THOMPSON
The Newsletter
I am delighted to be able to invite you in at the ground level of an
exciting new adventure in publishing. So many people have written to me
asking when my next novel – Love Lies Bleeding - will be out, that I have
decided to do something quite unorthodox. I am going to make the first 25
chapters of the book available via e-mail as a Word document. If you would like to read
these chapters, simply send mail to
katethompsonenterprises@eircom.net for the
chapters to be sent to you in an attachment.
I have done some research into e-publishing, and know that while most people
would be delighted to receive advance chapters of the book in this way, not
everybody is comfortable with the idea of reading text on screen. One
solution would be to share a print run among a group of friends, and pass
the novel on, chapter by chapter. Greenpeace is working on a campaign to
persuade more publishers to use recycled paper. By making such a large
proportion of Love Lies Bleeding available by e-mail, I like to think
that I am - in the words of JK Rowling - 'helping to save the forests and
creatures from the Muggle world'.
If you enjoy the book and want to continue reading, I will send you the
final 7 chapters – The Clandestine Chapters – by snail mail, on application
(please click here
to go to the Love Lies Bleeding website).
The final seven chapters come in a very classy package: I spent a lot of
time sourcing materials until I came up with a look that I judged to be just
right. The Clandestine Chapters are bound in the highest quality hand-made
paper, with silk ribbon detail. Each edition will bear a copyright seal of
authenticity, and will be signed and personally dedicated by me, Kate
(please indicate how you would like the dedication to read: eg. Happy
Birthday, Happy Valentine’s Day, For Rosa, etc). This makes The Clandestine
Chapters a unique and extremely collectable artefact. I am thrilled to
say that since I went public with this news, I have been kept very busy
e-mailing the first 25 chapters off to avid readers, some of whom have
already purchased The Clandestine Chapters - I have packages waiting
to go in the post to readers in Ireland, the UK, the USA, Canada, Asia and
Australia!
According to the Writers’ Handbook, word of mouth recommendation is really
what sells books, so do, please, feel free to forward this web page.
Love Lies Bleeding is my biggest, most ambitious book to date, and the
handful of close friends who have read it (including Cathy Kelly and Marian
Keyes) say it is my best. I hope with all my heart that you will think so,
too.
Love,
Kate.
CHRISTMAS
My Christmas present to myself this year was a fortnight in Roundstone in Connemara.
My heart pitter-pattered as the taxi from Galway rounded the bend in the road that afforded me a clear view of the village all lit-up in its tinselly Christmas glory.
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Yay! Long walks; lie-ins;
eating too much; reading books curled up by the fire; lazy lunches at
Ballynahinch Castle hotel (Des, the manager, was very chuffed that he has a
cameo role in Sex, Lies & Fairytales!); no telly, no internet,
no landline... Bliss. Roundstone is the village where I spent two winters writing
Living the Dream and Sex, Lies & Fairytales (and which is disguised in
those books as Kilrowan – go to www.kilrowanartsfestival.com for a bit of
fun). Lo! Who should greet me on my first day there but Fluffy the dog, who
trotted the length of the Bog Road with me on my inaugural walk, laughing
and frolicking as she went. I resisted the temptation to adorn her with hair
accessories the way Cleo does in the above-mentioned books, and rewarded her
instead with a saucer of milk and lots of salami.
Christmas Eve was spent at a big party given by friends, the Jocelyns.
Ann is Swedish, so she does a traditional Swedish smorgasbord every year,
serving iced vodka and a strangely more-ish mixture of porter,
Seven-Up and a liqueur that goes by some unpronounceable Swedish name. Mal
and Clara joined me later that evening – we had O’Dowd’s restaurant
(disguised in the novels as O’Toole’s) all to ourselves. We
gorged on fresh crab claws and seafood chowder, and the next day we walked Gurteen Strand and gulped in big, big, blue, blue skies before heading for
my friend Penny’s house and a fabulous Christmas lunch. The poet Mary
O’Malley joined us: she is such fun! Poets mostly get a bad press –
I guess on account of glums like Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and pedants
like TS Elliot – but any of the poets I know are great craic. Vincent Woods,
Brendan Kennelly and Danny Riordan are all terrific company with great big
beaming smiles, and I was once privileged to meet the smiliest one of all –
Seamus Heaney.
Clara departed Roundstone on Boxing/Stephen’s Day, keen to get back to
Dublin so that she could have the house to herself and ten million friends.
New Year was very quiet, which is how I like it. On New Year’s Day we
watched Test the Nation on RTE, not through any desire to test our IQ and
find out how shamefully deficient it might be, but because our girl was on
the Bebo Generation team - which came in third!
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A FAREWELL TO BATTY THOMAS
We drove up to the mobile home on Clew Bay one day to plant the little Christmas tree (a family tradition - we always buy one in a pot), and to scatter the ashes of our Burmese cat who died last year. We spread them round the roots of the tree, and then I took a handful and sprinkled it all along the sea wall, which was the route he used to come sauntering home after a day spent hunting pygmy shrews.
MAILING LIST
If you haven’t yet indicated that you would like to be included on my mailing list, just click here. This means that you will be alerted to competitions and updates on my monthly newsletter.
COMPETITION RESULTS
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Last month I asked those of you who had read Pixie Pirelli’s Hard to Choos who they thought would be ideal casting for Charlotte in a proposed movie version of the book. Suggestions ranged from Julia Stiles to Brittany Snow to Kirsten Dunst (my own personal favourite). But then I realized that Ms Dunst is actually too young for the role, so the prize – a signed and personally dedicated collectible copy of Hard to Choos - goes to:
Oonagh Considine
for suggesting Anna Friel.
Oonagh, please send your terrestrial address to kate@kate-thompson.com, and I will put a copy in the post to you ASAP.
THANK YOU
♥♥♥
from
Kate
PS: ORDERING BOOKS
By the way, while Sex, Lies and Fairytales is available to buy or to order in all good bookshops in Ireland, the UK and the Commonwealth, Hard to Choos is available to buy direct from booksellers only in Ireland at present. Should you wish to buy the book from Amazon, clicking here will take you straight to the sales point. You can also order Hard to Choos from Pixie's site. Lots of you are wondering where my backlist can be purchased. Amazon is good, of course, but my Transworld titles are also available - with free P&P in the UK - at Bookpost. (Just key in the title name in inverted commas - ie: "More Mischief")
© Kate Thompson, 2006
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