02 Jan 2013
At the 2012 So So Gay Awards, the winners included Downton Abbey, Lana Del Rey, and new play The Custard Boys, based on the novel by agency author John Rae.
http://sosogay.co.uk/news/the-2012-so-so-gay-awards-the-results/
The play was adapted and directed by the Bafta-winning Glenn Chandler, creator of Taggart, and opened at the Tabard Theatre last April.
In The Custard Boys, five London schoolboys are evacuated to a Norfolk seaside village, far from Hitler’s bombs. They want to fight for England but are too young to join up and too old to wait. They join the school army cadet force and learn to fire rifles, they form a gang and play at being soldiers. But it is not real war.
Sixteen year old John Curlew dreams of being a Spitfire pilot. Mark Stein is Jewish and a pacifist refugee who hates the war and longs for it to end. When these two boys are thrown together and form a romantic bond, their friendship splits the group and invites fear and prejudice. But it is a challenge to a rival gang which becomes the catalyst for a sinister train of events. While men die in their thousands overseas, in a small corner of rural England a group of schoolboys embark on a final war game which will lead ultimately to tragedy.
The Custard Boys was filmed in the 1960s as Reach for Glory and is a story of sexual awakening, loyalty and betrayal which was compared upon publication to Lord of the Flies.
02 Jan 2013
More success for Cathy Glass, whose book A Baby’s Cry was the 17th bestselling memoir of 2012, below Tulisa but above Justin Bieber.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/dec/28/top-100-bestselling-books-2012#data
25 Dec 2012
On 19 Dec Harper Collins 360 kicked off the US promotion. This runs until 8 Jan and throughout that period the price, across all e-retailers, will be reduced to $0.99.
On Christmas Day The Boy No One Loved will be added to Amazon’s 12 Days of Christmas promotion. This runs for the 12 days following Christmas.
With the 12 Days of Christmas promotion Amazon send out mailings to email subscribers, and directly to devices. They’ll also feature it across their social media channels.
21 Dec 2012
An interview with Andrew Lownie and David Haviland on Britwriters can be found at Brit Writers (no longer exists)
20 Dec 2012
Congratulations to Cathy Glass whose first book Damaged is at number five in the New York Times ebook bestseller list again this week. Five weeks in the top five .
17 Dec 2012
When Malcolm Castle joined the fire brigade at 18 he expected big things: roaring blazes, heartstopping dramas and rescuing damsels in distress. But life as a country fireman didn’t quite work out that way, as his hilarious new book reveals…
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/365290/Confessions-of-a-Country-fireman-
17 Dec 2012
Spanish rights in Nessa Carey’s popular science book The Epigenetics Revolution
Portuguese rights in Marina Chapman’s memoir The Girl With No Name
Dutch rights in Duncan Falconer’s thriller Assassin
Dutch rights in Shed Simove’s spoof Fifty Shades of Gray
17 Dec 2012
Constable have bought David Long’s anthology Bizarre Britain.
14 Dec 2012
Julian Maclaren-Ross’s Of Love and Hunger was Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime last week.
This week, Radio 4 ran an excellent documentary about his life, called Mr X: Julian Maclaren-Ross.
The programme is available for 6 more days here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p7dd5
There was also an interesting profile in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/07/dj-taylor-rereading-julian-maclaren-ross
14 Dec 2012
Harper Collins have produced this video trailer for Cathy Glass’s Another Forgotten Child:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151144309276394&set=vb.509805005719466&type=2&theater