CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

I just finished rewatching Serenity  again for the umpteenth time. This is the 2005 American space Western film written and directed by Joss Whedon in his feature directorial debut. It’s a continuation of Whedon's short-lived 2002 Fox television series Firefly, of which I have never seen an episode - but that doesn’t matter. Serenity  immediately returns to my (ever-shifting) list of top ten films. Set in 2517, the story follows the crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spacesh

I was never a ‘party person’. The idea of appearing on stage in any kind of show or taking part in anything remotely theatrical was repellent to me. Apart from developing a reputation as a public speaker by accident (related in an earlier blog article) I have managed to avoid such events for the most part. On one occasion though, again by accident, my role-playing became real in an unexpected way.   A fancy dress party with a historical theme was to be held at a remote locati

As a new writer, when you walk into a bookshop, what do you see?   Do you see thousands of shiny successes, each carefully categorised on shelves, each its own testimony to the triumph and wealth of its author?   Do you see an overwhelming amount of books signifying a closed market, a fabled realm into which you can never reach?   Does that zone inside you that you call your heart fill like a bath with the tepid green water of envy?   Please let me help you shatter some illus

Does any written work have an audience?   In other words, does quality count?   It’s an arguable point. Even the scribblings of a young child might be valued by its mother.   What kind of audience? What size of audience? Is there any way of guaranteeing that at least some people will read a work? It may shock you to discover that 99% of books put out by traditional publishers do not make any money at all, for the author, the publisher, the distributor, anyone. Publishers and

What’s really the best guide as to how to market your work?   You.   Ask yourself the following questions:   When browsing the net to buy a book, do you ever spend a lot of time on those group pages or sites which have long lists of links from people trying to sell their books?   When you receive a post on your page or in some way planted in front of your face on social media which says something like ‘Here’s my latest book, click here and “like” it now’, do you do so?   When

I’ve wanted to be a writer from a very young age. I recall sometime in 1967, when I was 8 years old, our family was in the throes of preparing to migrate to the edge of the desert in Australia from the edge of the Peak District in Yorkshire, England. I didn’t want to go, but Decisions Had Been Made and at the age of 8 one doesn’t have a veto on such matters, so there I was in my living room watching my father go through a whole heap of stuff - literally, a heap, piled in the

Despite having a pile of books to be read that threatens to topple over and crush me, I could not resist the recommendation of acclaimed author David Bowmore when it came to British author Ted Lewis’s 1970 novel, Jack’s Return Home . It’s the original book behind the much better-known 1971 film adaptation, Get Carter . In fact, due to the movie’s success, the book was quickly retitled Get Carter . British actor Michael Caine plays Jack Carter in the film, a totally ruthless g

Having recently finished Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree , I thought it deserved a review. The novella is a gentle story, nostalgic for the middle of the nineteenth century. Back then, music in church was a cooperative affair, as Hardy says in his 1898 preface: “displacement of these ecclesiastical bandsmen by an isolated organist (often at first a barrel-organist) or harmonium player…the change has tended to stultify the professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being

I lived in London for about six years, and for most of that time was in Highgate, one of the most beautiful and romantic parts of the metropolis. Highgate gets its name from the Bishop of London’s old hunting grounds: there used to be a high, deer-proof hedge surrounding the estate, and the bishop kept a toll-house where one of the main northward roads out of London entered his land, hence the ‘gate in the hedge’. As the village of Highgate was about a day’s ride from London,