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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.171.167.11
Posted on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 - 07:33 pm:   

http://fictionbitch.blogspot.com/2009/11/end-for-writers.html
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Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey)
Username: Ramsey

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 195.93.21.74
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:24 pm:   

The Waterstone's on Deansgate in Manchester is still splendid, but others aren't. I'm told that the Liverpool branches are no longer allowed to choose any of their own stock, for instance.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.23.233.247
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:38 pm:   

I had an idea for a coffee shop-bookshop where you got the price you paid for your coffee knocked off any book you bought i.e. the more coffee you drank the more books you got.
Piffling, isn't it? Spitting at wind. :-(
Sometimes it seems the best hope for a writer is to have a poo film made of your book, or an hbo series or the like.
Just been reading Clive Barker shorts for what might be the first time. So hard to believe he made his name in short fiction, isn't it?
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.23.233.247
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:40 pm:   

Mark recently told me that when he went to borrow a book of Capote shorts I'd recommended they told him they had been put in storage they were so uncalled for. He'd have to pay to have them retrieved. Those stories are so solidly good and rich, some of the best things I've read, this actually breaks my heart a little. Heck, a lot.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.23.233.247
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:41 pm:   

'the price you paid for your coffee GOT knocked off any book you bought'
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:42 pm:   

Thank God for Hay-on-Wye. :-)
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Zed (Gary_mc)
Username: Gary_mc

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 213.219.8.243
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:45 pm:   

The Leeds Waterstones isn't actually too bad - despite having a shitty horror section. They have those hand-written staff recommendations stuck on the shelves, and stock a lot of decent stuff alongside the celebrity trash.
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Allybird (Allybird)
Username: Allybird

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.47.117.174
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:54 pm:   

I used to spend hours in Waterstones, Manchester. I remember a very large sci-fi section or was that before the HMV take over - not sure. Haven't been in since I moved to Yorkshire.
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 217.23.233.247
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:59 pm:   

Waterstones can't stamp out the fact that their shops are still staffed by humans I suppose.
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Frank (Frank)
Username: Frank

Registered: 09-2008
Posted From: 213.158.199.76
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 02:44 pm:   

Whenever I'm home I avoid the big book chains because on the money I earn in Poland it's too expensive. I buy most of my books these days either online or in charity shops. I'm shocked though that I find so many great books have been donated to charity.

I bought a hardback copy of King's 'Nightmares and Dreamscapes' and somebody's mum or dad had written a lengthy prose dedication on the first leaf. That they'd given it away made me quite sad. Then again who knows what history lies behind it.
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 02:46 pm:   

Nightmares and Dreamscapes...no wonder someone gave it away, chief. I have the book...sadly.
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Huw (Huw)
Username: Huw

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 218.168.186.172
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 02:55 pm:   

I think it has some good stories - "The Ten O'Clock People", "Crouch End", "The Night Flier", "Dolan's Cadillac"...
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Steve Jensen (Stevej)
Username: Stevej

Registered: 07-2009
Posted From: 82.0.77.233
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 02:58 pm:   

Yeah, I quite liked Dolan's Cadillac, Huw, but, as with the other stories, I felt that its 'power' derived from King's storytelling gift rather than from the story itself. King can draw a reader in, make him/her read on even if the tale itself is lightweight.
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Craig (Craig)
Username: Craig

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 75.4.228.29
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 04:14 pm:   

So hard to believe he made his name in short fiction, isn't it?

Can anyone, anymore?... Even if you're published in the most prestigious magazines in America - The New Yorker, say - no one really notices.

Harry Kemelman, who wrote all those Rabbi-did-this-and-that mystery novels - he was a school teacher who had an idea for a short story generated from an exercise he taught his students. It took him, he claims, 14 years to get that one short-story right. He finally published it, his first ever publication, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine: the editor was so enamored of it, that he offered on the spot to publish however many stories he could possibly write with that same character. That one story's creation on a lark, led to his entire career. No more, no more, I venture.... (btw, it is a gem of a short story called "The Nine Mile Walk.")
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 89.19.82.89
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 05:57 pm:   

Waterstones in Dublin is now stocking DVDs.

On shopping websites the DVD of Star Trek XI is carefully labelled "Star Trek XI (11)".
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.2.144
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 07:17 pm:   

Tony, don't you think that the Barker tales were impressive in that all those 30 or so novelettes and novellas were produced within eighteen months and then released so close to each other for maximum effect? That and some luck I suppose. I think the stark humour and the decadent ironic and very bitter, sometimes angry voice, coupled with very body-conscious elements of the dark fantastic fired the imagination of some readers at the time? Sniffles, crawls back to bed with the flue, snuggles up with copies of the Landlord's latest and Under the Dome, which you could probably use as a weapon and rob a bank with.
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Seanmcd (Seanmcd)
Username: Seanmcd

Registered: 03-2009
Posted From: 86.155.111.216
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 09:10 pm:   

Belfast Waterstones is woeful. A 'horror' section full to brimming with those Vampiress Buffy type things and endless S.King reprints. Whilst in my fav second hand shop yesterday I found an E.F. Benson collection 'The Horror Horn and others', a Fontana anthology 'Tales of Terror from Outer Space' and both Peter Hainings Black Magic story collections.
I do, however, love the Waterstones branch in Dublin Proto. Also the bookshop directly facing it in Dawson St. Can't remember the name.
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Mick Curtis (Mick)
Username: Mick

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.178.83.10
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 09:32 pm:   

Sean - I bought that E F Benson book when it first came out! I recall having loads of Fontana and Panther collections.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 78.152.198.215
Posted on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 10:38 pm:   

That's Hoges-Figgis, Sean. Waterstones now has an entire section devoted to "Occult Romance".
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Tony (Tony)
Username: Tony

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 86.153.150.116
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 04:05 pm:   

Karim - I knew nothing of any of those things. That's astounding.
I've been listening to a lot of music from Barker's films and have come to the conclusion his heart is in the scores people have done for him. It's their music but it's him I encounter when I listen to it.
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Karim Ghahwagi (Karim)
Username: Karim

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 80.163.2.144
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 05:24 pm:   

Tony I once met Phillip Glass when he was playing a series of concerts here in Copenhagen and I asked him about the Candyman soundtrack, which was really excellent. So many people had wanted that soundtrack to be released- It hadn't been released at the time. The score does a tremendous job. I also think the scores of the first two Hellraiser pictures did alot to lift the pictures. Same with Elfman on Nightbreed. You are completely right in that the scores do sometimes capture the mood of the writing even better than the visuals.
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Protodroid (Protodroid)
Username: Protodroid

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 147.252.230.126
Posted on Thursday, November 12, 2009 - 05:51 pm:   

You've articulated what I've felt for about 10 years, Tony.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.249.185
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 01:32 am:   

Ramsey, you don't want to see the Birmingham branches of Waterstone's.
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Joel (Joel)
Username: Joel

Registered: 03-2008
Posted From: 91.110.249.185
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 01:39 am:   

Tony, that's an interesting point. I liked Candyman a lot more than Hellraiser even though it had less Barker in it... somehow I felt the former was Barker's higher self talking to us. I quite often feel that with writers: you can select the message and aesthetic that works for you, even if it isn't what the writer would usually lay claim to.

Which, of course, means that Des was right all along and I couldn't see it.
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Des (Des)
Username: Des

Registered: 06-2008
Posted From: 86.171.167.11
Posted on Friday, November 13, 2009 - 09:20 am:   

:-)

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