Big Day

Christmas and New Year's gone, and already we are well into 2008. But today is a big day for me: my book, on which I have laboured for the past six months, has finally gone to the printers and, technically, is published today - though it'll be a few more days before it can be ordered on line, either as a hard copy or as an e-book.

It's a biography - of a woman who was born in 1903 and died in 2004 and who, as a dancer, performed all over India and the Far East in the Twenties and Thirties. It's title is Playing the Empire and it is, in a way, the story of the last years of what we once called the British Empire.

You can read more about it on www.pedlarpress.co.uk.

Update

No posting for a while - I've been busy with final edits and the incorporation of a few b&w photos into the text of my book. I'm almost there - at the point when I convert the whole thing into one pdf file and upload it to the publisher. But now the Christmas holidays are going to intervene and I shall have to wait until 2008 to see the finished product.

Meanwhile, I have been preparing for the marketing 'onslaught'. I have drafted the launch press release, made up mailing and email lists of recipients, designed and printed A4 'posters' for the counters of my local bookshops - so, when I actually receive the finished book from the printers, I shall be already to go.

I've given up on the famous actress; I did eventually hear from a sidekick that she was tremendously busy and tied up until April, so I shall go ahead without her.

Don't know why I am doing this, really. I've installed an 'analyser', according to which my blog has been visited by 23 people so far (and some of those 'visits', I suspect, may have been my own) and no-one has left a single comment. It's like publishing into space. Perhaps I am missing something . . .

No answer

Still no reply from my Famous Actress. I have sent a second letter, saying that all I want is the briefest of signs from her - yea or nay, which surely shouldn't be too much trouble. But nothing. I suppose she thinks if she just ignores irritating people for long enough they will go away. I did think, however, that as I am a fellow actor, and the content of my book has strong pre-echoes of her own youth, she might at least do me the courtesy of replying - even if only to say no. But these days courtesy seems to be in short supply. . .

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A grumble

I'm in 'grumpy old man' mode, and feel like a rant. And the thing I'd like to take issue with is . . . the word 'issue'. Time was when people would write or speak of 'subjects', 'topics', 'matters', 'faults', 'questions', 'problems', 'difficulties' and so on. Now, every bloody thing - whether it's a software defect or a political crisis - is an 'issue'. It's a perfectly good word, of course; but why impoverish the language when there are so many alternatives?

While on language - why can't people say 'yes' any more? Nine times out of ten it's 'absolutely!' - which takes four times as long to say and is quite unnecessary.

Also, why has the verb 'to say' fallen into disuse? It's all "and he goes . . ." or "and I'm like . . .", neither of which seems to make any sense to me. Not that anyone is going to care what I think - or 'go'.

A final conundrum. Can anyone tell me why Clark Gable, speaking his last line in "Gone with the Wind" ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!") stressed the word 'give' instead of the 'damn'?

Etymology

Readers (if there are any . . .) may be puzzled by the title of my blog. Well, in the Middle Ages a 'chapman' was a pedlar - a travelling salesman who went from village to village with his pack of trinkets and gew-gaws. The name comes from the Old English 'cheype' - 'to sell' - which still survives in place-names such as 'Cheapside' in London - once a market near St Paul's - and Cheap Street in Sherborne. Both Chaucer and Shakespeare mention 'chapmen'.

So my surname is one of those, like 'Smith' and 'Miller', that indicate a former occupation.

I keep making tiny alterations to the text of my book - re-reading and polishing. I recently wrote to a Famous Actress in the hope that she may agree to write a foreword. Until I hear from her I can't take the next step towards publication. I plan to self-publish, on a 'print-on-demand' basis, as I am not prepared to have my manuscript sit in a traditional publisher's 'slush pile' for months, only to be rejected in the end.

First verse

Here's a little bit of nonsense that I wrote over forty years ago - but I think it is still relevant:

The Fashionable Rebel

The worst of the social diseases today,
Which the public in general condones, is
That ultimate symbol of moral decay -
The race to keep up with the Joneses.

Initiative's dead, Eccentricity too;
Conformity's Lord of the Revels.
High-seeking Ambition is limited to
These uniform Jonesian levels.

But I have burst open these bonds without fear -
To do as I please I am free now!
And the joke of it is that the Joneses, I hear,
Are trying to keep up with me now . . .

Who will read?

This whole blogging thing is so new to me - and, frankly, I am puzzled. Here I am, typing away - and who the hell is ever going to read it? How - or why - would anyone find this site? And yet one is told it is a wonderful way of communicating with thousands of other people . . . There must be something that I am missing, or not understanding. Still, I'll persevere - casting my bread upon the waters.

By the time one has finished writing a book, whether fiction or non-fiction, one has lived so close to the thing that - in my case, anyway - one has lost all critical faculty. I simply don't know whether what I have written is any good or not, let alone whether it is something others will want to read. In some ways it's like the theatre: no-one ever knows whether a new show will be a hit or a turkey.

Talking of turkeys - a happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!