January 2009 - Posts
I have now read a quarter of A Dance to the Music of Time. The first three volumes (Spring) are finished and off we go into Summer for three more volumes. I had to abandon Oxfam as they let me down badly by not having Summer on their shelves. So it was an Amazon job, with the postage costing twice as much as the volume bought previously. I am enjoying the book despite occasional dodgy writing. The thing about long books is that you can get very involved with the characters and this has happened with this one. I do wish the author hadn't chosen such outlandish and unpronounceable names. Perhaps it is all some kind of a joke.
In slight desperation I have been looking for online Publishers for Horse Painters. I could say it is to save the planet, but actually it is to save Horse Painters from languishing in a drawer. It is no easier to find suitable online publishers than it is finding offline publishers. The difference is that online publishers are heavily into erotica and adult fantasy. I'm not sure Horse Painters is quite what they want.
I am now reading the third volume of A Dance to the Music of Time . Only eight more to go. There has not been a dinner party for a few pages, so things are progressing. Am I enjoying reading it? Well I do want to find out what happens next and it is an improvement on Killer Mine. But then then Yellow Pages would be an improvement on Killer Mine. The book is written in the first person and somehow the author manages to give a lot of information about everybody except the character telling the story.
My editor asked me to write a children's Easter story for Dimdima Magazine. That was the good news. The bad news was that she wanted it in ten days. That sounds a long time, but we have;thinking of what to write about, writing it, typing a draft, typing another draft, putting it away for a day or so, re-reading it, not liking it, changing things, final copy. To my surprise I sent it off within eight days. I rather enjoyed writing fiction again after the mountain of online articles to promote my websites.
I watched the Laurence Olivier film of Hamlet at Christmas. Jean Simmons achieved the honour of being the worst Ophelia ever seen on the planet. Olivier, as ever, was brilliant. With music by William Walton the film, much improved by the death of Ophelia, was a delight to see.
In a moment of enthusiasm I checked out the Kenneth Branagh Hamlet on YouTube. I have never seen it and now probably will. It is the full version, which lasts four hours - Olivier's was half that. There are some strange things taking place (other than haunting, madness and multiple deaths). I couldn't quite understand why a play about Denmark seemed to be set in Imperial Russia (nice costumes). Also why, if it were indeed set in Imperial Russia, was it filmed at Blenheim Palace. The final dual owed a lot to Errol Flynn and came straight out of The Boy's Own Book of Stunt Sword Fights. Anyway Kate Winslet was good as Ophelia, which helped a lot.
I am slightly struggling with A Dance to the Music of Time. One more dinner party and I may well bin volume two.