fire. And to bonfires.

It is a strange between-seasons time. You can feel the earth turning slowly, feel the year sliding down gently. But meanwhile, sit on a bench in the sun and feel as if you are on 'the idle hill of summer.'

I am sure all regular readers will surge forward with the source of the quotation.

1. Written in the days when Crime Novels were called Detective Stories.

2.One of the best women novelists of the 20th century.

3.His best novel. Probably his best-known novel. Travel writer too.

4.You seem to have cracked this one. (For SCOTT. Try 'Dummies.')

5. Seasonal

6. One of my 100 BOOKS YOU REALLY MUST READ on the old blog.

7. I am always banging on about this great great novel.

8. Church of England.

 

And that`s your lot. You`ve got to win the prize on your own from now on.  When you have all the answers, e-mail your list to me on mail@susan-hill.com

 

It`s a quiz. But instead of first lines of novels, I thought I`d put up some last lines - or even last paragraphs for you. Identify the book and the author. And don`t Google them, that`s stooping far lower than anyone who reads this blog would ever stoop, even to conquer.

A prize for the person with every single one correct.

1. It seemed to him that he had no decisions to make, and now that he knew himself to be fallible, no one to question. Presently, he let his feet slide gently forward. The body was never found.

2 The copper-dark night sky went glassy over the city crowned with signs and starting alight with windows, the wet square like a lake at the foot of the station ramp.

3. The cremation, one of the few permitted by the Health Department, was conducted on the banks of a muddy stream and atracted spectators of various races. Afterwards, the sisters returned to their respective homes and Shama and the children went back in the Prefect to the empty house.

4.It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue. I have had my vision.

5. The donkey, Balaam, stood, still as a statue, grey as granite, under the riding moon.

Ruth closed the door.

6. 'Robin ?'.. she said.

7. And he played a game against himself, smirking, occasionally looking at the empty chair across the table, his ears filled with the gentle noise of the autumn rain, which was still running tirelessly down the panes.

8. The Author now leaves hin in the hands of his readers; not as a hero, not as a man to be admired and talked of, not as a man who should be toasted at public dinners and spoken of with conventional absurdity as a perfect divine, but as a good man without guile, believing humbly in the religion which he has striven to teach, and guided by the precepts he has striven to learn.

 

No. They are not easy. Or not very.

 

Actually, the plumber has metamorphosed into a carpenter. Having spent two days re-arranging  the plumbing in my bathroom and replacing an ancient radiator with a spanking new heated- towel -rail-radiator combo, he has now knocked out the ancient shower cubicle and is replacing it with a beautiful linen cupboard. Bang-bang. Crash-Crash. Drill-drill. Saw-saw. Whirrrrrrrr. Bang-Bang. I am longing for him to turn into a decorator and then it will be done apart from the smell of paint. Meanwhile, it is next to my workroom and as pipes snake about all over the shop, wherever I go in the house, I can hear the reverberations of bang-bang. Crash-crash. Drill-drill...

I was trying to write a chapter about a plane crash. No, that is misleading. The plane crashed some years ago. You would think that the noises off from the refurbishment of my bathroom would go with plane crashes and perhaps they should, but it was no use, I couldn`t concentrate. I only started work properly when he had gone.

And I still haven`t sorted out the bit about DCS Simon Serailler and the cross-bow.

Cross-bows are too interesting, they lead you via Google into wonderful historical battlefields and sites about longbows and medieval archers, all of which are totally irrelevant but lovely among which to while away the time. But then, the crashed plane has led our handsome Detective Chief Superintendent quite far afield too, not to mention his sister in Australia.

I had hoped to whet your appetites but perhaps I am only causing confusion. 

 

In a word, RETURNS. They are every publisher`s nightmare but authors do not generally know much about them. Well, for every aspiring or new author out there, here are the hard facts.

Your book, if you are very lucky, is ordered as what is called a Scaleout, by the head office of a chain bookseller. There are not many so let us call ours Waterbottaders. They have been persuaded, with honeyed words and with a  hefty dollop of money, that your book should be stocked and prominently displayed by all their stores. They order. Let us say they order 1,500 copies. That`s a decent order. You may even be very lucky and have the books displayed under a special promotion - 3 for 2 or Manager`s Book of the Month. Plenty of people who come into the store will notice it. BUT, although you can take a horse to water....

A sale is not a sale until the buyer hands over hard cash and gets the book in a paper bag to take home. Otherwise, your book is not sold it is OFFERED.

Around this time of year, Waterbottaders de-stock to get ready for Christmas - they take all the copies of your book which have not sold and return them to the publisher who has to give the Heads Office a credit for them.

I published a book this year which answers such a description. 1,600 copies sent out to Waterbottaders. Around 800 of those have just come back as returns, which means I, as the publisher, start the next book I publish and which I hope Waerbottaders will stock, in negative equity. It is all very depressing and it happens every day - or rather, ot happens in September, pre-Christmas and at the end of January, post-Christmas.

So when authors ask 'Why haven`t you got my book into the shops ?' they need to remember that publishers are not only looking to get any books INTO shops - which is only a first step. We want them out again in the hands of buyers.

There is only one mantra publishers never fail to remember. 'Don`t count your chickens before they hatch as Returns.'

