Itch

Simon Mayo can multi-task

Not only is he a DJ for the BBC, but he can write well-reviewed page-turners for young adults

Itch, his debut, was promoted by none other than Anthony Horowitz, the author of the hugely popular Alex Rider series, featuring a teenaged special agent in the James Bond mode.

'A great debut. You'll be itching to read more.' Anthony Horowitz

Meet Itch - an accidental, accident-prone hero. Science is his weapon. Elements are his gadgets. All-action adventure perfect for fans of Alex Rider and Young Bond.

Itchingham Lofte - known as Itch - is fourteen, and loves science, especially chemistry. He's also an element-hunter: he's collecting all the elements in the periodic table. Which has some interesting and rather destructive results in his bedroom.

Then, Itch makes a discovery. A new element, never seen before. At first no one believes him - but soon someone hears about the strange new rock and wants it for himself. And Itch and his family are catapulted into a breathless adventure with terrifyingly high stakes . . .

The debut novel from BBC radio presenter Simon Mayo.

Not only has Itch flown to number one in its category on the AmazonUK list, but it has been nominated for the prestigious Carnegie Medal, which counts CS Lewis and Philip Pullman as previous winners.

The Carnegie Medal is an annual award made to the writer of an outstanding book for children.

The winner is chosen by librarians and other writers, including Frank Cottrell Boyce who won the award in 2005 and worked alongside Danny Boyle on the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.

Chair of this year's judging panel, Karen Robinson, said: "This fantastic longlist - the largest ever - represents the high quality of children's publishing that we have here in the UK and is a testament to the enthusiasm of children's librarians across the country.

"In these difficult times it is really heartening that more librarians than ever can still find the time to nominate.

"Judges have a hard task in front of them to read and assess all these exceptional books by our specific awards criteria but their dedication and enthusiasm is second to none and we are all looking forward to the challenge," she added.

Other names on the longlist include Irish novelist Roddy Doyle who is nominated for his book, A Greyhound of a Girl.

Last year's winner was Patrick Ness who was chosen for his book, Monster Calls.

The shortlist will be announced on 19 March, with the overall winner - chosen in June - receiving a gold medal and £500 worth of books to donate to a library of their choice.

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Indie romance writer alert

Get published by Avon

From GalleyCat at Mediabistro.com


Editors at HarperCollins’ Avon Books are looking for NaNoWriMo romance novels, sponsoring “National Romance Writing Month”–encouraging writers submit their work directly to the imprint. Check it out:

Avon editors will make themselves available to the author community via online forums at www.nanowrimo.org, and by sponsoring “NaRoWriMo,” the publisher hopes to acquire original works of romantic fiction, to be released in 2013 by Avon Impulse. ”NaRoWriMo” romance fiction submissions should be submitted by December 10, 2012 to Avon Romance’s online submission portal (www.avonimpulse.com), and tagged “NaRoWriMo.” All novel and novella-length submissions (50,000 words and above) will be reviewed, and will be considered for publication through Avon Impulse, the publisher’s digital-first arm.

Bounty Obituary

A beautifully written description of a tall ship's end

From the New York Times,

By Dan Barry

A fateful meeting of the maritime past and present began amid the Monday morning dread of Hurricane Sandy, when distressing word came from the murk of the roiling Atlantic: the captain and crew of the H.M.S. Bounty, a vessel of timber rigged to evoke 18th-century adventure, were abandoning ship ...

On Friday, the Coast Guard announced a formal investigation into this terrible adventure at sea, one filled with a dime novel’s blend of heroism and tragedy. Fourteen of the 15 crew members were rescued. The body of the 15th — a woman who claimed relation to the original Bounty’s leading mutineer, Fletcher Christian — was recovered. And on Thursday night, the Coast Guard reluctantly suspended its search for the longtime captain, Robin Walbridge, 63, who was said to consider the Bounty an extension of himself.    

So ... why did this famous replica go out to sea, in a doomed attempt to avoid the teeth of a major storm?  Who were the heroes who went to the rescue, and what huge challenge did they face?  Is there anything to be learned from this tragedy?

Read the story
         

Discoverers' letters inspire poets

Robert Falcon Scott and Charles Darwin inspire modern poetry

 

The BBC reports that ten of the UK's top poets have been commissioned to write works inspired by unique museum exhibits.

RF Scott, with his wife, Kathleen

The poets have been matched to collections at Cambridge University, which include objects such as Captain Scott's farewell letter to his wife and Charles Darwin's zoological specimens.

The project, known as Thresholds, includes the poets Daljit Nagra, Don Paterson and Jo Shapcott.

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy described it as "an unprecedented initiative".

Each poet will spend two weeks in residence between January and March meeting researchers and exploring the collections. They will then write a poem inspired by the experience.

"This is a stunning level of commitment to poetry and poets," Duffy said. "These 10 residencies will create a unique collaboration of poets, creating a meeting of minds and disciplines and providing a catalyst for ideas."

Letters from Kurt Vonnegut

I have mixed feelings about advances on first books. They are hard to get, for one thing, and are usually so small that they tie you up without appreciably improving your financial situation. Also: I have seen a lot of writers stop writing or at least slow down after getting an advance. They have a feeling of completion after making a deal. That’s bad news creatively. If you are within a few months of having a finished, edited manuscript, I advise you to carry on without an advance, without that false feeling of completion, without that bit of good news to announce to a lot of people before the job is really done.

Kurt Vonnegut, writing to his son

This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide.

Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegut’s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Günter Grass, and Bernard Malamud.

Vonnegut’s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels—from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing “atomic” bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (“Knopf, for example, might give John Updike’s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion’s contract in return.”) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon.

