The kind of holiday photo I like to see.

Mrs Bron Hall and Mr James Hall of Auckland, New Zealand enjoying the sun and some quality reading material in Fiji (or somewhere like that).

The best publisher you've never heard of

There would, I imagine, be few people filling their shopping baskets exclusively with the latest offerings from, say, Harper Collins or Hodder and Stoughton. Brand loyalty amongst book lovers tends to be more about authors (many of whom are described as 'brands' these days). The honourable exception to this is the smaller, niche publishers - Salt and Bluechrome spring to mind - who are not only passionate about what they do, but also have a consistent feel to every book they publish, presumably because they reflect the tastes of just a handful of people, as opposed to committees and focus groups.

A few months ago I ordered a book called 'Believe in the Sign' by Mark Hodkinson, on the grounds that it had been grouped together with my latest book on Amazon, in the 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought This' section. Despite not really wanting to like something that had such a similar theme to my book, I found myself absolutely loving it. I had never heard of the publishers, Pomona, so decided to check out their website.

The first thing that struck me was that this was not a normal publisher. Hodkinson himself seems to run it and, with author royalty rates of 50%, it doesn't appear to follow any conventional publishing business model. But even more notable was the line-up of authors. It was some of the people who made me fall in love with reading in the first place - Hunter Davies, who wrote 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', Barry Hines, whose 'A Kestrel For A Knave' became the film Kes, and Trevor Hoyle, writer of cult classic, Rule of Night.

This was incredibly exciting. So why had I never heard of Pomona? The answer, according to Hodkinson when I emailed him, was something faced by most publishers in their position. Distribution. They simply don't have the money to compete with the majors, who can (rumour has it) effectively GIVE books to stores and pay for them to be front-of-house.

I am now on my fourth Pomona book in a row and it's fantastic. A Barry Hines book, called Looks and Smiles, which is a love story about a mechanic and shoe shop assistant, set during the turbulent early 1980s. It's the kind of thing Penguin used to do - real, passionate and unflinchingly honest. Before that, I read Mark Hodkinson's latest novel, 'The Last Mad Surge of Youth', which would be on the bestseller list if there was any justice in the world.

Perhaps inevitably, Pomona seem to be experiencing financial difficulties. I don't know of any small independent that isn't. But they deserve to at least be checked out at http://www.pomonauk.co.uk

And no, I'm nothing to do with Pomona. I'm just a huge fan. And how many publishers can you say that about?

Review - Death, Destruction and a Packet of Peanuts by Chris Pascoe

As someone who doesn't drink and has no interest in history, this book didn't seem particularly promising. A bloke goes on a massive pub crawl, while visiting sites of major battlefields of the English Civil War.
By the end of the second page, I was hooked. The author, Chris Pascoe, is a very funny writer - I defy anyone not to laugh at his story of the shed-eating dog or the American tourist rewriting history. But even more impressively, he brings the Civil War, a subject I've always associated with memorising dates at school, to full technicolour life. Some of the descriptions of battles are breathtaking and the characters mesemerising. Prince Rupert was my favourite, a man who didn't seem to have any concept of personal safety.
And then there was Pete. Pete was the author's traveling companion and a one-man disaster zone. His adventures are enough to make a book on their own, the highlights being an ill-advised toilet seat attack on a skinhead.
Throw in an incoherent Northerner called Dave and a dog of the same name, and you've got a book that I couldn't put down. Highly recommended.

Two emails that made my day

Both came from people who had just finished reading The Bromley Boys.
The first was from Alan Soper, goalkeeper for Bromley in the season in which the book is set. He was one of my all-time heroes and the fact he enjoyed the book gave me an enormous thrill. He also put me right on one anecdote. I claimed that one of the players was sent off for pushing an opponent. Apparently, it wasn't so much a push - more a right hook to the jaw. He told me a couple of other brilliant stories, including the time the team had to train in the ice-covered car park one frosty night, as the chairman didn't want them on the pitch in case they "broke the grass".
The other email was from a teenage Ipswich fan who had also just finished the book. He finished by saying " I would just like to say thanks for a fantastic read and i hope you will be writing more great books soon; as you have done something in my mind which J.K.Rowling couldnt, made me fall in love with reading!".
What a fantastic day.

Someone hasn't bothered reading e-luv.

My first book, e-luv, was frankly disgusting. All sorts of unsavoury sex things going on and a main character who wouldn't make a good role model for anyone. One reviewer gave it a "smut rating" of 8.5 out of 10. So I was a bit shocked to see a copy on eBay, described as a children's book. It really isn't. So, if you're thinking about buying it for your kids, I urge you not to. Buy it for yourself instead.

Black Boxes

As this blog is meant to be about books in general and not just mine, I thought it was time for a review. I've just finished Black Boxes by Caroline Smailes and found it so powerful and unputdownable, it seemed the perfect place to start.

I have to say that It was not my usual kind of book. Far from it. I tend to go for implausible legal thrillers and sporting autobiographies. But I'd heard a lot about it and was in the mood for something different.

The story is Ana's, a woman who has retreated into a world of (unreliable?) memories. She has given up on her children and, by the end of the book, we know that she will be dead through an overdose of sleeping pills. The story is told from Ana's point of view, then from her daughter, Pippa's, diary and her son, Davie, who communicates with sign language, before going back to Ana. It's less complicated than I've made it sound.

It's as though the reader is eavesdropping on a one-way conversation in Ana's head as she retraces the path that took her to where she now finds herself. You know how it's going to end. But, and this is testimony to the author's skill, you keep hoping that her abusive ex will come along and rescue her.

Pippa's segment is heartbreaking. Smailes perfectly captures the voice of a neglected, unpopular 14 year old girl, who is used and abused by just about everyone in her life. The revelation of who wrote PIP IS AN UGLY FAT COW on a fence she passed on the way to school was so unexpected, I had to read it twice.

And if you can get through Davie's final message without being moved, you're doing better than me. An exquisite touch.

Given that I knew how it was going to end I was surprised when I realised, about an hour after finishing, that it was actually a happy ending of sorts. I recommend Black Boxes highly. It's intelligent, moving, uncomfortable and a real page-turner. Caroline Smailes is a seriously good writer.

The only complaint I have is that the cover, which shows a glamorous twenty-something model delicately swallowing a handful of pills, jars with the book's ultra-realistic tone.

Join the club

I was reading a piece on book promotion and one of the suggestions was to set up a Facebook group for your book. Now, being at the cutting edge of yoof culture, I went straight online and set up the group 'The Bromley Boys is a brilliant book and more people should read it'.

Is this going to lead to more sales? It's doubtful. But it was reassuring to see a couple of people who aren't related to me have already joined.




http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=71506104044