Getting it in the neck...

...the hazards of this sedentary, desk-bound life are coming home to roost. Rebel took three years to write and the research and original screenplay another two. That's a long time craning forward to a screen, crossing legs, leaning on one elbow waiting for le mot juste or just a sentence that comes close to expressing the idea in your head.

Consequence, cn't hit the 'a' on the keyboard, due to numb left hand, due to nerve compression, due (says Jane the sports therapist) to 'treating your body like a stray dog.'

That is so unfair. I've been unusually kind to stray dogs at all times, bar those salivating and frothing at the mouth.

Hey-ho.

Rights...and Wrongs

Check this out...

http://writereport.blogspot.com/2011/02/good-wife-right-of-publicity-and-why.html

An interesting, and I think worrying blog post on a subject close to the heart of this writer and one that should concern other writers creating historical or political works.

When the right to publicity becomes a post facto attempt to cash in, or worse still, a gag on independent opinion, we should all worry...Did you know for example, that the right to publicity extends beyond the death of the individual in some states?

Lose this one, and we're left with only 'the official version' of events. That's not history, that's propaganda.

Thank you Donna Ballman

All of a Quiver

It's odd, although officially the manuscript is in the hands of a proofreader, cover design is steaming ahead and it all seems to be about the detail of the publisher page, acknowledgements and so on, I've got the strange sense that I need to go back to the story just one more time. Arrows, said Kahlil Gibran of our children, and it seems I'm all of a quiver about letting go...

I think maybe we'll work our way backwards in time from today...

Here's Kit's most recent proposal for the cover. He'll hate me for putting it out there whilst still very much a work in progress, but hell, I'm unreliable that way...

Covers are fascinting things. We're told they matter enormously to readers, and I think that's right. But how do we judge success? Design felicity? Story appeal? What do you think?