Do me a favour!

Despite an offer, made at the beginning of December , to publish my novel in February 2009, nothing at all happened at bluechrome, and they are now making noises about being able to bring it out over the summer, perhaps...
When they said the same thing about last summer, I believed them.
I’d like to believe them still.
So can I ask you people to do me a favour? As bluechrome seem to be extremely shy when it comes to communicating with their authors directly, would you drop them a line saying something like this:
‘I heard you have plans to publish a novel called The Gift of Honey. What’s happening? When will this title be available?’ Obviously, writing such a message doesn’t commit you to anything. The address to send it to is info@bluechrome.co.uk
And if they deign to reply, perhaps you would let me know…

Cornishmen do it drekkly

... or so the bumper sticker has it.
Ask any Cornishman what 'drekkly' means and he'll probably ask you if you know the Spanish concept of 'mañana'. Then he’ll explain that drekkly is much like mañana, but without the hurry.
Well, I took my West Country novel to a West Country publisher and a compounded case of mañana seems to be the result. Repeated efforts to get a publishing date from bluechrome have resulted in the promise that they’ll be announcing one drekkly. When their drekkly is exactly, is anybody’s guess.
Bluechrome have had their fair share of woes over the summer; I wish them well. I have every faith that they’ll be bringing out The Gift of Honey in the fullness of time. They’ve even put a microscopic picture of the book’s cover on their website; seeing it reminded me of the scan I saw of my daughter some twenty years ago: it was hard to believe that that fuzzy grey image heralded the birth of such a beautiful baby a few months later.
Somewhere within the byzantine womb of the Bristol publishers (to mangle my geography as well as my metaphors) this wonderful novel is undergoing gestation. However, until I have a publication date from them, I’ve just got to be patient. And that means that you, dear, eager prospective reader, have also got to be patient.
I’ll keep you posted.

Not waving but Drowning

What an exciting moment! At lunchtime my publisher sent me the cover of my first novel, The Gift of Honey, which is due out in July.

It wasn't at all what I imagined. However, after living with it for an afternoon, it is beginning to grow on me.

The novel is a tale of Cornish saints and Victorian parsons, smuggling and cholera epidemics. So in my mind's eye (which, admittedly, isn't a very good eye - I have a somewhat underdeveloped visual sense) I imagined the cover would be a lurid drawing, figuring - at the very least - a Celtic cross, a Cornish cove, a slate-roofed church and a lugger fluttering St Piran's flag.

But the publisher's cover is much more subtle than any of that. The sepia photograph conjures up the period in which The Gift of Honey is set (well, nearly: is that a dress really from c.1840?). More than that it hints at the central relationship in the novel: that between the protagonist, Parson Mudge, and his niece Isobel.

But better still, and far cleverer, is that this photograph made me think of the Stevie Smith poem, Not Waving but Drowning. And that's a poem that conjures up Mudge's predicament to a tee.

Clever people, over at bluechrome!

Oh, and one last thing: the bluechrome logo, those two little squiggles down in the bottom right-hand corner, which are supposed to look like sails (I think) - don't they look like a shark's fin poking out of the turbid Cornish waters? They do to me.

What's in a name?

Finally it looks as though we're in business. After months of leaving me in the doldrums, my publisher has written to say he's gearing up to the July publishing. He's sent me reams of questionnaires to fill out; I've spent much of the weekend writing blurbs and autobiographical sketches and answering questions about my ideal reviewer.
And I've also insisted on publishing 'The Gift of Honey' under the name of R. Rushforth Morley.
Why? Rather a mouthful, isn't it? Rather old-fashioned?
Maybe. But Rushforth was my mother's maiden name, and I'm happy to keep it flying - if nothing else, as a nod to my favourite grandparent, who had the delightful Anglo-Saxon name Harold Rushforth, and began every day of his life with a bacon sandwich.
And there's a nod in another direction, too: I'd like to think it has the ring of a 'W. Somerset Maugham' about it: a writer I've always admired for his craftsmanship and well-plotted stories.
But the real reason for taking pains over the name on the cover of 'The Gift of Honey' is because my given name, Robert Morley, has always been in the public arena. Surely you remember the genial, adipose actor, playwright and wit? Although he passed away in 1992 his stature still casts a shadow (all through my childhood my name was greeted with a raised eyebrow and the comment "Well you've certainly lost some weight!" Not to mention the fifty years.).
And would you believe that my sister (well, half-sister really, but why be technical?) was named Elisabeth Taylor? Now, doesn't that raise another eyebrow? Whatever was my mother thinking of? Actually, it's Jayne Elisabeth Taylor - and you wouldn't be surprised to learn that she prefers 'Jayne' to 'Elisabeth'... (Hi there, Jayne! You reading this, sis?)
So I've struggled with this second-hand name business. I guess this is why it's taken me fifty years to get round to getting a novel published! I've tried the trendy Bob Morley (only Mother threatens to cut me off), anagrams (how does Terry Bremolo sound ?- or even Beryl Tremotor, which happens to have a Cornish ring about it, although I'm not sure I could face a sex change), and even dropping my surname: yet Robert Rushforth seems to leave off too much of my identity, as well as needlessly giving away the George Orwell advantage. Do you know that story? Eric Arthur Blair chose his nom de plume from a list of English rivers, and settled on one from the middle of the alphabet bercause he calculated that Avon or Blackwater would place him up on the top shelf out of reach , whereas Wye would require searching for his books on bended knee.
So that's it. R. Rushforth Morley. I hope that it's a name that'll soon be staring you straight in the eye, from the shelves of a bookshop somewhere near you.