 

The answer is almost certainly 'Nothing whatsoever.'  Lorna Sage told me that she was always being asked the question by Creative Writing Students and she was always brutally honest. his morning`s Guardian has an anguished cry from their drama critic who has published her first novel, for 12/13 year olds. She has started a blog about it called IT`S ALL GONE QUIET and this is an extract.

 "It is two weeks since my first novel, Into the Woods (David Fickling Books) crept quietly out into the world to a resounding silence. There were no fireworks, no glittering launch party, and no column inches celebrating its arrival. It feels a bit like having been pregnant for a monstrously long time only to discover that nobody takes a blind bit of notice when the baby finally arrives."...

 

That is absolutely par for the course. First novels for adults are lucky if they get a review at all in the national press and then it is likely to be in a round-up shared with a dozen others. First novels for children will ONLY get the round=up and as national papers do not review children`s books very often, it could be months before even that happens.

Only a tiny percentage of authors get launch parties mainly because they are only given to get press attention and you only get that if you have celebs at your party, not family and friends. Parties cost money. I have never had and do not ever want a launch party. Pure waste of money.

Poor author. It was wrong of anyone if they led her to expect more but in fact I bet they didn`t. We all try to be as negative as possible to our authors so that they will not feel as let down as this writer clearly does and because if you expect less than nothing, the smallest good thing that happens will seem wonderful. 

Writing is about writing. It is about the pleasure and fulfillment of doing it. Next, it is about people out there, even if only a handful of people, reading your book and finding something in it - entertanment, enjoyment, deep meaning, whatever. You will probably never know that they have had this experience. You write your book and send it out into the world to seek its fortune ' Go little book..' And that`s it. The rest is froth. Well, and if you are lucky, some money. That is not froth, that is just living, same as if you were selling oranges. 

 

But meanwhile, there is a book.  It is called INTO THE WOODS. It has no voice of its own though it may sit on some bookshop shelves looking pretty. It cannot speak until it is opened and read and that is what it is waiting for.

At least go and have  a look and if you can`t find it, ask for it.. in a bookshop or even better, in a library. That is what the latter are supposed to be for, though sometimes you would never guess it.

 

 

This blog has got a bit earnest and bluestocking lately, what with Woolf and Will and Chaucer so I intend to write about  what reading I really, really cannot do without every day and no, it is not the Bible. I do not belong to one of those 'a Verse a Day groups.' It is The Daily Mail. I am harangued and lectured and made to feel guilty about this day in day out and do you know what, I don`t care. It is my fix, along with the cappucino and I am not going to give it up now. So let us have a look at today`s copy and see what sense and nonsense we may find. Lots of stuff of no interest like Madonna`s new haircut and thin catwalk models. But then comes Virginia Ironside on Trust Me, Life does Begin at 60. Now I can tell her a thing or two, being 64. I can confirm that it goes on beginning, if you follow. I agree with some things she says, like how good it is to know you will never have to go to Outer Mongolia when you can loaf around in Good Old England. It is indeed. So good that I don`t have a passport. When I think of travel I always remember a line from a character in one of C.P.Snow`s Cambridge novels, an old don who always says 'Do smoke if you want to. I don`t myself but I like to see it in others.' Just substitute 'travel' for 'smoke.'

She bangs on about the joys of being a grandmother but then they all do. Now this is where Ms Ironside and I do not see eye to eye though admittedly, she speaks from experience and I do not. But though I am sure I will love them when they appear, if they don`t stay too long, I have absolutely no desire for them, urge for them, yearning for them.. I do not look into prams and long to be a granny or whatever. I just do not. It has to do with having the Younger Daughter at 43 which is only half an hour ago, and we are still enjoying long nights of sleep and not having to meet the school bus.

Next comes Esther Rantzen complaining that someone else was wearing the same M and S dress as her. Only one answer to that. So bloody what ?

Much more seriously, there is an excellent leader on how our society mistreats its old people - and I am not concerned about that just because I am 64. It is a national shame and a disgrace and we should all hang our heads, our government not the least. But it is not only the fault of government. The D Mail has been in the forefront of a campaign to highlight the shocking  state of care homes and geriatric wards. I do not always agree with their campaigns or indeed their politics, though my children would be surprised to hear it, but I cannot think of anyone who would not support them on this.

There is a sad story with even sadder photographs, about ill-treated lions and tigers but I had to turn over the page. I cannot bear to read those.  I enjoyed the news that dentists earn 150,000 a year. I would want double that for looking into people`s open mouths all day.

Fay Weldon is a woman of sense, always has been and the extracts from her new autobiographical book 'What Makes Women Happy' ( awful title) have confirmed that she is one still. She says wonderful things which makes you gasp because you know they are true, like how much easier it is to find friends if you get fat because ' they are nicer to you when they don`t have to envy you.'

There is a joyous two-page spread of kitsch featuring the couples who hired Jordan`s glass wedding coach for the day ( a snip at £20,000,) followed by a page of the New Winter Coats, every single one of which is beyond hideous - and if they look hideous on the models think what they will look like on you. And finally, before the Stars and the Racing News, the must-read page, Top Ten Mascaras.

 I don`t know how anyone gets through the day without it.

 

This time it is more for me than for others though if it appeals to you, why not do it with me ?

