Edinburgh Does Legend Press …
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? What’s wrong with, "Hi Bill, how was your weekend"?"
"Well the point is that you promised me a date with Susan and nothing’s come of it."
"Susan?" I said. "Who’s Susan?"
"The mother of Damian."
"Oh! That Susan! Of course - well I’m just sorting it out. In fact, it was here in my in-tray of important things to do - and as you can imagine, fixing you up on a blind date is right at the top of the pile."
"And rightly so."
"Umm." There was much I could have said at this juncture, but seeing as irony is not Tom’s forte, I segued onto an infinitely more interesting subject: "Tom, I’ve had a really good idea."
"Oh yes?" Not interested. Even remotely.
"You know how you’ve tried to get me into all these Literary Festivals like Edinburgh, Althorp, Henley and the rest - "
"Yeah, it’s really tough trying to break into those festivals -"
"Yeah, I’m sure it is Tom. But the point is … you don’t have to do the festivals. Why don’t you come up to Edinburgh next year and put on your own show. It can be a one-hour show, you doing your stuff, and at the end of it all you flog a load of books to the grinning punters."
"Me?"
"Yeah! You’d only have to do it for a month! I’ll sell the books at the back. It’ll be brilliant! You could may call it, "I wanna publish your book!" Use it as a talent-finding competition - and at the end of the festival, come what may, you’re going to publish a book that you’ve discovered during the festival."
"Hmm. You know what Mr Coles -"
"Yep?"
"I think you might be onto something!"