The dotted line

My new Bloomsbury contracts arrived yesterday. It is always a satisfying moment, signing a new contract - not least because then actually receive some money.


For those not familiar with the arcane process of payment in publishing, the writer receives a wedge of money on signing the contract for a book, another wedge on delivery of the manuscript and another wedge on publication (and possibly another on publication of paperback if there is to be a hardback/paperback publication).


These payments are an advance from the publisher set against royalties on sales of the book. The better the book sells, the quicker your royalties will pay off that advance. The more generous the advance, the harder it is to pay it off.


But that is infinitely better than having a measly advance and still not selling. Royalties are pie in the sky - better to have a decent advance (unless you are J K Rowling - and then you get both anyway). Sales of a book are not a judgement on the quality of your book (or at least not always). Really bad books sell well and very, very good ones disappear without trace. It is a bit of a lottery.


In any case - a decent advance is a show of commitment from the publisher, and that means they are more likely to give your book a publicity budget. Anyone can promote authors who are already famous. It takes a bit more work to develop the careers of the rest of us. The work of the sales, marketing and publicity people is vital. There is a big difference between printing a book and publishing it. Anyone can print a book. I have to say Bloomsbury have been excellent publishers for me.


That said, a writer needs to justify an advance. It is always good to work off that advance - and that means helping to promote the books in any way that helps: doing author visits and talks, doing festivals, doing interviews. . .


And maybe running a blog.

Some changes to the blog

I had an email from my agent yesterday suggesting a few changes to the blog.

They were good suggestions - as Philippa's suggestions always are - so I have tweaked the left-hand column a bit to group my links to her and to my publishers and to the Tales of Terror website. I have also added cover shots of the next book - Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (US & UK editions) and of the rest of my books currently in print. Hopefully it all makes it clearer.

Is Mrs Coulter the Ice Queen?

I went to lunch with my friend Paul May today. He was in Cambridge for a conference on teaching music in primary schools. He is a primary school teacher and writer of children's books - a good one too (writer, that is - I can't speak for his teaching abilities).


We went to the Michaelhouse Cafe and talked for ages about teaching and education and writing and writers. Paul and I used to share an agent and a publisher and now share neither. We talked about about that. We talked about the way we write and what we write and what we'd like to write. Writers have that conversation a lot.


We also had a chat about Philip Pullman and C S Lewis. Paul hadn't seen the BBC4 programme about fantasy fiction, but he had wondered - like me - whether, for all his detestation of Lewis, Pullman wasn't just a bit affected by him. Were Lewis's books a spur for Pullman to write something himself, if only to show that it could be done better?


Mrs Coulter does have something of the White Witch about her (but then the White Witch had something of the Snow Queen about her). And then there is the frozen worlds that take up so much of Northern Lights and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And of course there is the anti-religious theme of Pullman v the pro-Christian Lewis.


This is not a particularly thought-out theory - hey are such different books and such different authors. I just wonder whether Northern Lights was written - in part - as a reaction to Lewis, and is therefore influenced by him. And if that's true, would Northern Lights have been written without The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? An odd thought.

Tap, tap, tap

A classic English Bank Holiday Monday - howling gales, cold and very very wet. I spent another day in the house tapping away at the keyboard, pacing about the house, tapping at the keyboard, making cups of tea and tapping at the keyboard some more.

The life of a writer is incredibly glamorous.

Mad men

I drove my wife and son to the station today. They are bound for Somerset and a week's holiday with my mother-in-law. I on the other hand, have been left alone to write my latest book - Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth.


Infuriatingly, I video-taped the wrong channel like some gizmo-phobic wrinkly and missed last week's Mad Men, and so caught up with it on the BBC's iPlayer. I don't like watching things on the computer. Some of the boring connotations of computers leak into my viewing and tend to deaden whatever I am watching. That and the fact that I have to sit in my office in my boring office chair.


It says much about Mad Men, that it was still as engaging as ever. It is by far and away the best thing on TV and just about makes up for the loss of the The Sopranos. I understand that we do not have the resources in the UK to make anything with such high production values, but why is it that we can't make anything this grown up or ambitious in terms of writing? Unless it wears a bonnet and rides in a carriage.

And on guitar. . .

I went to the studio today and did some work on my paintings. I have put the four I have been working on to one side and am working on another four. They are going OK. I may even take some photos and post them on my blog. Maybe.


I went for a coffee with my studio mates Andrew and Lynette and had a real freelancers chat about the funny old ways of clients and how in almost every conceivable case, we knew best. We also talked about the illustrators Alan Adler and Ed Briant, both of whom I used to share studio space with in the 1980s - the same badly-lit Bloomsbury basement I shared with Andrew Ellis. Lynette - who is a graphic designer - shared studio space with them later at a different location in London. Another one of those strange coincidences that seem to be following me round at the moment.


I was at college with Alan Adler - he was on the MA Illustration course at Manchester when I was on the BA. We shared houses together both in Manchester and London and were briefly in a band while still at college in the late 70s (he on drums, me on guitar) that never performed. Which was probably just as well, thinking about it.

New Hall

I went over to New Hall College in Cambridge today to see my friend Peter Kirkham who works in the gardens there. I had never been to New Hall before. It is one of the modern colleges of Cambridge - built in the sixties by the architects responsible for the Barbican complex in London.

There is something a bit grim and Stalinist about concrete, but the structure is definitely exciting in a severe kind of way. There is a huge dome over the dining hall that looks like a cross between an astronomical observatory and a massive concrete flower bud. I'd certainly like to see inside sometime.

I was amazed to discover there were only four gardeners to tend to over 11 acres (at least I think that's what Peter said. The gardens looked great though and I want to make a return trip later in the summer to see what else is going on. I particularly liked the herb garden where students are actively encouraged to eat the plants.