I sometimes look back to my BA English Degree (King`s, London 1963) and wonder what I would like to study all over again. Certainly not the 18th century which left me cold. A cold, formal century, in art, architecture, poetry, the novel though many love it. The 19th I have continued to explore. The Rennaissance I think I have had enough of. But my current MA in Theology module on medieval Monasticism, has made me realise how much I enjoyed what we did of the Middle Ages and Chaucer in particular. So I plan to tackle him again. NOT the Canterbury Tales -somewhat overrated and nothing like so funny as everyone likes to remember- but  the other books and especially Troylus and Criseyde. And if you are going to read Chaucer at all I do think you need to get to grips with him in the original. It is not so difficult as it looks, take it slowly, read it aloud occasionally, and it soon opens up its secrets.

I wonder how many will follow me ? I think probably the best way in is to read the Troilus and Cressida story in a plain modern English re-telling, to familiarise - or re-familiarise - oneself with the basic narrative, and then have a bash at the Chaucer. Why not ?

We read him in the edition edited by Robinson, and it is still the best but it is large ; best read at a desk, not in your lap. It has good, clear footnotes and a helpful and thorough introduction. It may be be expensive - I have my old edition, with my notes inked all over it and I feel quite sentimental about it. I expect second-hand ones are available. I will investigate other versions and post updates.

It may be that no one wants to accompany me on my Chaucerian journey and it is not something I would press anyone into doing. But rewarding if you do. Very, very rewarding.  Reading too many modern novels makes your brain spongey. Chaucer, like Skegness, should prove very bracing.

It was on the old blog and I was reminded about it in an e-mail tonight. This is the revival and perhaps the first book you really must read of the new blog will surprise you.

To begin with it is not a book. It is a play. And to begin and end with it is a play by Shakespeare.

Now this, as you may know, is not my territory at all but I am going to stand my ground, as a rank amateur on the subject.

I used to be a theatregoer. In my youth I queued at Stratford for a standing ticket to see the Golden Oldies - Michael Redgrave as Hamlet, for example. But something happened and I am not a theatregoer now. I need the remote control and the fast forward button. But in any case, flying in the face of the SP and received wisdom and of the latest pompous pronouncements from the RSC about how young people should be taught, I am going to say that I prefer my Shakespeare read not acted. There now - I`ve said it. I daresay I`ll go to the Tower for it but who cares ?

I think Shakespeare is better read quietly from a book, by oneself. So the book you really must read is a Shakespeare play and the best one to read first is MACBETH. In any case it`s hard to get to see it on any stage as it`s cursed and you have to call it The Scottish Play and all that  nonsense. But take my advice. Get a copy not in a big fat Complete Works but in a paperback by itself  - the Penguin is good. Treat yourself to a new copy.  Get a comfortable chair and a glass of whatever, draw the curtains, sit beside a fire, preferably on a bitterly cold night with the wind howling round. Skip any Introduction, just plunge straight into Act One Scene ONE and start reading. I bet you won`t stir till you`ve got to the end. It`s fantastic stuff and you don`t have to listen to all those hammy actors, you`ve got the scenes of blasted heaths and scottish castles in your own head, you can go back if you don`t quite understand a bit... and you`ll be so excited you won`t be able to sleep.

There now.

I have 2 copies of MR THUNDERMUG and two of THE SHORT DAY DYING left to give away to anyone who would like one. I posted a batch today so if you have not yet received the copy you asked for previously, it may be on its way to you.

When I find another book which I think might not /did not get enough attention and which I admire greatly, I may buy some more copies to give away.  Meanwhile,  shout quickly if you want one of the above.. e-mail me to mail@susan-hill.com with your address.

There are 23 copies at reasonable prices available on www.abebooks.com from UK booksellers (more from the US.) Go to the site, then go to ADVANCED SEARCH. Key in author and title and under Booksellers make it UK in the drop down box. From there you will find the 23 from prices of about £4 upwards plus postage.

I hope everyone can get hold of the Lyndall Gordon biography and the novel. The idea is for you to erase everything you know about VW from your mind and start afresh.

The Voyage Out is her first novel. Read it as such. You might make a note of other first novels by young women in their twenties - from any period - and when you have read TVO, see how they compare. Is she a confident writer ? Does the book seem very far removed from us now, as readers and just as people living in 2006 ?

Did you find anything dragging ? Is there any naivete there, or lack of certainty in the style.. was she feeling her way ? Is this a young writer whose future you would feel sure about ? Which way would you expect her to go in future novels ?

But this isn`t a test.. settle back and enjoy the novel. I hope an exchange of views will start. Let me know if the comment section does not seem adequate for this - but it should be fine. 

I think a couple of weeks should see everyone through the novel and the chapter of Gordon, but don`t feel there is any rush. We can allow another week. The Woolf for Dummies is an autumn and winter Evening Class after all.. and you don`t even have to leave the house.

The boys at Crockatt and Powell have a competition to see which customer orders the book with the most way-out title. I think one from my 12th century monasticism module is up there with a chance. But because I have had the plumber here all day, and indeed, will be having the pleasure of his company for the next week, I haven`t got much serious work done. Well, I did take DCS Simon Serrailler into a derelict house one foggy October morning in search of the crossbow, but before he found it the plumber started to bang next to my workroom, so I gave up. One of the things I did instead was go on a tour of all the book cases in the house NOT counting those of the SP, to find the weirdest volumes. I excluded children`s books and the SP`s Shakespeare stuff and in no order, I came up with the following.

