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Comments on Star Letter in this month's WM

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Comments

  • My publishers were a bit - taken aback I think is the only way to describe it - when I sent in my list of titles, but it does ensure that they will never be duplicated by anyone else. They are all taken from poems published between 1915 and 1922, one poet, every title fits the person and so does the poem. Nothing like giving myself a challenge ... they concluded (the company that is!) that the titles were dramatic and different. Bit like the series, really.
    Whoops, rush for pills, I can hardly see the screen for flashing lights ...
  • Hope you catch the migraine in time to stop it, Dorothy.
  • Hope you've stopped the migraine getting worse Dorothy.
  • thank you, I think I did. I left the computer, got the vacuum cleaner and cleaned up the summerhouse instead ... because we wanted an 'outside coming inside' feeling, the summerhouse being surrounded by and overgrown with plants, Terry ordered a dark green carpet ...
  • Will you have to mow the carpet?!!
  • edited March 2009
    Or use shears? ;)
  • use a horse! they love green and provide a welcome feast for those roses.
  • no horses. My guys love them, I don't ...kittens are coming, not quite the same thing but kittens are coming to replace the irreplaceable KK, together with a rescue dog. Life seems set fair to be interesting at work. Thank goodness home is comparatively sane ...
  • I love kittens. but just to tell you of my experience with in my case,a magazine editor. I had a story published in a popular mag in tha ninties ok and that was grand. After a number of months i was asked for permission for my story to be used on a TV channel in a new programme where actors would act out the story i was overjoyed and said Yes. I was told id be contacted in the near future, after the "near future" passed, I contacted the mag who had asked permission and was told that the editor in question had taken up ajob in the country down under and had taken a file of stories that were submitted and we never saw nor heard from her again. That was my experience and it taught me that I must be carful of who you trust long time after I wouldnt send anything for publication but then i coped on and said its the risk you take when you send your work out there that there are people who will screw you cause they do not have any conscience but thankfully they are very few.
  • that sounds terrible monty. So basically she stole your work and went off 'down under' to publish them? That's just mean. Would there be anyway of tracking your work?

    Dorothy, have you got your kittens yet? I love kitties (we have 7).
  • not yet. They aren't mine, thank goodness, they are Terry and Jill's responsibility. We don't do pets indoors any more, too much heartbreak when they go. They are apparently coming in June but the rescue dog has been shelved, as it were. Goodness, the man is 70 tomorrow and doesn't need a dog on top of two kittens and a terminally ill wife! He would have done better with a mature cat needing a home but Jill wasn't listening.
  • Dogs are such hard work and i really don't know why some people get them - and then feel the need to get more and more! There are several local english people that have moved to france and got dogs (not one of them are under 70) They can't speak much french, none of the dogs could be easily taken back to the UK due to the lack of vaccinations and we have already had a couple try and 'fob off' their dogs on us (they had 3). Quite afew of these people have died (which is very scary) and one lady even went back to the uk and just litterally threw the dogs out. It's just plain daft.

    I agree about the mature cat - there are so many needing homes right now. although it has to be said there is something wonderfully healing about kittens. They can make you smile on the darkest of days.... except when the little buggers are swinging off your new laura ashley curtains that is...
  • My best friend's dog died suddenly, aged 11. She waited 3 months before deciding she needed a dog in her life and then chose with great care. She got a lurcher who, despite having long legs and apparently boundless energy, doesn't need long walks. He tires very quickly (it's the greyhound in him) so he sleeps much of the day. Perfect for someone in their 60s. One like that would do Terry if it were not for their ability to hog the settees ...
    I think Jill needs the brightness of kittens. Life 24/7 in a chair on an oxygen machine is not much fun.
  • my mum has a lurcher and the dog doesn't need very much walking at all. My parents are both recently retired and those hour at a time walks are perfect for them. we once had a springer and after 3 hours at the quarry with him galloping up and down every consevable lump and bump he slept for an hour then asked to go out again!
  • I have a very old springer so she goes mad for half an hour in the woods, then collapses in her bed. But we are getting a kitten soon!

    Goodness, this thread has gone off at a tangent. Erm... I haven't ever had any ideas stolen. Perhaps that says something about my weird ideas!
  • She went too far, that tutor, but as an Idea Vacuum Cleaner, I have some confessions: At Swanwick last summer I picked up a cracker of an idea from someone in the Della Galton workshop. I fiddled with it a bit, wrote it up. It's been out 4 times. WW said 'worn theme', Fiction Feast said nothing at all (just their standard letter), PF said ' not for us'. It's with MW at present, but I'm not holding my breath. Obviously that idea's been repeated many times, but I'd never heard it and I thought it was A New One.
    Ha! Also, Oh Evil Me, I read a story in FF, rehashed the idea and sent it to WW and they published it. I was pretty surprised, although obviously really pleased with the sale, because I've seen a variation on that idea a lot and thought WW would tick the 'worn theme' box on a rejection slip, instead of which I had a phonecall and a cheque! It is worth reading lots and lots of the stories in magazines, because one does pick up new slants on old themes!
  • I think we all do elements of that in a way, the idea triggers your own idea of how you would do a story, but it wouldn't be exactly the same.
    BUT you haven't deprived the original writer of their opportunity to sell the story in the first place, the way that tutor did.
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