Publishing date etc for 'The Well of Shadows', my memoirs of the London Underground

tigerlily wrote:we don't need to put up with shit in our lives no matter how old we may be. Life is just too damn short to spend it in misery.

That's the kind of response an author loves: the whole damn opus summarised in a couple of phrases. Thank you, tigerlily.

pinhedz wrote:"Economic necessity--he had no choice."

Also true, of course. Once this book is finally out there, I'll be back in the jobs market again, for a while at least. Less money with less madness would be fine.

I was dreading this, but half expecting it: there will be a delay of up to one month occasioned by a family bereavement before the publication of 'The Well of Shadows', my book of LU memoirs. I'll let you know the new publication day as soon as I can. Apologies.

pinhedz wrote:Sorry to hear about the family bereavement.

It's my IT boffin in Wales who's lost a family member, Pinz. I should have made that clearer. Coming on top of her current house move, she's obviously pretty upset. In the face of real life-and-death happenings, literature quite properly pales into insignificance.

Hi eddie. We docked this morning. I arrived home half an hour ago, thanked my house/dog-sitter and logged on before he'd driven away.

I started reading the ms between family outings in Cairns, and got through 3/4 of it. It held the sort of strange fascination for me that occurs to make one not want to put it down. I tucked it into my backpack and finished it during my first watch out of PNG.

For the first half I noted typos and redundancies (old habits fie hard)...then, too absorbed, put the pen down.

My last encounter with the LU was about 34 years ago, and a few year's back i wrote a poem about it, reminded of the encounter after rereading Anna Karenina. I posted it when I was still at ER. I mention this only because of pinz's earlier post here. The poem was inspired because the first read of Anna was on the LU. I couldn't help but think "how things have changed"...except possibly for the feeling of desolation I shared with anna.

trains of thought

On her pallid face
drifts of snow
softly fall.

On the platform
from a red steel engine
black smoke billows
and obscures her
desperate figure
stumbling on numb feet
as she tries
to pace the train
easing from the station
as she races.

Look ahead from that Russia Anna,

imagine me below the ground
in London, far below
those drifts of falling snow,
a million creeping faces gathering
momentum, sweeping past and then

it’s just an empty platform and me
and the warm turbine wind huffing on my cheek,
lifting sheets of newsprint,
stirring soot beneath my feet

as I read of you.



I'm bone-tired and sweltering...I have to fly to Cairns in a day or so to pick up my car and drive it the 800k back home.

I'll post my considered opinion later when I'm more articulate. I wouldn't do it justice in my depleted condition (I caught some awful stomach lurgy first trip to PNG that it seems I'm going to have to seek medical advice about...)

...soon

Welcome back.

As you were. New IT techno-boffin located. All is well. Stand easy.

And the book is now finally edited, cut, revised, improved, proofread...finished!

Actually, a book is never REALLY finished. The deadline arrives, that's all.

pinhedz wrote:

eddie wrote:proofread...finished!

I've double-checked with 'The Guardian Book of English Language', which gives 'proofreading' etc as the correct usage. If The Guardian says it's correct, it must be so.

Hi eddie.

I really enjoyed your book. I couldn't put it down. I like your writing style and was interested to read about the history, the inner-workings and the hideous working conditons of the LU.

But what really absorbed me was the picture it presents of the narrator. I want the sequal. I want to know what happens to ed. I want his perspective on life in general and the rationale for the choices he makes.

I've worked for a large, impersonal corporation, and as a teacher, so no amount of corruption and stupidity, or the inadequacies and horrors and lack of common-sense involved in economic rationalism surprise me.

But the view into the trials and tribulations (guarded as they sometimes are) of ed's world fascinate me. It's a wonderful first-person account. My taste runs strongly to the autobiographical (with a dash of magic realism), so I find The Well of Shadows is an immensly satisfying read.