THE CHANGING FACE OF MONASTIC SOLITUDE

SHAM. HOW THE GURUS OF THE SELF-HELP MOVEMENT MAKE US HELPLESS. (rather good that one...)

MARILYN MONROE. THE FBI FILES.

LIFE-THREATENING ALLERGIC REACTIONS.

THE VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN HOME FROM OLD PHOTOGRAPHS

WILD FOWLERS AND POACHERS

THE SCARBOROUGH CRICKET FESTIVAL

NOAH`S ARKS IN PAPER AND CARD

POINT ENGRAVING ON GLASS

A HISTORY OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

 

I think the best title of any book I found was THE FIRE ENGINE THAT DISAPPEARED ( not a children`s book a Swedish crime novel.)

I`m sure there are more and even stranger. Now see who can come up with a wierder list and no cheating, they have to be on your bookshelves.

The first post about this novel for students who are studying it for GCSE is now up.. go to Students - Set Books - I`m the  of the Castle.

As you may imagine, I was in need of it after London so I sifted through the piles to find books that would act as a massage and an aromatherapy session and a balm to the mind and the soul.

Maybe a crime novel would not seem quite the right thing, but oddly enough it was. If you prefer your crime set in another country, I recommend the books of ANDREA CAMILLERI, whos fictional detective Montalbano  works in beautiful, corrupt  Sicily. A crime novel often seems better when set abroad. I love Michael Dibdin`s Inspector Zen novels for this reason. So the sense of place and the sense of humour of Camilleri took me out of myself, as they say. Then I turned to my MA Module and read a chapter or two of the biography of the 12th century Cistercian abbot, AELRED OF RIEVAULX. He is fast becoming My Hero. But there is nothing like removing yourself entirely in time, place and way of life, to start feeling the stresses of the day roll off your back like Christian`s load.

Yesterday, I turned to Virginia Woolf, for the Woolf for Dummies course over on the other bit of this blog. I dipped about in her A WRITER`S DIARY, my permanent bedside book, then in Lyndall Gordon`s biography. By the time I had been with VW for a couple of hours, I felt absolutely normal again.

But to reinforce my sense of rootedness and calm, I opened a W.G. Sebald book which has been waiting patiently for some months - this one is VERTIGO. He is a genius of a rare and special kind and not everyone will take to him. Like Woolf really. If you haven`t, try him. An acquired taste like that for very peaty malt whisky. I don`t drink any alcohol now but when I did, a rare and occasional treat was a small glass of the whisky from Skye called Laphroaig. I think W.G. Sebald is Laphroaig.

PART ONE IS NOW UP. Go to BOOKS AND READING, It is there in a sub-section of its own.

In the next few days I will be putting up part of the Opening Chapter of each shortlisted book - just to whet everyone`s appetite.

If you all still do want this, then I plan to post the first in the series over this weekend.

No one has to enrol. You can come and go as you please. Comment as you please.

It will put it up on the main thread and on a separate thread, so that you can just refer across to that once each post has slipped down below new ones.

I really do want people who have struggled with Virginia Woolf for whatever reason to start afresh and if, at the end of my inputs, you still do not see eye to her with her, then you`ll have given it your best shot  and she just isn`t for you. But I have loved her and her work all of my life so if  can make even one or two people say 'Ah, NOW I see' I shall be happy.

Oh, and I may have a good English degree but I am not an academic - I am just a great lover of VW, am interested in her and her life, and owe her this for what I have learned, from her, as a writer.

A splendid item in yesterday`s must-read COTSWOLD JOURNAL. There is a nice picture of a young man ( good move that, not a middle -aged woman..) with the librarian of Stow- on -the -Wold Library, set against a very nice backdrop of enticing looking books on the shelves. She is giving him advice on filling in a survey. And the write- up is as follows.

"Adults using Stow Library are being invited to take part in a national survey.. to say what they think about their library services...  "  The Gloucestershire County Council`s spokesman for libraries says that this survey gives borrowers  "the chance to give their views, good or bad, on what they want."  Library staff will be encouraging them to give their opinions, which will be analysed to see what improvements can be made.

At last ! Someone is asking the people who go into libraries what they like about their local library, what they do not, what they would like to see, what they would like to change. I wonder if the results will be published ?

But this is surely a great step - people who pay their taxes for the libraries they use should be asked directly about the quality of the service.  That`s what democracy is all about. Too often governments at national and regional level assume that once people have been asked to give their opinion at election times, they need never be asked what they want and do not want again. Not so. Good for the libraries.

And good for Gloucestershire Libraries, which continue to provide great books and helpful staff and are so popular with borrowers.

 

Below are the FIVE shortlisted books and authors for the 2007 LONG BARN FIRST NOVEL competition.

There will also be a very exciting announcement for the shortlisted authors coming up very soon. Please would all the shortlisted authors contact me straight away by e-mail ? Here we go and these are in alphabetical order of author.

