The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G.W. Dahlquist

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by  G.W. Dahlquist
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Friday, September 15, 2006

A Buzz in Bloomsbury

It was meant to be a Grand Day Out – a day of absolute indulgence, wandering around some of my old haunts from the days when I worked in WC1 and then on to do some credit card damage in Liberty’s.

Great Russell Street is in the heart of Bloomsbury and boasts a fair number of publishers. We were within a few brisk paces of the British Museum when Julie, my friend cried,
‘Oh! What a waste!’
She was pointing to a skip. It was a big, rusting hulk of a thing, piled high with stuffed, black bin liners and…….BOOKS. We both made a swift dive towards it. We could hardly believe what we were staring at. It was stacked with piles and piles of books! Brand New Books! WOW! We thought this cannot be true. We hauled out a few. They were large and glossy. Tomes, stuffed full of photographs on architecture, design, art deco, lofts, minimalism, staircases, typography. We glanced around us……where had it all come from?
Suddenly another bin bag was thrown onto the pile. The culprit looked a little….dusty!
‘Are these yours?’ we asked, indicating the books.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are the publishers and we are moving offices. So we’re having a clear out. Help yourselves.’
OH BOY!
Well, whilst we were rummaging through one end of the skip, making a pile of ‘definites’ and ‘possibles’ and wondering which one of us would clamber into the middle of the skip to get at those books just out of reach, we noticed that someone else had paused beside us.
‘Are these…..?’
‘Yes,’ we said. ‘Help yourself’
Next several students were up to their elbows. They didn’t ask to join, they just threw themselves, heart and soul, into the skip. Then a cyclist stopped, pulled out a book on architecture, tucked it under his arm and cycled off. More passers-by stopped and joined in. They were like bees around a honeypot. The buzz had come to Bloomsbury…well a skip in Bloomsbury. Julie and I changed ends. Our piles had already reached an unmanageable weight. These were BIG books, remember.
One rather lovely guy said he had to come over to see what was going on because from across the road the sight was bizarre…..smartly dressed people rummaging in a skip. We thanked him for the compliment on our clothes. He said he was not wearing his spectacles. Hmmm…. Then another guy said he would enjoy reading these books, especially as so many of them were in German, his native language.
Ah, yes, that was a SLIGHT downside to our find. Many of these magnificent books were in French and German as well as English. But hey….we can still look at the pictures, can’t we!
Sated, we decided to continue on our way to Liberty’s.
Ah…..BIG PROBLEM. Heavy books and lots of them.
‘We’ll have to buy a trolley,’ suggested Julie. ‘A cheap one.’
Unfortunately we didn’t find one cheap enough by Julie’s definition until we were halfway along Oxford Street. By then our arms were about ten feet longer than they had been at the start of the day and we were struggling along the street like a couple of primates.
However, a trolley we found and bought and it did well to survive a gruelling day being hauled around Liberty’s.
Actually the trolley did verywell. By the end of the day it was an ex-trolley. Its wheels were no more. One was in shreds, the other too hot to touch. The weight it had managed to transport across London and back out to the sticks had been far beyond its capabilities. We will remember it fondly.

We also give our thanks to the publisher who gave so many people so much pleasure.
Laurence King, Publishers extraordinaire. Your books are wonderful! Thank you……And may our arms one day resume their normal length.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Is it all worth the effort..........?

The angst of writing is great. The preparation, the avoidance, the preparation again. More tea, the light's not right (or write). More tea, perhaps something to eat. Another chair, the space is just not right, move the desk, rearrange the room, start decorating, maybe I need to move house. Let's get the paper, look at houses. What area, what can I afford? Well not this country, that's for sure....perhaps I should emigrate...let's find a map.

Ah....China.......!

Well, maybe not. But the house is definitely not in the right place, or the room, or the desk.Maybe I'll just settle for tea!

It's great when a day finishes and you can say that day was all write!
It's even better when a review is okay too. Check out Conversations with Mr Prain review in StopSmiling......and view it on our shelves.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Cover Story

Can a book cover tell a story? Can a book cover sell a book? Can a book cover make someone get their plastic out and WOW...buy the book. Er....yes! Check out Glimmer Train Press - those covers are absolute jewels.

There's a series of books about now - Fantasy/Horror me thinks.....these days I find it best to speed past interesting books in case my credit card jumps out and lands me in trouble. Very interesting covers - no apparent border/frame around the image and striking in appearance. That's not to say that borders are a bad thing ( or Borders....let's keep in their good books) - check out those on those glorious Glimmer Train Press books. Book covers are just so very important. They have to stand there on the shelves and do a lot of attracting! So if the cover makes someone stop and look and reach out and touch........! Move over chocolate!

Monday, September 04, 2006

Maturing nicely

We did mention somewhere in all our ramblings that some books may take a little bit longer to reach maturity than others. I think we may have likened them to cheese. (That's my choice but feel free to think whisky or wine instead). The September issue of Writers' News www.writersnews.co.uk ran an article on Ron McClarty's 15 year period off the shelf before his novel The Memory of Running met a publisher's taste buds. Okay, so it was aided and abetted by a rave from Stephen King and it had been recorded as an audio book in that time. It's enough to keep digits tapping away on keys though.

A recent roam through the blogsphere threw up another interesting read. A Newbie's Guide to Publishing can be found at www.jakonrath.blogspot.com. This is one man's quest to save the publishing industry. He is such an unselfish guy and wants to help a lot of people including booksellers and authors. But then he does have an old oil lamp, a genie, six wishes and a pile of unsold books to spur him on. It's a long blogspot but fun to read, especially when he gets on to his marketing tips. Enjoy the ride.