I am so pleased to announce that well known mountaineering author Hamish Brown is joining Eventispress to publish his latest adventures.
Author Diana Jackson has got to know Hamish quite well since moving to Fife and she and her husband have been on a few mini adventures with him, because that is what Hamish is about, adventuring! Even though he is now in his late 80’s! He is an honorary member of the Burntisland and Kinghorn Rotary.
After re-walking and rewriting his Fife Coastal Path book, he got, some would say, the hair-brained notion to walk the inland border of Fife from Kincardine to Newburgh, across moor, farmland, bogs and his favourite, the hills. His book is a quirky but amusing recollection of this strange adventure.
Burntisland Beach
Not only that, but he achieved both in lock down during the pandemic, travelling by public transport from his home town, Burntisland.
“Defining celebrity is by no means easy. I sometimes come across lists of celebrity names in connection with “reality” TV programmes and rarely recognise any of them. If they are really well known, they are sometimes referred to as A-list. How far down the alphabet this taxonomy goes I don’t know, but Q-list wouldn’t be good.
From time to time, celebrities decide to write. This is to be expected, because a main point of celebrity status is being in the public eye. It may be that a given individual is a high-profile sportsperson, in which case they may write about their sport and their career in it. The footballer David Beckham has done this, as has the tennis player Andre Agassi. If they can’t write? No problem, a ghost writer can do it for them.
It sometimes happens that a celebrity will move from the autobiographical to fiction. I don’t know when this started, but the earliest example I can remember is when the yachtswoman, Claire Francis, published a novel. This was back in 1983, and what I read of it then didn’t impress me much. She has gone on to write several more and will doubtless have improved as she continued. But Francis had begun by writing non-fiction five years earlier, some or all of it based on her experiences as a yachtswoman, an area in which she clearly excelled.
Another case which comes to mind is Ben Elton. Elton was a stand-up comic who also wrote scripts for TV such as the comedy series, The Thin Blue Line. At some point he stopped all that and started writing novels, seventeen at the last count, I think. Elton has been extremely productive in TV, musicals, and books.
But what has brought this subject to the fore in what’s left of my mind is a flurry of recent publications. The Reverend Richard Coles has just published a second novel, A Death in the Parish’. Judy Murray, mother of tennis players Andy and Jamie Murray, has just published a novel, The Wild Card – about a young (female) tennis player and an older (male) coach. And Melanie Hamrick has just published First Position, in which “forbidden love takes an erotic turn in the dark world of ballet”. In the event you didn’t know (I did not), Hamrick has been the partner of Mick Jagger for nine years or thereabouts. A former ballerina, when it comes to ballet, she knows what she is talking about.
My purpose here is not to evaluate these books, but to ask a simple question: would they have been published but for the celebrity of their authors? Because, from the marketing perspective, having a well known name on the cover will get sales off to a flying start – just what the publisher wants. Many people will wish to attend book signings and, so to speak, have their slice of the celebrity in question. Maybe even a selfie!
The fact that a book is good will not achieve much if no one has heard of the author. So if you’re a writer hoping to make it big, or even at all, become a celebrity first. Become known for being known.”
Now there’s a thought Rod ~ become famous first and then write a book 🙂
Eventispress author Diana Jackson has recently written a series of blog posts explaining how research into her family history; specifically her family links to the lovely island of Alderney, has inspired her writing.
Diana writes, “It has been an interesting and rewarding journey, from the publication of Riduna to today. All of my writing has been influenced by genealogy and social history, even when not directly related to my own family stories as in my first series, The Riduna Series.”
About 40 people attended Martin Towey’s book launch on Saturday. Folks were in both rooms and standing at the door.
Martin spoke movingly about his life and his book, reading a couple of extracts and poems and then we were treated to a lovely rendition of My Singing Birdby Scottish singer Chris Miles.
Many copies were signed and everyone was in good spirits, especially Martin!
Many thanks to Douglas and Lynette Gray who, once more, hosted one of our events at their lovely Station Gallery in Kinghorn, Fife.
A great deal of creativity was buzzing that night.
Author Roderick Hart was struck by coincidences he remembers in novels. It poses some interesting questions?
Are coincidences an integral part of writing?
Are coincidences needed in a plot in order for all loose ends to be tied?
When does a coincidence become unbelievable or are all coincidences hard to believe?
Rod writes:
“In the novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne, there are a number of coincidences.
The narrator, Cyril Avery, ends up sharing a room at a boarding school with Julian, a boy whom he had last seen when he was seven years of age seven years before. How likely is that?
Having relocated as an adult to Amsterdam, Cyril has taken to visiting a pub run by a certain Jack Smoot. Jack’s life had been saved by Cyril’s biological mother when he and his lover, Sean, were attacked in Dublin by Sean’s father in a drunken, homophobic rage. Despite being heavily pregnant with Cyril at the time, his mother had tried valiantly to save them. Sean died of his injuries but Smoot, though badly injured, survived.
As coincidences go, this one is major. It also incorporates dramatic irony, since the reader is aware of how major this coincidence is, but Cyril is not. Cyril has yet to meet his mother and has no idea who she is.
Coincidences abound in Oliver Twist, and Les Misérables contains a prime example. When Valjean is fleeing the police in the backstreets of Paris, he meets a man whose life he had saved many years before in another part of France. How likely is that?
Some readers may find such coincidences hard to take. If so, the author could always reply, Coincidences occur in life, as they do, or They may be highly unlikely but they’re possible. Which, of course, they are. Do they work? Some may feel manipulated by them, others may not.
Thinking about Book Marketing, two of our authors have joined up with Allauthor.com for publicity in the last few months.
All Author gives you an author page, sends out posts on Twitter, features your books/book, sends you mock up banners to use for personal publicity and interviews you. We’ll share the interviews on the next post, but here are a couple of mock up banners.
Fab aren’t they! We love them here at Eventispress and you’ll be seeing more of them on our tweets shortly.
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