THE GOOD THIEF`S GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM by CHRIS EWAN

PUNJABI MOON by NATASHA MANN

THE CLEANSING by Bill Rogers

WALKING AT LOW TIDE by Jane Taylor

DR ERIN O`ROURKE by Shirley Williamson

 

The final meeting to select the shortlist was long and interesting and very amicable and there were no serious disagreements. I am sorry if your book was called in but you did not make the shortlist after all. The standard of entries this year was extremely high overall and our shortlisted authors can be extremely proud.

THERE WILL BE A PRESS RELEASE NEXT WEEK WHICH WILL INCLUDE THE OTHER EXCITING NEWS FOR THE SHORTLISTED AUTHORS ABOUT THEIR BOOKS AND  LONG BARN BOOKS.

 

 

Today Richard Charkin spoke a a meeting of the Library Association in Reading (see his blog for more.) Mr David Lammy, the Minister of Culture, was in attendance. Readers of this blog will know that I have had my say about the decline in the library service lately on Tim Coates's Good Library Blog and it has been picked up in the national and international press. I was not going to use this blog to write about libraries ever, but I am going to do so just this once, purely in response to what David Lammy said - and which Richard Charkin quotes.

There are just two points .

1. He says 'Libraries are about more than books AND THEY ALWAYS HAVE BEEN '  Oh really ? Other spaces within library buildings may have long been used for other purposes but the book-lending and reference sections of libraries have only been used for 'other things' to the detriment of the books, in the last 15 years or so. I do NOT mean that they started to have computers which people could use for their research - of course those should be there. I mean when they started to be for things like noisy computer games and baby creches and the sale of spectacles and DVDs. Those are recent innovations.

My other point was that these things have pushed aside books. And as councils have cut the budgets for libraries the opening hours have become shorter, and many branches have been closed altogether. So whatever libraries are for, if they are not there or not open, they can`t be used for anything.

 

But the most insulting and disturbing thing Mr Lammy said today was this.

"So I get heartily tired of self-appointed, un-elected, un-representative groups who dogmatically say that libraries are for this and not for that. "

I do not know what groups he means. I am not a group, nor is Tim Coates, nor is Richard Charkin. We know one another a bit in other contents and we blog about libraries, Tim all the time, Richard and I very occasionally. If he does not mean us I would be interested to know who the groups are that he has in mind. But the matter is quite serious.

Neither I nor anyone else has to be appointed by Mr Lammy or elected by anyone else to say what we think about the state of libraries. To have the RIGHT to say something about them we should be taxpayers and council tax payers. I am both.  Anyone who is either or both, and who therefore contributes financially to the public library service, may speak out, publicly on this issue. And to say 'unrepresentative' is laughable. I am not any sort of official Representative but I represent thousands and thousands of people who are concerned about the state of their libraries. Our libraries.

How DARE he tell any of us that we may not voice our opinion. This is not yet, just, a totalitarian state.

 

 

 

There are some new nominations up there. If you are following this please check them out from time to time as they don`t appear on the main page.

There are ten more copies of MR THUNDERMUG available, free to anyone who would like one. Please e-mail me on mail@susan-hill.com with your address and one will be on its way. I so want everyone to love this.

Everyone who asked for a copy of THE SHORT DAY DYING can have one. They are coming in to me tomorrow, Wednesday, but won`t go out till Friday as I have to go to a funeral and then have a day in London. But you will have your copy to read for the weekend.

There is a letter in today`s Daily Telegraph, which has been picked up everywhere. It is signed by authors and child psychologists and educational experts and it says today childhood is being lost to a poisonous cocktail of junk food, marketing and video games.

I want to ask 'compared to when ?'  100 years ago children went up chimneys and down coal mines. They left school at 12. 200 years ago they left at 10 and 5 year olds stood in fields for hours scaring birds.

And how good was the diet of poor children ? Rickets, tuberculosis, scurvy were commonplace and it is only in the last 50 or so years that we have assumed that most babies will live to see childhood and most children to see adulthood.

My own childhood was rich in books borrowed twice weekly from the library, but not in toys. It was not rich in living space but it was rich in outdoor space for playing. It was poor in diet. I was born in 1942 and even though babies and small children were given extra rations, boils and styes were an everyday occurrence because we did not have such a vitamin-rich diet as children now. There was no junk food but we ate  what would now be regarded as unhealthy -  dripping, lard, white bread. Yesterday I ate three peaches. They are cheap. When I first saw a peach as a child, it cost HALF A CROWN. That is several pounds by today`s reckoning. Needless to say, peaches and other exotica were for the very rich. We did not have many sweets - they did not come off ration until I was ten, but I had spoons and spoons of condensed milk and treacle. Semi skimmed milk was not heard of and all meat had the fat on.

I don`t doubt that many children now are deprived of much -but books are available, outdoor games and sports can be played, friends can be had, fresh good food costs no more than junk.

I do agree that there are huge pressures put on children at school which we seemed not to have even though we did all the lessons and many exams. We seemed to have more time - but everything speeds up as you grow older so how do we know ?

I worry about two things. The middle-class pushy parent, the one whose poor children`s feet never touch the ground in the rush from one out of school activity to another - all of which, of course, are competitive. They are never left alone to find themselves and their own amusement, never allowed just to mess about. You learn a lot, messing about. I saw enough pushy parents and academic striving when we live in Oxford to last anyone a dozen lifetimes.

