Stretching

The scene: An English-language bookshop, somewhere in Prague.

The players:

The bookshop salesperson, earnestly pretty

A well-spoken customer, elegantly dressed

A new customer enters. She appears to be constructed entirely from wool.

Salesperson: Hello, can I help you?

Woolly customer: No, no thanks. Just looking.

Removes enormous fuzzy hat and begins to unwind two layers of scarves. A nose emerges.

Salesperson: Ok, just let me know if you need some help.

Woolly customer: Yes, thanks.

Leans casually against a bookcase in an effort to push her right arm towards her coat buttons. Attempts to look nonchalant.

Well-spoken customer: So anyhow, I was saying to P. that next time I came we simply had to review this. It's quite extraordinary, and so very moving.

Salesperson: Yes, of course.

Well-spoken customer: But of course, I really should have come on Friday not on the Saturday, so I'm very sorry about that.

Salesperson: Really, it's no trouble at all.

Well-spoken customer: Well thank you, dear. And heavens isn't it cold? We've had eleven metres in Bucharest, if you can believe it, and it's been minus 16.

Meanwhile, the woolly customer catches sight of her hair in the glass and discovers that the removal of her hat has back-combed random sections of hair into three poorly-executed fuzzy quiffs.

Tries to smooth hair down. Removes gloves. Tries to smooth hair down again. Realizes she has a choice between looking mad because of mad hair, or looking mad because of her attempts to de-madden her mad hair. Decides to remove all her outer layers and leave her hat on.

Pauses in satisfaction at clever resolution of seeming insoluble dilemma.

Salesperson: It's been very cold in Slovakia too. Minus twenty or twenty-one I think.

Well-spoken customer: Heavens, that's terrible. It's supposed to be moving here too.

Salesperson: Yes, it's already getting quite cold.

Well-spoken customer: And later, moving towards England.

Salesperson: Next month I hear.

Woolly-hatted customer worries that the wearing of a solo outdoor hat indoors might appear vaguely trendy and hipster-esque. Wonders if the armload of woolens is sufficient to counter this impression. Remembers that anyhow she is now closer to the mad cat lady age anyhow. Wonders if she should get a cat.

Well-spoken customer: Anyhow, dear, I really must be off now. Thank you again very much for your help.

Salesperson: It's not trouble at all, thank you. Here are your things.

Well-spoken customer: Goodbye dear.

Salesperson: Goodbye.

Well-spoken customer leaves in a blast of cold air. Woolly-hatted customer wanders over to the cookbooks and thinks about stew. Somewhere, an espresso machine grinds on.

Sweeping up

So, now that we have that dreaded catch-up question post out of the way, what else is new?

Well, there’s all the various scandals, storms and tempests that have been going on in the corners of blogland that I used to frequent, and occasionally lurk in. Here is a totally scientific and accurate statistical assessment.

1. 1,394 internet squabbles over who has the right to review books.

2. 2,587.6 arguments about the fairness of “mean” reviews, and whether the only criticism permitted should be constructive, helpful, and gently eased by the presence of fluffy chubby cupids and rainbow unicorns.

3. 982.92 monologues about why Bad Reviews Are Good For You and should be swallowed by authors, preferably whole and before breakfast, rather like castor oil.

4. 1,187.3 monologues about why Bad Reviews Are Not Your Business If You Are An Author. If Bad Reviews did not exist, tender, delicate and easily-led readers would otherwise fall for the seductive wiles of Harriet Klausner & co. These fiendish producers of uniformly sunshiny reviews have but one foul aim. They are trying to convince Poor Innocent Readers that Every Book in the World is Brilliant, Wonderful and Amazing.

This is of course, all part of a plot to ensure that Poor Innocent Readers lose significant chunks of their lives lurching from one ill-penned book to the next, constantly lured on by yet another review promising, “The greatest Secret Virgin Doctor Billionaire’s Sheikh’s Secretary’s Love Child in the Magically-Endowed Camper Van novel to ever exist, both now and in the hereafter.” The sunshiny review producers are doing this because

a) they lack critical faculties

b) they aren't actually reading the books they review

c) they are in it for the free books, even if they are crap

d) they are succumbing to the dominating cultural norms inculcated by the patriarchy that women must always be kind, sweet and nice and never say anything nasty to anyone.

e) they are a bit odd

f) all of the above

5. Some stuff that I mainly skimmed about why ebooks rule. See 2 posts below for the why of the skimming. Anyhow, death to paper. Death to paper publishers. Death to the old model of publishing. Oh, but it must be CHEAPER. Blabla long tail, blabla wisdom of crowds. And stuff.

6. A frustrating number of competitions, largely useless to me as I live outside shipping distances. That said, I tend to regard said competitions with a largely unbothered eye, since I don’t particularly worry if the book I’m reading carries the signature of the author (unless maybe the author is Eric Hobsbawm). The frustrating part is more the way the frenzied posts clutter up the more entertaining blogs.

