Book cover designs for the modern era

Here are some contemporary book cover designs here. Fortunately they're not real. Unfortunately, they very well could be. I particularly like the Dostoevsky one.

"...not editing your work is akin to buying a new gown and turning up at the ball without make-up or brushing your hair." This quote is from Sam's latest A-z post. She's on E, on editing.

Not to go on about it too much, but this is such a good series of posts, and this is the best yet. Every writer, would-be writer and would-be book editor should read it.

Recommendation nation

Stuff you wouldn't ordinarily come across recommendation thing:

A day late, but better tardy than never: A Halloween Story, by Interzone bod Peter Tennant. It's an amusing A Christmas Carol pastiche with lots of in-jokes for horror fans.

Requiem for the East, by Siberian author Andrei Makine. Makine pretended to be the translator rather than the author to sell his first novel in French. (He does the Nabokov/Beckett trick of writing in a language other than his mother tongue). Poetic and kinda heart-breaking. This book is the only one to have made me cry in public. I was on a train heading to work.

Fisher of Devils, by that rogue Steve Redwood. A perfect comic fantasy for those not of a Christian-fundamentalist mindset.

How about some music. Camden's Beatmolls were doing the Scissor Sisters thing with more verve, sparkle and dreaded hair long before the New Yorkers put the Bee Gees through the blender.

Can never recommend Monkey Boy enough, but only if you're of the garage rock persuasion.

And if your thing's more science-fiction new-wave surf punk, that can mean only one thing. It's time for the sadly disbanded Man or Astroman.

Inconvenience store

Waitrose. Website. Is. Rubbish.

I work pretty much half of my living online. Yet I can't even work out how to register on the site. Surely Ocado could have given the old grey-hairs at Waitrose just a smidgen of guidance on designing a decent ecommerce website. Idiots. I'm tempted to look at the LIDL site and compare the experience! Gah and indeed Fah!

We don't all have veggieboxes delivered direct to our door see, even if we try very hard to get them! How many exclamation marks? Aliya will be so proud.

Ooh, look, I made a meme. It's called 'Secret Vice'

Not as exciting as it sounds. Mine's Holby City.

I have respect for soap writers. They are much maligned, like soap actors in fact. Sure there are rubbish ones (yes, I'm so looking at you Hollyoaks). But for the main part they do a hard and dirty job.

But Holby City, oh, a diamond in the rough. Sure some situations are so absurdly contrived, but kind of brilliantly.

So, what's your secret vice? Erm, oh yeah, who to tag? Let's go with Ian, Nik, Alis, David and Fiona.

Sesame Street was brought to you...

In case you hadn't noticed, Sam Hayes is doing wonderful things with the alphabet and the writers' life over on her blog.

Good day at the office, dear?

Admittedly, been a bit busy at work lately, but things haven't got quite this bad yet.

Get outta town, buddy

I'm AWOL for two weeks and get replaced by a cheap computer. Charming.

Tis true, I have been reading Ian's novel, but the reason for my absence has been much more prosaic. Work. Lots of it. Big dents made. Chin up. Top lip stiff, what. Normal service resuming...

Talking of Ian's book--which he terms a 'technothriller'--it's interesting how many parallels can be drawn between it and ours. Both are set in modern day. (Well, his is in 2003, but you know what I mean), and both have something sciency and untoward going on. Though his science is probably a tad stronger than ours. And both have one naive young woman for a protagonist who has a complicated connection to a much haughtier and ostensibly more clued-up partner. And there are superhuman killings a-plenty. And both books dash about the globe as if it's much smaller than it is. All we need is a manifesto and by jove we have a movement, albeit an unpublished one.
No penguins in Ian's book though. Sorry, Tim.