The other thing which worries me more is the ubiquity of sex. Every form of sex is everywhere, paraded in front of children, no matter how small. Sex is on advertisements, on television, on films, on every headline shouting at them from the newsagents stands. I would never want a return to the days when parents like mine could not acknowledge its existence, even when I was an adult. There were a lot of badly adjusted people because of those atittitudes. But as ever, the pendulum swings too far the other way. I was shocked to watch a delightful television programme about the first day at school of some 5 year olds, and to hear one little boy telling every little girl he could find that he wanted to have sex with her. Where did he get the phrase from ? Did he know what it meant and if so, how ? Sex is not for childhood. Sex is an adult business.  The time to become aware of it is post 11 years old. We devalue sex and pollute our children by  our exhibitionism and lack on decency and self-control.

It would be interesting to hear comments on this one. I am not knocking the authors of the letter -I don`t want to get into any more hot water - just thinking their comments through.

I am saddened that we have a secular society and  by the absence of a sense of reverence and holiness. We do not teach those to children any more than we teach the sense of God, and of right and of wrong. Or rather, some do, of course they do, but they are in the minority and they are shouted down and derided. I would bring back prayers and assembly and Bible reading and the teaching of a moral code.

But I am sure most of the signatories to this letter would not agree with me there.

 

For those of you who have not yet discovered the joys of one of America`s greatest prose writers - as well as crime novelists - here are a few quotes. They should tempt you. Think of the being spoken by Humphrey Bogart. They come from a wondrous little book called PHILIP MARLOWE`S GUIDE TO LIFE which ought to go into everyone`s stocking this Christmas.

The first comes from THE LONG GOODBYE. What a piece of scene-setting . The novel is one of the best, though probably not as good as THE BIG SLEEP.

" I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -that`s wonderful."

Practically the whole of THE BIG SLEEP is a quotation. I love this.

"That was that. We said good bye and hung up. The coffee shop smell from next door came in at the windows with the soot but failed to make me hungry. So I got out my office bottle  and took a drink and let myt self-respect ride its race."

and the last for now, from FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.

" It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."

After that, how can you not drop everything, rush out and buy them all ?

I know why the temperature shot up, that`s easy - I put the Aga back on. But why did we have the mother and father of all thunderstorms this afternoon ? Because Dan had just cut the grass I suppose. Literally. Half an hour before. I had a headache, which is most unusual for me, and I know it was barometric pressure and then the dogs started getting restless and the horses began to race about the field. I daresay the cows in the field beyond ours would have been lying down together in a bunch if I`d gone to see. And then the sky gathered like a boil and the next thing was the telephone which I`d left on the sill  beside the open window was full of water and the laptop had blinked and gone out. It went on for ages, crashing and flashing. My mother would have covered up all the knives  and mirrors and put the scissors in the drawer.  No, truly. She kept cloths specially for the purpose, left over from the blackout. I went to have a bath, which she certainly would not have recommended. Suppose you were struck by lightening when wet and naked ? I told her you couldn`t be - struck, I mean - in a bathful of water but she didn`t believe me any more than she believed that the four rubber tyres on a car meant you were safe there too. Scientific evidence meant absolutely nothing to her.

The storm wandered off in the Stratford direction and I settled down to watch East Enders - I would never have been able to do that either, the plug would have been out of the wall. But it was terminally depressing so I switched off. By then the laptop was fine but there was no server. The dogs were looking hopeful and the SP was looking hungry. Nothing for it but to feed all three of them and then read a book. Which will make a nice change, as I have been writing one all day.

Oh - forgot to mention. Shortly after storm was over, the sink was full of spiders and my office full of daddy-long-legseses.

I told you it was weird in the country.

 

You can go on saying nice approving things, positive and cheerful things, until you`re blue but they ignore you. The moment you say anything critical, the moment you shoot from the hip and complain loudly - they copy your blog or your comments on someone else`s blog in a nano-second. Which is what The Guardian has done today and what the trade press has picked up. You may remember that I did my back in  and so referred you all to Tim Coates`s Good Library Blog, where I had a thing or two to say about Library Management - not the foot soldiers who serve you so charminglywith the novel you have waited 6 months for, but the Faceless Grey Men in Suits  behind the scenes. The ones who turned libraries into gin palaces. It`s that which has got me into hot water of sorts.

But at least the Guardian followed up by asking me to write a piece specially for them - which means they would have paid me. They don`t have to pay to reprint blogs. I said no because I`m saying no to everyone apart from DCS Simon Serailler at the moment.

Still, nothing like stirring the waters a bit to make you feel young.

 

 

 

I`ve done a trawl along one bookcase, the one on the landing outside my bedroom. And I have come up with the following six books. All come highly recommended so try one if you don`t know what to read next. No particular order, here they are just as I pulled them from the shelf.

THE HIGH WINDOW.  Raymond Chandler.  You know by now what I feel about Chandler and this is one of the best. I`d give my back teeth for his prose style and nonchalance.

A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY. J.L.Carr. About two men who meet in a church in the English countryside of 1920, both war survivors. A short, absolutely perfect book. You will probably have read it. If not, you can`t afford to wait and if so, then read it again.

BARCHESTER TOWERS. Anthony Trollope. Arguably the best of the Barchester Chronicles - but if you are going to read them for the first time it is probably best to begin at the beginning with the first THE WARDEN ( BT is gthe second book.). If not, well, pick any of them up and re-read.