7. Breath by breathless tweeting and live-blogging from assorted conferences and whatnot. Again, geography.

8. 35,843 arguments about what constitutes either acceptable romance, or acceptable tools of romance marketing. They kind of blur after a while, presumably due to shock value.

9. Some people who write blogs now have published, or will be publishing books (paper or otherwise). Good on them. More importantly, does this mean they are allowed to blog any more? Or only on certain posts? Discuss, or just pull it out as an ad hominem argument in the middle of any of the kerfuffles of your choice.

10. The thrills and excitement about a hot new YA author making the rounds and everyone writing about how they are so much MORE than just YA, and why YA is the bestest ever and we should not be ashamed to read YA because really it’s better than some of the other things that are published. It probably is, but I don’t see how this becomes a moral question.

11. Jean M. Auel has published a new Clan of the Cave Bear Book. Suppressing my suspicion that we have another Virginia Andrews on our hands, I am compelled to cry out with unmitigated prehistoric pleasure. Long Live Ayla, the Mother of All, the Creator of Everything, the Inventor of the Bra! She who will invent the internet and dining-table centerpieces of ochre-glazed pinecones! After she tames the dinosaurs and turns them into ostriches! Long Live Dongelar! Long Live his most significant asset! Long live the improbably-named cave lion, Baby!

12. Fan Fiction. Le Scandal. Le Kerfuffle. Le Distress. Les up-mixeds wacky relationships that ruin your reading of the original text forEVAH. Never more can I read the Big Book of Dinosaurs. I am forever plagued by the memory of that disturbing piece of fanfic involving the pachycephalosaurus and the procompsognathus. And the velociraptors. Oh the humanity.

Enter, pursued by a bear

Once upon a time there was an evil auntie who had a blog. First, she was a fake auntie, then a real auntie, but always there was the blog.

Sadly, the evil auntie had a job, and as the years progressed the job sucked up more time and energy. And so the blog withered and dwindled.

However, it had not been wholly forgotten by the evil auntie, who would occasionally drop by to see if it had been infested by spambots, or turn around post ideas in her mind. But the actual writing of the actual post, well, that was always going to be trickier.

However, as is the wont of evil aunties everywhere, this evil auntie was somewhat bloody-minded and couldn’t quite give up the idea of the blog. And so she eventually returned. And thus, the most evil entry to date came about. The dreaded, fearsome and horrific catch up question post.

1. Where have you been?

A. Busy. Stuff. Slow internet. Work. More work.

2. But geographically, where have you been?

A. Prague. Still Prague, more Prague. Some holidays.

3. Gosh, you must be older now.

A. Yes.

4. And that monkey? You know, the one that, er…

A. Monkey? What monkey?

5. Umm… that monkey? You know, the one that got bored with writing Shakespeare sonnets, and… er…

A. …awkward pause… I think you may be confusing me with someone else.

6. Yes, yes of course. No monkey. So Prague? Still? Wow, you must really like it? Job going well, that sort of thing?

A. There has been that world economic crisis.

7. Ah, yes. Haha. So, um… what have you been reading?

A. Cookbooks.

8. Oh, FF’s sake. Now you’re really being bloody-minded.

A. I’m interviewing myself in a virtual vacuum, and vaguely annoyed by the fact that I felt the need to euphemize my language. Of course I’m bloody-minded.

Next time: the dreaded what-have-I-missed post.

Catch-up photo, the first.

pre-Christmas, but not by much, and not in Prague

Once upon a time in Birmingham*, they built a new shopping centre on and around the site of an old marketplace. And both the old marketplace and the new shopping centre, and a shopping centre created in the 1970s that no one likes to talk about much, were called the Bullring. And outside the new shiny mall, part of which looked like a giant silver alien beehive hairdryer, they placed an 8-foot bronze statue of a bull.

And to this shopping centre, the mighty Selfridges came from far-off London to open a new department store so that humble folk from far and wide (or at least the ones in Midlandcestershire) could obtain those sturdy, shiny yellow plastic carrier bags with dramatic black writing and thereby declare (in a not-terribly-subliminal-way) "Behold! I have (expensive) style!"

And to the basement floor of this department store of marvels, came an American sweet company. And they opened their only European store with much fanfare and rejoicing for they were able to help the inhabitants of Midlandcestershire, and their visiting relatives, to fulfill their ultimate destiny. And their destiny was, of course, to obtain limited edition Hershey's Kisses and gobstoppers the size of tennis balls. And the crowning glory of this marvellous achievement was an 8-foot statue of the bronze bull made out of jelly beans, and priced at £20,000.

*not the one in Alabama, more the Midlandcestershire area of the UK...

Hooolliiiiddaaayyy!!!!

...gone to the Motherland via a rather old-skool style residential course in Bath, complete with extremely uncomfortable mattress and endearingly eccentric tutor. (Done, hence earlier quietness).

Mainly I will be avoiding things electronic, although not quite to the point of sporting tinfoil headgear, I hope. I will probably also eat some strawberries.

In the meantime, something to consider may be sub-genre, or even genre hopping writers (I've taken Kelley Armstrong's new book with me). Or tango singing.