Cats and Blogs

Am I going soft-headed and soppy? I'm reading 'Dewey' by Vicki Myron - the story of a librarian in Iowa who adopted a cat and the whole town / state / world took the cat to its heart. And I'm loving it. I've gone daft and sentimental, but maybe that's okay this time of year? Mellow fruitfulness and wallowing in it. But the book's sold a million copies (according to the Christmas bauble spot-laminated on the cat's neck on the cover of my copy) and I wonder whether I should be reviewing the more obscure things I read? I love the shonky old paperbacks reviewed by The Groovy Age of Horror, and god knows I spend enough time delving into obscure stuff myself... Maybe these million sellers get enough attention as it is? At any rate, I'm still enjoying the cat book.

Cats and vampires and old ladies. That's where I'm at these days...

And Doctor Who, of course. Yesterday, a smashing lunch time meeting with Gareth at the Lass O'Gowrie - planning the NovelCon event for Sunday 11th October. Now, there's a real celebration of obscure novels! We were just saying sitting in the snug yesterday, how funny and strange it is, that even the most obscure Who episodes from way back in the mist of the early 60s are pristine and available on dvd (apart from those lost forever, of course) and yet the original Who novels of the 90's and early 2000's seem suddenly vanished forever... We're hoping this daylong celebration of Doctor Who in print will bring back a few memories... with panels, readings, playlists and silly games - and pints and pies, of course.

Oh! Speaking of book blogging... here's a couple of quotes from Nicola Morgan in this autumn's issue of The Author - being brilliant about blogging and book reviews. This is Nicola telling authors not to be snotty about readers-turned-bloggers:

'Please don't go all reactionary and roll your eyes: yes, some bloggers are weird and not to be trusted with a minute of your time; so are some authors.'

And here she is on why Amazon's reviews and recommendations are to be taken with a pinch of salt:

'...the automatic recommendations on Amazon, which have so little pertinence that they keep suggesting I buy the books I actually wrote...'

It's a great article.

The pics above are me messing about with autumn colours... the squirrels are still busy up in the chestnut outside the front of our house, where I can see them when I'm at my desk. They're so organised in their campaign of terror - chucking down the conkers and scaring the passersby. Fester the cat shouted to be outside this morning and when he went the squirrels from the Longsight Branch scared him so much he had to come straight back in. To be fair, it was probably the dustmen with their lorry that scared him as well. He's not a soft cat. Aaagghhh. I'm writing about cats.