Kate Mosse - Blog

Monday, 20 February 2012

Happy Birthday Orion

This evening (Monday 20th February 2012) in London the annual Orion Author Party will take place. A wonderful way for authors to meet each other, to feel part of the company as a whole, to meet all the people at the company who work on our books – not just editorial, but sales, production, publicity, marketing, administration, digital, audio, merchandising – every year there are jokes about the ratio of authors to agents present at the party. On some occasions, it's been said that agents even outnumber the authors ...

Tonight, though, the focus will be on the fact that 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Orion. To commemorate this, Orion has repackaged some of the titles - each with a new 'china' cover (china representing a twentieth celebration) that help tell the story of Orion: they include Maeve Binchy's The Copper Beech, Ian Rankin's Black and Blue and Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry (the full list here). Some authors, of course, have a stronger link to their publishers than others. Some have worked with more than one publisher, particularly those writing for children and in the YA market. But many of us do feel a strong link to Orion and, partly because it is one of the smallest of the 'big' publishers, do feel a connection with the other authors published by Orion too.

I love my new edition and, though I know a film tie-in edition of Labyrinth will be coming later in the year (see www.labyrinth-tv.com for details), for now it's great to be a visible part of the birthday celebrations in this way.

Monday, 6 February 2012

Happy Birthday CD...

I don't think it can have escaped anyone's notice that 2012 marks the bicentenary of Charles Dickens' birth. Everywhere there are adaptations, publications, articles, love letters from writers, from actors, from readers – none better than Simon Callow. Like Dickens, Callow is both an actor and a writer (or, rather, Dickens would have liked to have been an actor and put a great deal of theatricality into his stage readings of his own work).

On The Review Show this week, John Carey, Geoff Dyer and I will be talking about Dickens, why he still has such a hold on the imagination, why the celebrations of his birth two hundred years ago are so widespread. We'll also be talking about favourite adaptations and favourite novels, so if anybody wants to send me their thoughts on this during the course of the week, that would be very interesting to know.

What was your introduction to Dickens? Do you like or dislike this raising of one author above so many others - first amongst equals? Do you, whether you're a writer or a reader, feel that the way Dickens' birth is being commemorated tells us anything about our reading habits now, what we value in a novel or an author now?

In the meantime, four wonderful books that we will be looking at, all very much worth a look:
Charles Dickens Bicentenary 1812 - 2012 – Lucinda Dickens Hawksley
Charles Dickens – and the Great Theatre of the World – Simon Callow
Becoming Dickens – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Charles Dickens: A Life – Claire Tomalin

Wednesday, 1 February 2012

The Library Book

Thursday 2 February will see the publication of The Library Book, ahead of the National Libraries Day set for this coming Saturday. The idea for the book comes from Rebecca Gray at Profile Books, both a way of celebrating individual writers' affection, memories, commitment to libraries and to raise money for The Reading Agency.

The questions asked (and answered) are those that have informed debate on the issues of library closures since the battles began in earnest more than a year ago. The Bookseller's Fight for Libraries campaign is the most comprehensive and the most accurate, clearly charting the month-by-month progress of high court battles, sit-ins, mass check-outs, campaigns in Somerset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, London, the Isle of Wight, Buckinghamshire, Surrey.

What comes through is that the dishonesty of central government's intentions, when insisting that local government should dictate local policy. It has resulted, as we all feared it would, in the dismantling of our 'national' library service. This is what campaigners tried to guard against. The wording, the terms, of the 1964 Act have been used and abused for fourteen months and more. In the same way that campaigners in different parts of the country have discovered that judges would rule differently, so readers discovered that local authorities have interpreted the words of the Act differently.

Children's author, Alan Gibbons, through his Campaign for the Book, has been tireless in cataloguing the realities of the situation, not least of all the consequences of professional libraries being squeezed out in favour of volunteers. In the past week alone, I have had notification from the 'Friends of Flackwell Heath Library' in Buckinghamshire and from SLAM, the Surrey Libraries Action Movement (savesurreylibraries.org). Any emails, letters any of us send in support, can make a big difference to local campaigns.

In the end, it is our chance on National Libraries Day, 4th February 2012, to make our voices heard. Join local protests, send letters to local Councillors, to Members of Parliament. The Department of Culture, Media & Sport Select Committee is closed to written testament, but will be hearing evidence on Tuesday 7th February. It has been a war of attrition, those who do not see the value of a comprehensive, national library service attempting, simply, to wear down campaigners, hope that boredom will set in and protestors will lose heart.

That hasn't happened yet. The coming week is a chance, once again, to put the fight for libraries back in the limelight. As for The Library Book, everyone has contributed their piece without payment and all proceeds are going to The Reading Agency.

So, beg, borrow or - best of all, in this instance - buy a copy!