Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Publishers, proofs and paintings

Book News:

I'm happily going through the final proofs for The Gifting and should have those ready to send back to Bluewood Publishing sometime over the next few days, I hope. It's nice to key into the beginning of the trilogy once more and to get back in touch with how things are in Gathandria and Lammas. Some things I honestly can't remember writing at all, but hey somebody must have done. But, in my defence, I did write it quite a while ago.

Other positive book news is that Butterfly Girl, my lesbian erotic short story, is now available for free at Oysters and Chocolate webzine, and has been read about 620 times, which is heartening. Continuing the lesbian theme (though not the erotic one), I'm happy to note that The Girl in the Painting was briefly at No 78 in the Amazon UK charts, so that was nice too.

Other less positive book news is that one of my publishers has, rather dramatically I feel, threatened me with legal action for attempting (wisely, to my mind, since they haven't yet paid me the royalties from 2010, let alone 2011, Gawd bless 'em, and their dealings with me have been sooooo slow as to be virtually non-existent) to extricate myself from their grip. Somehow I can't help but be wryly amused by this, hey ho. I may yet end up in a foreign jail, who knows! However, I've had several offers of cakes by post with files in them, so you may not have heard the last of me yet ... However, if this blog goes suddenly silent, you know where I am! There's a story in there somewhere, my dears - maybe even a movie ...

Today at Vulpes Libris, you can read my review of Robert Goddard's Long Time Coming - in which the end is really way too long in coming. It was an exhausting read - not quality Goddard at all, sadly.

This week's meditations are:


Meditation 518
It seems a shame
seeing he was so evil
the Lord killed him

that the unfortunate Er
couldn’t be granted
a longer name.


Meditation 519
Women from Carmel
are tall and dark-haired.
Their beauty is legendary.
They float like a ship
through the air’s mysterious tides.

They say little
and when they do speak
their words are full of wisdom
whilst their breath
smells of honey and spices.

They make deceitful friends
but true wives
as they walk through the world
in their secretive lives.


Life News:

Whilst selling our flat seems to have ground to a (hopefully temporary!) halt due to our buyer's mortgage not being quite there yet, the news on our house purchase is rather more interesting. It looks like (praise be ...) our vendors' solicitors have finally delivered all the necessary information to our solicitors and it may be that one day in recordable time the issue of an exchange date might be discussed. Watch this space, eh ... In the meantime, we have also booked to see a very nice house in West End Village on Saturday so our options remain, as always, open.

But there is more positively good news, hurrah. In spite of potentially being a known literary criminal of no fixed abode, my doctor tells me that my anxiety levels are officially down a little whilst my depression levels have halved. Hurrah indeed! Keep those little happy pills coming, is what I say.

Anne Brooke

2 comments:

Jason Shaw said...

Ohh so hopefully the house buying and selling will happen sooner rather than later. Good luck my dear.

Hmm publishers seem to be prickly people to deal with it seems. Hard to please and harder still to get money out of. Maybe you should threaten them with some legal action, or some naming and shaming!

All the best.

Anne Brooke said...

Thanks, Jason! :))

Actually I'm really lucky with most of my publishers - it's just the odd one or two I want to escape from! I'll keep digging my tunnel :))

Anne
xxx