ingredients for a novel #2

Over the next few weeks I intend to thank a lot of people for the generous help and support I’ve received in launching the great ship A Lady Cyclist out into stormy – both literally and figuratively – weather. I need some time to digest and reflect first as so much has happened quickly but I shall certainly be coming back with a post on indie bookshops, book-bloggers (amaaaazing people), literary events and the comaradarie of other writers. Such a lovely community. Such kindness. Plus there are lots of reviews and articles but I haven’t been able to keep up with them… which is no bad thing I guess.

For sanity’s sake, though, right now I’m a bit self-promo’d out and just want to immerse myself in Book2. As such, here are some things I’m thinking/writing about:

I like this here article, ‘The Space Between the Lines is Your Life’ in the LA Review by Elizabeth Koch.

I like these 2 quotes from the front of Kitty Hauser’s brilliant Revenants in the Landscape: The Discoveries of Aerial Photography:

The imagination has its own geography which alters with the centuries. Graham Greene, ‘The Explorers’

 A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minorones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history. To be sure, only a redeemed mankind receives the fullness of its past—which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has livedbecomes a citation à l’ordre du jour—and that day is Judgment Day.

 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’

 

And I like these pictures.

a soho book launch

I had a lovely launch. It started here:

moved on to this:

and ended, rather tragically, in the Groucho:

thank you everyone who came and Bloomsbury for hosting it. xxx