The Well-Tempered Clavier

Idle Tom the Publisher calls, a bit shirty-like, early yesterday morning. I was barely on my second cup of coffee, had hardly finished doing my (easy) Sudoku in The Times.
 
"Well?" he says. In fact it’s more than a "says". It was almost a "barks".
 
"Well? Well? Is that how you greet me on a Monday morning? […]

Idle Tom the Publisher calls with good news. Great news! Quite superlative news!!
 
Somehow, some way, he’s managed to carve out a deal with an American publisher, Soho Press; even got a very modest advance for it too.
 
However …
 
"It’s weird," said Tom. "They’re changing the title -"
 
"Really?" I said. "What’re they going to call it?"
 
"Not a […]

News from the front-line of Idle Tom’s love-life, that gritty, unrelenting no-man’s land where my publisher finds himself all alone and hunkered down in a muddy, God-forsaken fox-hole.
 
"So Mr Coles, how’s it going?" asks the Idle One. That’s how he likes to start every conversation. I can imagine it - you stagger in off the […]

Off to London for a TOP LEVEL MEETING with Idle Tom the Publisher as well as my Uber agent, who for some reason came over all shy and retiring after hearing about this blog and said that "under no circumstances whatsoever" did he wish to appear in it by name.
 
Fair enough Darin - your wish […]

Never come across The Small Press Review before … but from the little I’ve read, it is a most excellent magazine. First-rate. Forthright. Independent. Dazzlingly perceptive.
 
Oh - and did I happen to mention that they’d just given the thumbs-up to The Well-Tempered Clavier?
 
Diana Harris-Deans is the reviewer - and Diana has done me proud. Diana […]

Now just because I’ve been on holiday this past month doesn’t mean for one moment that I’ve been off the case as regards The Well-Tempered Clavier. No Sirreeee!
 
Throughout my time in The Sticks, I was sending out yet more copies of the Clavier, as well as pounding the phone.
 
And - surprisingly - I even managed […]

Back from a full month’s holiday with the family. A full month of English weather with variously: Beaches on the Isle of Wight; beaches in Kent; and beaches in Norfolk.
 
And, as it turned out, I had a full month off from Idle Tom the Publisher - four weeks without speaking to Britain’s Mr (Young) Publishing […]

And finally … for my last posting before I go on hols, I have a remarkable spat-ette to reveal.
 
Last week The Well-Tempered Clavier was appearing in The Wall Street Journal.
 
This week, it’s the page lead in the Axegrinder column Press Gazette - read by hacks all over the country. Obviously a highly influential mag.
 
And the […]