Following several bouts of illness in the Salt House, plus school half-term holidays, I’m pleased to announce that we are now back to normal full steam ahead mode. Lots of book news (see the Confidential blog for full details) and some wonderful but embargoed prize news (damn it! – keeping quiet kills me), which I’ll have to fill you in on later. But meanwhile, I can tell you that we have brought some lovely new books into the world, which anyone visiting Chez Salt could tell you. In fact, yesterday son 1, Callum, had a game of football (the Wilbraham Warriors have yet to win a match, but they’re all still dead keen and turn up — and yesterday they did actually score a goal) and was brought home by one of the dads who hadn’t been here before. He stepped into the hall with a look of, well, I’ll say it was astonishment, though it could have been something less positive, when he saw our box-lined walls. I had to explain that we published books and had just taken delivery of new titles. I counted them and there are currently 59 boxes of books piled high – and it isn’t a big hall! And that’s after I sent out over 40 boxes last week. Toddler Cameron has worked out that they can be climbed on, which is a rather worrying development, but at least they help over up his scribbles!
However, I digress. Without further ado, let me tell you briefly about our LOVELY NEW BOOKS. Two collections of short stories, one by Vanessa Gebbie, Words From a Glass Bubble; the second by Scottish-based Linda Cracknell, The Searching Glance. I have loved working on these books and with these authors and feel privileged to know every story inside and out. As well as them, we’ve published two collections of poetry from Australian poets Tim Thorne, I Con and Without an Alibi by Philip Neilsen, both of which we’ve published in hardback – the first of our Australian titles to be available in this format.
Also, we have managed to pull together to final-proof stage a book that we’ve been working on for around two years now. It started off as a collection of short stories about women with psychosis who commit terrible crimes, but they started to inter-relate and the final story ties them together, so now it’s a novel, a genre we don’t usually publish, but we’re absolutely thrilled to on this occasion. It’s Sister Morphine by Catherine Eisner. Here is a pic of the front of the jacket:
When I sent that to Catherine, she said this: “A scarlet dress is dangerous and its effect can sometimes be unpredictable,” which led me to think about having to get something to wear for the Independent Publishing Awards dinner/awards ceremony in two weeks’ time. Last year I wore a black dress that possibly looked okay, but felt absolutely STUPID in – it just wasn’t me and I felt really uncomfortable all evening (though losing might not have helped, I must admit). So, I reckon that this year I might just go for a scarlet dress – an element of danger and unpredictability could just spice things up a bit!
I have therefore two weeks to *groan, here I go again* lose weight. Fortunately, the ground has now started to dry out and yesterday I was able to go for a “run”. I use that word loosely – my staggering and wheezing around half of my normal course was more of a limp than a run. Worse still was my making use of the clever heart rate monitor I got for my Christmas. This confirmed that I am rather on the unfit side, thanks to my months of sloth over the wet winter (one can’t run in mud or wellies).
These are my measurements *yawn, I know – skip this bit, I won’t mind*:
Duration of exercise: 45 minutes
average heart beats per minute: 151 (I should be within the range of 126 – 144)
Time in proper fitness zone: 15 mins
Max heart rate: 199
How bad is that! It’s amazing I didn’t kill myself out there! I was running into the wind, but there were no hills, so all in all, pretty bad. But, hey, I can only get fitter! Time to lay off the biscuits and booze for a couple of weeks, I suppose, and perhaps invest in this for my next venture out:
Enjoy the rest of your weekends, everyone!