You can't lick that!

... as my grandad used to say.
Actually, you can, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.
What am I on about?
Stamps. Italian postage stamps. I've just sent the last of my Christmas cards and that's got me wondering, as I do every year (and quite a few times in between), why it is that the Italian post office still can't produce a stamp that will stick to the envelope. There are always at least two corners of an Italian stamp that curl up at the edges like a week-old sandwich, and no amount of spit or pressure seems to help hold them down. I always push my letters in the post box doubtful whether the envelope and its stamp will stick together for the length of the journey.
Not that I have anything but praise for Posta Italiana. It's an institution that has revolutionised itself over the last ten years. Gone are the dingy premises, the long queues and the rude, lugubrious service of yesteryear. Along with the shiny new blue and yellow logo, they have introduced a ticket queuing system, seats, bright stationery shops and even, miracle of miracles, friendly and helpful staff. Not to mention a revamped post office bank which puts most of the high street banks to shame.
And all of this while in Britain post offices have been closing down.
I was Peru a couple of summers ago and sent my usual flock of post cards back towards Europe. None of them arrived. Not one. But I remember the stamps - prettier even than the post cards themselves, each one with a picture of an exotic bird on in. And above all, after my Italian experiences, I was impressed at how well the stamps stuck to the cards. If the Peruvians can do it, why can't the Italians?

Bali: US vision versus EU caution

So the cautious Europeans have got their concensus on carbon emission cuts after all.
I expect that there are some on the American right who rue the European refusal to let the Americans handle climate change their way.
After all, only a generation ago wasn't the biggest challenge to the global climate posed by the threat of a nuclear winter?
So why not think outside the box and go for a win/win solution here?
I'm surprised that none of the Neo-Con think tanks has suggested that as Mr Bush has the technology, as well as the military hardware, the most elegant way to offset global warming would be with a few localised spells of nuclear winter. In, let's say, Iran, North Korea, and (should Cuba be a bit too close for comfort) maybe Venezuela.
Not only would that avoid having to take any tiresome steps that may well lead to an economic slow-down, but it would keep the world free for global exploitation - whoops! er, I mean... 'democracy'.

Not on my wish list

Last night I baked a couple of potatoes for supper. It's the one thing I wish I had a microwave for: pop'em in a paper bag and your spuds are ready in minutes. Done to perfection.
Otherwise, a microwave is not a gadget I've got a lot of time for, probably because I wouldn't know how to use it. I have a friend in Como (Hi, Fiorella!) who cooks all her vedgies in it, and out comes a cornucopia of aubergenes, courgettes, peppers, carrots and artichokes, all delicious. But no potatoes. So it was with some pride that I shared my tiny secret about spud-baking with her...
Actually, I've probably picked up my prejudice against microwaves from my Mum. Back when she first got hers in the mid-seventies, I can remember there was talk of revolutionising the bar she ran, with an unending suppy of easily produced bar snacks. Yet a few weeks later and the only thing that saved the microwave from relegation to the back of a cupboard was its handiness as an instrument for softening butter. Once spreadable butter was introduced, back in the early eighties, the microwave got a new lease of life as a plate-warmer, but in my mother's eyes, I suppose it never really escaped the taint of those stories about Soviet submariners cooking their intestines when they forgot to close the oven door, or the dangers a microwave poses to poodles...
Do you know that story? It's no doubt apocryphal, an urban legend, and goes something like this:
There was a lady in Florida who had the habit, on the rare chilly mornings that Florida is prone to, of switching on her oven, at the very minimum, before she took Fifi out for his morning stroll, then popping her pet in the oven on her return for a couple of minutes to warm him up. When this over-protective pet-owner acquired a microwave, she reckoned that a 20 second blast would be quite enough to achieve the same effect, without, however, realising that a microwave cooks in a very different way from a traditional oven, beginning on the inside and cooking outwards. Needless to say, the poodle came out with cooked kidneys and never went walkies again.
And of course, as this tale is a parable of American excess, it ends with the pet-owner suing the company who made the microwave and winning an absurdly extravagent sum in damages on the grounds that nowhere in the instructions did it say that it was unsuitable for pets.
Nor, no doubt, did it say how well it bakes potatoes. Remember, you first read that right here!