• On a job he had as a young man: “Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.”
• To a relative who calls him a “great literary figure”: “I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.”
• To his daughter Nanny: “Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.”
• To Norman Mailer: “I am cuter than you are.”

Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote.

Publishers Weekly 100 best books of 2012

Publishers Weekly have announced their picks for the 100 best books adult books (and 40 top children's books) of 2012. Here is their top 10 list:

Building Stories, by Chris Ware (Pantheon)
Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (Holt)
The Round House, by Louise Erdrich (Harper)
Happiness Is a Chemical in the Brain, by Lucia Perillo (Norton)
The Devil in Silver, by Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
Detroit City Is the Place to Be: The Afterlife of an American Metropolis, by Mark Binelli (Metropolitan)
All We Know: Three Lives, by Lisa Cohen (FSG)
People Who Eat Darkness, by Richard Lloyd Parry (FSG)
The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600–1675 by Bernard Bailyn (Knopf)
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 by Anne Applebaum (Doubleday)

 

I have to confess that I have read none of them.  Any comments? Recommendations?

Frankfurt Book Fair

How did New Zealand fare as Guest-of-Honour?

PANZ News Frankfurt Roundup

“We just did it, and it was quite good.” – Tanea Heke, NZ Guest of Honour Project Director

PANZ president Kevin Chapman believes it is too soon to truly know how successful our Guest of Honour Year at FBF was for New Zealand’s publishing industry. “When we receive reports from publishers and authors and collect the feedback due at the end of November, we will then be able to say results and benefits have accrued.

“Nevertheless, we can say at this point that Frankfurt Book Fair management are extremely pleased to have had New Zealand’s presence. We’ve broken every previous record for Pavilion attendance, and we drew in the biggest public attendance over the final days, so we upheld our part of the deal.

“It was hard to say goodbye to Juergen Boos, Claudia Kaiser, Simone Buehler and Karina Goldberg as we had been such a good team, and they were incredibly supportive of everything we tried to achieve. We deeply appreciate their help and involvement in making this an incredible focus on our country at an international event.

“PANZ thanks must also go to the rest of the New Zealand team: Tanea Heke for a stonkingly good cultural programme; Andrew Patterson and Mike Mizrahi for a Pavilion which astounded everyone who went near it; and Michelle Tayler for massive coverage in German media. But within the industry special thanks and commendation must go to Sarah Ropata for the amazing feat of bringing off a top notch books and author programme.”

Once back in NZ, Kevin got out the original proposal document he and Sam Elworthy drafted three years ago and used for presentations to government and agencies. “We said we would get senior politicians to the launch, have a substantial NZ trade presence, involve NZ Tourism, have an engaging cultural programme and provide a writers and book base on which New Zealand could promote itself... We did all that and the FBF and large number of Germans went mad about New Zealand!

“Our people worked so hard. We were under-staffed, under-resourced and under-funded, but we did the Kiwi thing and pulled it off!”

Government cuts lead to bookstore closure

A victim of public sector cuts

Long-established Bennetts Government Bookstore is closing in Wellington

Part of the Whitcoulls bookstore chain, Bennetts was saved while Whitcoulls was in administration last year, by a buyout led by managing director Geoff Spong.

At the time, it was so run down that it "had almost become a dollar-discount remainder" store, he said.  Money was spent to upgrade the site and boost sales, focusing on the business of serving universities and technical colleges. But it was all in vain.

"We've worked hard over the past 18 months to refresh the store, change the stock offering, but at some point there's only so much money in the till," he said.

As recently as 1999, the store had a job to keep up with demand for copies of parliamentary papers. Since then, the internet has destroyed that market. Most official documents are freely available to anyone with a computer.

The store will hold a closing down sale on November 12, and shut doors at the end of the month.  Passersby will miss reading the daily quote that is displayed on a board outside the store -- often pungent, sometimes funny, and always thought-provoking. If only because of that, Wellington will be a little poorer.

Harlequin suffers from Shades

Harlequin Sales and Profits Fall Again, Blaming 50 Shades of Grey

Harlequin's parent company Torstar reported third quarter results Wednesday. The book publishing unit had sales of $107.8 million (CA), down by $7.9 million, or 7 percent (including $1.9 million in foreign exchange impact.) EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was down $5 million in the quarter at $19.8 million, which Torstar attributed to "revenue declines in most markets and increased costs in the North American digital business." Harlequin also incurred a $500,000 restructuring charge so far in 2012 and has laid off 8 people.

As in the past, the sales drop was attributed to declines in print revenues that couldn't be offset by digital gains, though "the shift in retail sales from print to digital began to moderate in the second quarter and this trend continued into the third quarter of the year." Harlequin also cited "the timing of higher digital marketing spending in addition to the initiation of higher author royalties for digital sales." Interestingly, the company also pointed to "the exceptional performance of a competitor's bestseller" -- in other words, 50 SHADES OF GREY -- that "has had a negative impact on our market share."

Overseas revenues for Harlequin continue to decline because of "economic conditions in Europe," although "lower operating earnings in several countries were partially offset by strong results in Germany," again related to digital growth as it was in the second quarter. (Strong UK results, cited in the previous quarter, were not mentioned this time around.)

Global digital revenues, up $2.9 million compared to a year ago, remained stable at 20.3 percent of Harlequin's total revenue for the quarter (and 20.4 percent for the first nine months of the year), up from 15.8 percent in 2011.
Release

Hobbit safety video

The Hobbit:  the chance to win a trip to wonderful Wellington to attend the world premier

Air NZ partnered with WETA Workshop on a brand new Hobbit inspired Safety Video. It features cameo appearances including Sir Peter Jackson. Visit http://www.airnzcode.com/hobbitmovie to Find and Unlock the Elvish Code for your chance to win one of six double passes to the World Premiere Screening of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in New Zealand on the 28th of November 2012