Lair of the Bibliomaniac!

Dear Juliet

Currently laid up and lugubrious, but I looked round the flat to find something to tell you about and came upon my book collection.

I'm not reading much these days as the work needed to write Macnab was so murderous I liken the whole process (1996-2015) to this excerpt from Conan the Barbarian. Come to think of it, a friend once nicknamed me Conan the Librarian... I also felt like I was manacled to the word processor screaming, night after night for years. I once went out for a walk and found they'd put up several buildings in my absence.

Macnab was rescued from the grave by my marvellous publisher in 2015 and with my improved skills I revised it fairly easily. Then I got the very last draft back from Amanda one dark night. She mentioned it just needed a few revisions. There were hundreds. I worked for eleven-and-a-half hours straight...

If you consider the whole writing process to be like a brutal boxing match, I didn't even get to hide behind my jab and coast to a points win at the end, On top of everything else, I had to pull out a 15th round knockout. It was hell all the way, my heart's blood was indeed on every page and when Rocky said "nah, no way," to Creed, I knew just how he felt.

Sent the revisions back to Amanda and she basically did a John McEnroe:

Hi James.

EIGHT PAGES of lists of corrections??!! I am completely flabbergasted.

Macnab isn't quite as free of errors as Dear Miss Landau (DML), but it's pretty good. Also, if I hadn't done all the work trying to get Macnab right before 2010, I wouldn't have been able to write DML or Roses so well.

So it goes.

So I don't read so much nowadays, but I got an eye for collecting now I was nearer London.

Sweet Thursday, East of Eden, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat and Travels With Charley are first editions, if not first printings; and The Red Pony was the cherry on top of that wonderful day at the Steinbeck House and Center. It wasn't about money, but $52! It really felt like Somebody Up There really liked me.

I wish you'd been there. You'd have really liked it.

Also, never do this with rare books! If that pint had tipped over...

London pub, incidentally. Just opposite Big Ben.

More of a niche subject, but these are mementos of the library work at Corehouse. Cosmo Gordon Lang was written there in 1948, forty-five years before I was there, Although it was very much like experiencing a real-life version of Brideshead Revisited, I privately selected this as Corehouse's theme...

And if you look carefully at the second last book, that's the first American edition of Brideshead (1945). I found it in Magus Books, Seattle, being fobbed off for $9 or so. I did check with the guys at the desk, but all they said was, "hey, man, I just work here."

Okay then. I guess Evelyn Waugh's not that high profile on your side of the pond.

Brief view of some pictures framing the TV and Dru in her display case. The rose seemed like a good idea.

I also took the wrong turn in the New Forest in January, ended up in the village of Minstead and came upon Arthur Conan Doyle's grave. Wet day, good experience...

It all feels like I've gone off into 84 Charing Cross Road territory. It was a favourite of mine and I'd recommend it. Also, I don't know if you know this, but I wasn't quite sure what salutation to use for Roses' original covering letter. "Hi Juliet" would have been far too personal as we didn't know each other from Adam at the time. "Madame" far too formal and pompous. Then I remembered the way Frank Doel addressed his first letters to Helene Hanff:

Dear Miss Hanff.

So dear Miss Hanff became dear Miss Landau, and it all went on from there...

Have a good day.