^

This morning I received via snail mail 11th-hour permission from the publishers of Peter Ackroyd to use quotations from his work...at a price. Since I'd already despaired of ever getting a response, I'd been paraphrasing the quotes I wanted to use, and generally filling the gaps. I was tempted, then, to laugh this last minute offer to scorn, except that there is one particular quotation I would still rather like to use as an epigraph, viz:

"One sewerman told an interested guest below: ‘You should see some of ‘em under the City. They’re medieval. They don’t show ‘em to visitors.’ In that medieval spirit we read then of a ‘cavernous chamber… with pillars, arches and buttresses, like a cathedral undercroft ‘. It is a strange city beneath the ground, perhaps best exemplified by worn manhole covers which, instead of reading SELF LOCKING, spell out ELF KING..."
(‘London: the Biography’ by Peter Ackroyd. Copyright Peter Ackroyd 2000.)

I'm very tempted. It's a great quote, but do you think it's worth £75 +VAT?

I don't, that's so greedy. You would think he had made enough money, he knocks out a book a week!

You could always just use the first part of the quote I suppose, seeing as Ackroyd is quoting a sewerman who appears to be anonymous?

Nah Ville Sky Chick wrote:You could always just use the first part of the quote I suppose, seeing as Ackroyd is quoting a sewerman who appears to be anonymous?

It's the second part of the quote ('SELF LOCKING/ELF KING') I really like.

I agree it's a rip off. Random House's original offer was £150 + VAT to uses 4 quotations from 2 Ackroyd books (London: the Biography & Shakespeare: the Biography) or £75 + VAT to quote from just one book. I've replied stating that I just want to use this one quotation- the other 3 I've either cut or paraphrased. Let's see if they come up with a better offer.

My first reaction was to tell them to shove it...but ELF KING's really good.
Any chance of taking a photo of the manhole covers involved, and referring to the photo?

blue moon wrote:Any chance of taking a photo of the manhole covers involved, and referring to the photo?

Sadly, I've never personally encountered an ELF KING manhole cover. If I had, I'd have disappeared down it years ago. Subterranean homesick blues?

I've seen a picture of it on fb...wonder if you can use that, legally. Gotta go to work. Back later.

I'm on lunch. I found this on google...a shot of the original manhole cover. If you right-click on the photo, the licensing info comes up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyrmworld/3292026965/

I'm about to trawl fb for the photo I think I remember. Not sure now if the image got into my head from reading your book, or if I actually saw it. It's a vivid image either way.

I found this quote via the link:
http://www.angelfire.com/weird/junkyard/dodgy.html

All this and more is revealed in the wonderful and highly recommended London Under London – A Subterranean Guide by Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman (new edition by John Murray 1993). This records developments underneath London from the very beginning and includes curiosities like the network of pneumatic pipes that once carried messages beneath the city and the manhole covers marked "Elf King".

^^

Ha ha. Thanks for the links, moony.

I think the time factor is what is going to determine the 'ELF KING' content. I've emailed Ackroyd's publishers Random House, asking for a more reasonable offer, but the integrated Word & Text disk ought to be ready for my approval early next week and if RH haven't responded by then, the quote's out. There simply won't be time to get permission for use of the manhole photo. Tra la la. Happy days.

Ackroyd quote Permissions Licence arrived from Random House Publishing Group this morning. That has to be the last, thank goodness, because at this late stage there simply won't be time to process any more.

New IT boffin is mailing the integrated Text & Illustrations Word disk for final approval. Hopefully, that should arrive before the weekend. I know I have to add a couple of acknowledgements etc. to it. An hour's work. Then I mail it back to him and he re-formats it for Kindle. With luck, book should be out by the end of the month. But I've learned that, once you've done everything you physically can, these things are in the lap of the gods.

Hi eddie. Hope everything's falling neatly into place?

blue moon wrote:Hi eddie. Hope everything's falling neatly into place?

New IT boffin's partner is about 3 weeks away from giving birth. He obviously has other priorities at this stage. That aside, all is well.

eddie wrote:

blue moon wrote:Hi eddie. Hope everything's falling neatly into place?

New IT boffin's partner is about 3 weeks away from giving birth. He obviously has other priorities at this stage. That aside, all is well.

Yes eddie...but the boffin's wife is only giving birth to a baby, and her doctor will see her through that'On the other hand, the boffin is responsible for the delivery of your book. Don't see that the priority is obvious.