TOM`S MIDNIGHT GARDEN. Philippa Pearce.  I never understand why more adults don`t read and re-read the great children`s books, of this is surely one. 'There is a time, between night and day, when landscapes sleep...This grey, still hour before morning was the time when Tom walked into his garden.'   How can you resist ?

THE FLANEUR. Edmund White. A flaneur is someone who strolls or loiters about a city. This is what White does about Paris through this short, delightful, evocative book.

A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by VS.Naipaul. A classic. That`s all. A classic - and very very funny.

 

There are, of course, many differences between small independent publishers and the major firms. Differences of scale. The large firms have big offices and many staff. I read wise words today from Felix Dennis who, in giving advice to people in business said keep your staff-ing levels as low as possible. 'Overheads walk on two legs.' Publishers never seem to see this. So they have to pay all those two legs. They are also much more likely to be answerable, ultimately, to faceless proprietors and money-men. That is why they need big bestsellers. But it is simply not true that therefore they are not interested in a. literary novels or b. books by unknown/first-time, writers. Of course they are. Literary novels can become big best sellers. And J.K. Rowling was an unknown first-=time writer when she sent HP off to an agent she had picked out of The Writers and Artists Year Book.

BUT.. there are a great aspiring writers out there, and a great many of those are simply no good. Hopeless. But they go on writing and sending in their manuscripts, and gradually the tide of them rises and rises. In there somewhere may be the new Harry Potter. Or not. But the certainty is that there will also be a load of rubbish. Think of the DRAGONS DEN. There are masses of would-be inventors/entrepreneurs /multi-millionaire business-owners out there - and look at some of the people who climb those stairs. In every programme there are perhaps two whose idea is good and whose business might, just might, be a modest success.  The rest are there for the laughs. Our laughs. It is, I am afraid, the same with aspiring writers and their manuscripts. But the dragons are looking for a brilliant idea to back, and the publishers are looking for best selling books. They really really are. There is no conspiracy against new writers.

But, especially in blogs abd on forums, I detect a whingeing note of 'They OUGHT to publish us.' Why ought they ? Publishers risk their money. What gives you the right to say someone OUGHT to risk their money on you just because you have written a book ? And more than the backers OUGHT to risk theirs on a dud idea for a business. There really is no difference.

In the next blog on this subject I`m going to make a suggestion to all aspiring novelists.  Or, put it another way - I am going to issue a challenge. I guarantee that if you succeed at it, you will find a publisher.

Watch this space.

 

It`s called THE SHORTEST DAY DYING by Peter Hobbs and it was published in 2005 by Faber and I want to know why they did not make more fuss about it, why they did not jump up and down and dance and sing and shout ? Because it is quite short ? Because they didn`t pay a million pounds for it ? Oh get thee behind me cynic.

Right. Let`s try to do something. You don`t need to know a great deal about the plot. It is set in  remote south west cornwall in the 1870s and it is about a young  blacksmith who is also a peripatetic Methodist preach who walks miles round the county  preaching the Word with passion and conviction to tiny congregations.  Its descriptions of the landscape, as seen through  Charles Wenmoth`s eyes, the way it conveys the fire in his soul, his determination, his sense of mission, are white-hot. It is a strange, haunting, gripping book. Another writer would have given us 700 pages and we would have been weary. Hobbs gives us less than 200 and every paragraph, every line tells, every word counts.

I`m going to do with  THE SHORT DAY DYING what I did with MR THUNDERMUG. I am buying 10 copies. If you would like one, just ask. Leave your address under Comments or, if you would rather not, e-mail to mail@susan-hill.com

It comes with an obligation. If you love it, tell people about it.

Oh, and my back is getting better, thank you kindly for enquiring and for all the helpful advice. The best was DO NOT LIE DOWN. So I walked about and even ate my breakfast standing up. I did go to bed though.

It seems to have done the trick. But as any doctor worth his salt should tell you, 90% of things get better by themselves anyway, whatever you do or do not.

Yesterday afternoon I went to the book store. I looked at a big box of books and bent over to pick it up, NOT in the position required by Health and Safety. As I did so, I said to myself, if you lift that up you will do your back in. I lifted it up.

Today I am better standing than sitting and better walking about than standing so I cannot spend much time putting up a blog. I am also full of paracetamol. So instead of writing again here what I have already written there anyway, may I ask you all to leave this blog and go to THE GOOD LIBRARY BLOG  ( THE LINK IS TO THE RIGHT IN THE LIST.)  It is an important site for book readers anyway but I have written a comment which Tim Coates, who runs the G.L.B, has pulled onto the main page. And it`s important.

And I am going to see if lying down helps.

The trouble is, there is never much ON telly at the weekend. My programmes all occupy mid-week. I watch Holby City on Tuesdays and The Bill on Wednesdays and Thursdays. On a regular basis, as they say now, favouring the longer more important sounding phrase to the shorter, perfectly serviceable word 'regularly.'  NO. STOP ME. I am beginning to sound like a Grumpy Old Woman, the sort who bought six copies of EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES, one for each room of the house.

