Hooray, the rain slowed today sufficient for me to leap on my bicycle for a between the showers ride to fetch a morning paper. Because of a dislocated finger last month and the rain, gales and busybusy life, I’ve not had a chance to do any long hilly rides, so I rode slowly. I’d forgotten how exhilirating it is to cycle through the countryside, challenge and beat the hills and freewheel down them. I think it was President Clinton who once remarked that cycling was one of the few simple pleasures everyone should experience regularly.

I’ve also been busy writing and editing. Also I’ve had the pleasure of critiquing several short stories at Cafe Doom a great crit site mainly for horror writers. Many of us there write in other genre too but generally in a noir fashion. One aspect of the stories I critiqued intrigued me as it is true of many of the submissions I’d read for the Escape Velocity magazine. Many writers are great at describing what they see, and often have good characterization and dialogue but forget to engage all the readers’ senses. I recently read two 10,000 word stories neither of which had any smells or tactile experiences to offer. Along with taste, odours and feel are part of the way we use SHOW instead of TELL. Allan Guthrie of Hardluck Stories, once showed me that where I’d written about a man sat next to a rancid tramp on a train, I could convert it to real show by adding – as if a pint of sour milk had been poured over him. Excellent. Doesn’t your nose wrinkle now? Hah.

I’ve been having fun revisiting an old favourite article of mine lately. I’ve been asked by Marilyn Peake to contribute a couple of articles for a print version of a newsletter she is publishing in 2008 on writing issues. In 2004 I was commissioned to research and write an article on why dogs bark at and chase bicycles. I used Yahoo and other forum groups to ask basic and then more specific questions to groups of dog owners, cyclists and sound engineers. I’d received over 2000 responses along with long correspondance with ethologists. I’ve always intended to write an article on how I did that research including some amusing aspects and so the draft is done.  I’ll read it again in the next few days and send it off. Peter N. Davidson took some great photographs for me and I’m hoping one or two will be used again. Here is his gallery.

Good news from our forum members of survivors from Christopher Hill’s crashed Literary Agency. As time heals our wounds, more of us are writing again and gaining recognition. Gladys Hobson wrote a romance novel, Awakening Love, which has won a highly commended award at the London Book Festival this week. Well done that lady! A link to her books is here.  Others in the group have made progress too, including Lanaia Lee where her ‘Of Atlantis’ has released a YouTube video here. Another member, Brian Withecombe has his The Seagull & Le Corsair book published here
http://tinyurl.com/276fup
Other members are singing like Elvis! Well done, Bob Taylor >>> http://www.myspace.com/tuesdaynightatthebootandshoe

It really is worth listening to. Congratulations Bob.

My contract for my sf novel Exit, Pursued by a Bee is with Double Dragon Publishing in Canada now, so I look forward to working with J. Richard Jacobs my editor.

Christopher Hill re-emerges?

I learnt yesterday that it seems that Chirstopher Hill
has been ghostwriting a book, Of Atlantis, for the author Lanaia Lee. When her agent (Cheryl Pillsbury, who is her friend or
sister?) accepted it and submitted it to the publisher, Koval
Publishing. Koval is about to publish Of Atlantis and now it seems it is a
plagiarised lift from David Gemmell’s Dark Prince fantasy novel based
on Alexander the Great.

There is understandable wailing and ire from Gemmel fans although some would say to plagiarize him is a kind of homage too, especially when the deception is revealed! Some folk at the Absolute Write and Writers Beware forum seem very agitated that Lanaia would seek a ghostwriter in the first place and so she cannot be a ‘proper’ writer. I think that is rather unfair. I know Lanaia has health issues, which has taken much of her energy and time. It seems understandable to me that after coming up with the plot, characters and ideas, along with writing some of the novel herself, she seeks help to complete the work.

The other concern expressed is that yesterday’s revelations means Christopher Hill is actively continuing to con writers. I’m not totally convinced this is the case. Apparently, he started his ghostwriting for Lanaia Lee in 2005 around the same time that he began the Hill & Hill Literary Agency. We outed him after he fabricated publishers’ reports although it took us a few months because Christopher met some of us face-to-face and conducted long-distance phone calls, coming across as a knowledgeable and genuinely amiable person. Also, unlike the $400 per month he took for ghost writing, he took virtually no money from his literary agency clients, and indeed, spent more than he took buying me drinks in an Edinburgh hotel, buying copies of my Escaping Reality, etc. Because he refunded the small fees to all the Literary Agency clients who asked for them back, the police and FBI felt there was insufficient crime for them to pursue him, but apparently left the files open. He would know this, and he would be very foolish to continue in any underhand or illegal way.

I’m more concerned, but not losing sleep over it, that in the course of his agency work Christopher had his hands on over 60 completed unpublished manuscripts. If he was also ghostwriting, who knows if our work is now published but under someone else’s name – twice removed? He says he destroyed all the scripts submitted to him when the agency crashed, but did he? I’m actively seeking representation and a publisher for Left Luggage. I’d be gutted if I found it re-badged, published by Publish America, under another author’s name! On the other hand if I found Left Luggage had been plagiarized and turned up substantially as a Michael Crichton novel maybe I should cheer and use the honour to publicise my other work!
More details of the Lanaia Lee ghost writing problem is in Victoria Strauss’s blog at Writer Beware

Meanwhile if anyone would like me to ghostwrite a book for them, well I’m too busy writing my own, editing the new Sci fi magazine, Escape Velocity for Adventure Books of Seattle, and editing other good folk’s novels, but I know a man who would…