Fleur De Lys Publishing

Sade limited edition prints.

2010-03-08T01:52:00.000-08:00

Above: Sade and the Tiger © Jude Calvert-Toulmin

The photographs of Sade I took back in 1982, before she found international fame and was just one of my mates on the London music scene are now available to purchase online as signed prints from a limited edition of 50 from Fleur De Lys Publishing Ltd here.

My Sade prints were exhibited at the prestigious Mall Galleries in London during the summer of 2009 as part of Royal Society of British Sculptors member Guy Portelli's Pop Icons exhibition. The exhibition, with my photographs, is now on tour nationally with the possibility of a future global tour.

The exhibition was a huge success; you can see some shots of the preparation and the private views here and read an interview with Guy prior to the Mall Galleries exhibition.

As fans of Sade know, Sade is not just a singer but a band comprising sax player and co-songwriter Stuart Matthewman, bassist Paul Denman and keyboard player Andrew Hale. You can read more about my times hanging around with the band in the early 80s in a couple of blog articles I wrote in 2006. Turn of the 80s - The Hull Connection: Sade and Turn of the 80s - The Clubbing Connection.

This article which contains some of my original photos, has consistently proved to be one of my most popular articles and still gets regular readers from all over the world.

Above: Sade and the Audience © Jude Calvert-Toulmin

Sade's new 2010 album Soldier of Love has quite deservedly topped the US and European charts and she remains the elegant enigma she has always been; a true British icon.

Above: Sade and the Alligator © Jude Calvert-Toulmin

Crash - new non-fiction book from Fleur De Lys Publishing Ltd. Stories needed.

2009-09-23T01:14:00.000-07:00

"This resolution can mark the moment when the world's community looks out at the suffering and the grief and the cost of road crashes and decides to end it. This is in our power to do. We have the tools, we have tvhe knowledge and we have the means. What we have to do now is act."

Lord George Robertson, Chair, Commission for Global Road Safety, March 2008.

Jacqueline Saburido, victim of a drunk driver.

On Saturday 19th September 2009, it was 10 years since Jacqueline Saburido narrowly survived a crash caused by a drunken driver, suffering horrific burns in the process. Jacqueline is one of 20-50 million people injured every year in road crashes.

Many people regard it their right to drive their car however dangerously they choose, and much of society still ignores this. Cars are killing machines, but are still not generally regarded as such. Imagine hundreds of giant machetes hurtling up and down the road, manoevred by human beings many of whom are unable or unwilling to control their beloved machete. That paints a slightly more disturbing picture of our roads but one that dulls our senses into complacency a little less than rows and rows of shiny cars.

Fleur De Lys Publishing, the publishing company of which I am a director, are researching a non-fiction book comprising the stories of survivors of fatal car crashes. If you have a story you want to tell and are happy for it to be possibly included then please contact me here.

It was the following incident that set me off thinking about road crashes and the devastating effects they have on peoples' lives.

In 2005 my partner Brian and I were being driven from an airport in Spain by a supposed friend who swore he had given up drinking and was clean. He was drunk, and the car in which he was driving us started veering off the main carriageway of the motorway on which we were travelling. I was terrified, but this time, there was no accident, although we later witnessed this man pulling into a duel carriageway in front of an articulated lorry, and having to swerve to avoid a collision. (He is still out there in Spain, drinking and driving, by the way, and his remaining friends are still turning a blind eye to his drunk driving.)

These incidents set me off thinking about road crashes and the devastating effects they have on peoples' lives. Although commonly referred to as RTAs, or road traffic accidents, crashes are often the result of human error or impaired ability through consumption of drugs, including the drug alcohol. In the US, approximately 40% of all motor vehicle fatalities are alcohol-related.

In 2008 there were 2,538 fatalities in the UK alone from road crashes. The global figure is 1.3 million deaths, a toll comparable to malaria and tuberculosis, according to the Executive Summary from the United Nations General Assembly Session on Global Road Safety which took place on March 31st, 2008.

From the 2008 resolution summary:

"Low‐ and middle‐income countries are disproportionately impacted; more than 85% of all fatalities and injuries occur in the developing world.

