travelling, phones and food

What a great few days - except for the awful book agents....let me expand. Spent Thursday with my brother who is now going AWOl which I think is great but not sure what the wardens - sorry nurses - at his brain injury unit think. We were supposed to meet his support worker and we waited three quarters of an hour and when she didn't show I phoned her - and then she tells me she ain't coming because she doesn't feel well. That just ain't good enough, says I... but it falls on sick ears and I seeth.

But Friday and Saturday was great -spent them at Winchester talking - which comes naturally to me more than others - and finding out all sorts of information. Look out for www.completelynovel.com: quite apart from the name, it's a new networking site for writers, small publishers, and readers, to exchange ideas and well, keep in touch. A sort of netmarket for all things literary - I was impressed.

WE sold some books, chatted and I bought a fantastic old edition of Mallory's Morte D'Arthur with Russell Flint illustrations which is wonderfully evocative of my childhood when I used to devour the few old books left on a side shelf - apart from that it was the News of the World on Sunday and the Mirror in the week. I part swapped my novel The GAwain Quest for it which I'm sure will be as well known as Mallory's writings (Ok you've never heard of it....) in time.

I came back totally exhausted and fell asleep - nearly - in Dr Who and am totally peeved that the BBC powers have decided to make it a three parter with the denouement coming next week when I'm in Bruges...just hope the TV will get BBC1. Fat chance.

Sunday was another DAvid day so the less said....
But today, and the reason I'm writing this now, is that Irene, dear friend, has made the final preparations to Luther's Ambassadors (the text) for the printers. Just waiting for the cover to turn up and it can go - my second baby, about to depart into the world, to founder and then walk tall....It's a tale of Anne Boleyn (yawn, not another....) but this is different. This time she's mixed up with some French guys who's faces will be familiar to anyone who has visited the National Gallery - those wonderful men painted by Holbein, the Ambassadors. And we get to know what she did as a child, and the psychology behind that cold determination to marry Henry....

Now to plan the book launch....

So now I can move on and nurture the next baby.

Oh, and the book agents; saw two (nameless) at Winchester at the writers' conference. One asked 'so where will this fit into the bookshelves?' of my submission, and the other one turned up half hour late, flustered, unshaven and totally non sympathetic; I let him get on with his life, while I get on with mine....When I told my husband about the 'where will it fit?' He said: 'where does Ishiguro fit on the shelves?' Answer me that one, folks...in 150 words, only. I have come to the conclusion that the whole publishing world is crazy, but that there is a new uprising going on; look out for small publishers, like Goldenford, or new ways of marketing, for we all know that publishers pay bookshops to strategically place their books at the front of shop and how many of us could truly say that those 3 for 2 offers really make good reading? enuf, its near to my bedtime - I love waking at the dawn which is about 4 at the moment, and starting the day but as it drifts off into greyness now I can feel slumber coming on.....