Tom has a solution for the awful front-cover …
What finer way to start the week than with a call from my publisher - the constant bridesmaid Idle Tom?
"Tommy!" I said. "Tommy! How nice to hear from you!"
"Yeah," he said, the word dragging out a little as if he were pretending to be a sceptical Jeremy Paxman. "Yeah."
"What you got for me this week then, Tommy? What’s cooking in the delightful world of Legend Press?"
"Yeah," he said. Again. Was something up?
"Yeah? Why do you keep saying "Yeah"? What’s eating you Tommy? Something wrong in the gilded world of Tom Chalmers?"
"Yeah."
"Look, could you just stop saying, "Yeah" all the time? What’s the beef?"
Finally he said something different. "I’m worried about The Killer."
"And so you should be. Not only can he kill with his bare hands …" (By the way, this is true - I have seen him kill numerous rabbits, not to mention fish and various farmyard animals with a single blow of his fist) "… but he’s got a very short fuse."
"But … But I don’t think I’ve got the money to redo all the covers. I don’t know what to do."
"Is there a third way?"
"I don’t know what to do."
"How about we stick something on that awful cover?"
"I don’t know what to do."
"You’re being a bit repetitive this morning, you know Tom. Tell you what. Why don’t you get some stickers made up? Just with the quote from Alexander McCall Smith?"
Tom sniffed a little. "That one that read, “What a read! Every schoolboy’s dream comes true in this deftly written treatment of illicit romance. A triumph”?"
"The very same. Get that done up as a sticker, black on yellow. Whack it onto all the remaining copies. That would at least show willing. I’m sure it would get the Killer off your back."
"Ok. Well if you think it might work -"
"Course it will. Well I hope it will. Just one thing though -"
"What’s that?" Sniff.
"Just make sure it’s a big sticker - at least four five inches square. The more of that wretched cover we obliterate the better -"
April 21st, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Yeah! Go Bill! Even better - a wrap-around sticker - obliterate that dread word ‘bittersweet’ once and for all . . .
In fact, print the words ‘Alexander’, ‘McCall’ and ‘Smith’ large enough (and maybe add a discreet giraffe or zebra) and it’ll fly from the shelves and top the bestseller lists in no time. The sticker’s a sure-fire winner whichever way you look at it and, indeed, pretty much wherever you stick it.