As I said. The Bill. I am also currently watching DRAGON`S DEN because I fancy Peter Jones more than for any other reason. The format is soo predictable and I feel guilty at enjoying watching people who have invented a singing corkscrew make fools of themselves when they try to open a bottle of wine while playing E Lucevan le Stelle with the corkscrew in front of the panel and the bloody thing doesn`t work - either the corkscrew or the music. I have to record The Bill OR Dragon`s Den, as they clash. I am also passionately devoted to HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MARIA and not because I fancy either Graham Norton or Andrew L W. I cannot understand why this show has been so panned by the critics. It is so unbelievably kitsch, and besides why not choose Maria this way ? Gives some good young singers a public platform even if they do not get the Maria part. I think this was ALW`s motive. I actually believe he is an altruist at heart. He just keeps it buried beneath a ton of  Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

I also watch the X FACTOR because I fancy Simon Cowell and admire Sharon Osbourne. (I turn the sound down and go to make a cup of tea when the performers are performing .)

But Friday-Sunday is dead. Unless Manchester United are playing. Which usually they are not. 

However, tonight, praise be, sees the return of REBUS and with the right man cast at last - Ken Stott, who was born to play Rebus. God knows why they faffed about with that other bloke for so long.

Other than  that, I watch films and DVDs of TV series I love. I am currently deciding that I will probably love GREY`S ANATOMY. So I have bought more of it. I also watch re-runs of ER ( WITH George Clooney because.. well you know why..) And SPOOKS. and HUSTLE. And the miraculous Helen Mirren as Jane Tennant in PRIME SUSPECT. I could watch and watch and watch those. I do. And no, it is NOT because.. well, you know.

I also watch a film called CROUPIER which didn`t make the big time but has the handsome Clive Owen and is wonderful in the Casino bits. And any of the series called LAS VEGAS, ditto the Casinos.

You must wonder how I find time to read any books.

 

The bubble will burst of course. Only not quite yet. In a previous blog I wrote about one of the first Victorian pastiches, Charles Palliser`s THE QUINCUNX. We had JONATHAN NORRELL AND MR STRANGE.Matthew Kneale`s SWEET THAMES was a good one. Earlier this year came KEPT by D.J. Taylor, who must be a bit sick to see the others which have come piling in bagging the Christmas market. His was rather good though stronger on style than plot. Now we have Michael Cox`s THE MEANING OF NIGHT, which so far has had more column inches because of his brain tumour than because of his book, though that will change.

And then another strange thing. I was going to write a piece in the Publishing thread of the blog, about my editor at Hamish Hamilton, Christopher Sinclair Stevenson, who became my editor in 1968 and remained it through various moves of House, until the late 1990s when he retired from publishing to become an agent. We catch up on the telephone and have a gossip two or three times a year and on the last occasion, when I asked how business was, he sounded, for Christopher, rather excited. He had been sent a first novel more or less at random, had read it and known at once not only that it was good but that it was going to make a very great deal of money. It has and Penguin are making a mega song and dance about it over on their website. If you want to know more, Jessica on her blog The Book Bar, has picked it up. You can buy the book in parts, like one of Charles Dickens`s novels, before it comes out as one volume in January. It has sold in about 28 countries and - oh, the usual. It is - guess, what, a Victorian pastiche, and it is called THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM-EATERS by Gordon Dahlquist.

It looks set to do well. So does Michael Cox`s book. Now you can bet that when they all get into paperback, just one of these is going to make Richard and Judy. And that one will be chosen out of the rest because the story behind it will have the X-Factor - i.e. it will be good for a 10 minute sofa-chat on the R AND J Sofa. And my money is firmly on THE MEANING OF NIGHT. You can`t beat that story for a 10 minute sofa-chat.

I wonder how long it will be before the genre runs out of steam ?

 

This is such a good topic I`ve put it into a main post. It appears as a comment below the last post. But here it is and I think this merits discussion - both in the light of her vicar-interview and in general.

"Has anyone done any research
about judging people's personalities by their favourite books? Not the
books they read, the ones they love and value? We are shortly to
interview for a new vicar, any suggestions for what book tastes we should
seek?"  SHEILA

Personally I would never trust anyone whose favourite books were Condensed ones and I would be as worried by someone who said they only ever read Kafka as ditto Danielle Steele. A good mixed diet would seem to me best in reading as in food. But the person who did not smile at either  THE PURSUIT OF LOVE or THE DIARY OF A NOBODY would be very very unlikely to become my best friend.

Mind you one of my favourite novels is Jean Rhy`s WIDE SARGASSO SEA and one of my best friends has just said she couldn`t take it at any price but she is still a friend.

I would always trust someone who appreciated Graham Greene and Edith Wharton, but would I give a job to the Terry Pratchett fanatic ? Hm.

I bet you thought it was all a hoax. But the books were held up by the wholesaler. This is because my account was frozen. Turns out I owed them the princely sum of £4.93.  Well, take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves.

Now they are here. I am posting them to those of you who asked for a copy, this morning.

Dan has cut the grass there. All afternoon, the steady grind of the tractor mower up and down between the trees, in and out - not one`s favourite sound. But just now I went up to the top of the cherry orchard hill with the dogs. They could hardly believe their luck. The cherry orchard freshly mown is a paradise of revealed rabbit holes, old and new, of fresh smells and ancient smells, of fox and badger and deer. The birds were descending among the seed heads in bevvies. I sat on my bench at the top and looked down. The line of hills in the distance had gone smokey blue. Th