"Tragically, children are often the victims particularly in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Road traffic fatalities are the number one killer of children aged 10‐24, and 96% of these children are dying on roads in developing nations. The trend is predicted to continue and to accelerate, fueled by the rapid motorization that accompanies development.

"Road traffic crashes consume 1‐2% of GNP for most countries. The World Health Organization estimates annual worldwide economic costs at USD $518 billion ‐ a total that equals or exceeds annual bilateral overseas aid. Although this is a global epidemic, there is no coordinated global response and many developing nations lack the capacity to prevent these very preventable deaths and injuries."

Lord George Robertson, Chair, Commission for Global Road Safety concluded:

"This resolution can mark the moment when the world's community looks out at the suffering and the grief and the cost of road crashes and decides to end it. This is in our power to do. We have the tools, we have the knowledge and we have the means. What we have to do now is act."

Cars are a relatively new addition to the landscape of human experience, which is why it is taking time for society to wake up to the damage and suffering they are causing. I believe we should all look at what tools we have at our disposal to act, and use them. I run a publishing company, so what I can do is publish peoples' stories in the hope that it will make others think about driving more responsibly.

I also do not have a car. I walk, cycle or use public transport.

Jacqueline Saburido's story as told by David Hafetz

Fifty is a great age to start writing plays

2009-08-28T05:06:00.001-07:00

Me at my 50th birthday party for 50 people.

I recently threw a big party for my fiftieth birthday, and invited only those friends whom I really valued and who weren't prone to being rude or offensive. I mistakenly invited a couple of people on my mailing list whilst trying to work out how to use Google Events, but luckily only the people who were meant to be there attended.

Three of my oldest friends at my party.

I had to miss out many acquaintances I value because I simply couldn't cater for more than fifty people, as I did all the catering myself. But the end result was a party where the comment "I can't believe how many nice people there are here!" was made again and again by lots of people.

Part of the party spread.

Another criteria for my invite list was people who aren't jealous of me. I've always had to endure jealousy from the odd person, and I mistakenly thought that once I reached middle age it would stop. It hasn't. In fact, being a published author has only exacerbated the jealousy from certain quarters.

A few months ago, a double page spread interview about me and my novels appeared in The Sheffield Star. That very evening, I was the target of an ugly verbal assault by a vicious bully, at a public event, in front of dozens of witnesses. The ostensible reason was some imagined personal grudge about my book, but this bully had been sneering at me even before I was a published author, so the book was merely a thin excuse to have yet another go at me.

Party meringues

As with many bullies, the attack started with her being in the company of a circle of friends, and me being momentarily alone. I tried to do the right thing and just walk away, but she physically chased me through the building, refusing to let me go whilst she bombarded me with insults and accusations, jabbing her finger at me, her eyes flaring with hatred, her face screwed up with vitriol. Three times she chased after me; my eyes welling up with tears merely encouraged her and intensified the horrendous attack. By the time I escaped from the building I was shaken to the core and the attack left me feeling very vulnerable and physically sick. My friends were ringing me on my mobile to ask me why I had suddenly disappeared and I maintained a dignified silence for a very long time, until finally I started to tell people what had happened, and they were appalled.

But the difference between me, as a writer, and other people who have endured trauma, is that my method of recovery is the pen.

So I have decided to write a play about a family of substance abusers, certain of who are habitually rude and offensive and who scapegoat anyone who comes within arms' length in order to distract from their problems.

Friends at my party.

Yesterday, seven months after the attack, I saw the bully, who lives in my neighbourhood, in the street. She had the nerve to smugly say "Hello Jude" with a cocky look on her face, as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

I said "Fuck off." turned, walked into my house, sat down at my computer, and resumed writing Scene 7 of my new play.

Sometimes, being a writer can lead to you feeling bad. But sometimes, it can lead to you feeling very, very good.

Mainstream vs Independent

2009-06-09T02:12:00.000-07:00

My self-portrait "Rubber Stamp" being prepared as a lego mural by one of the world's leading Lego artists, Chris Doyle, inventor of the Lego Minimizer, in which you can make yourself in Lego online...

And some more hot news for you about how leaders in their field love my work...

The editor of one of the main UK broadsheets has read and "loves" my novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law. It will be interesting to see whether his paper reviews it, then. After all, I'm not a mainstream publisher. I'm an independent publisher.

So maybe I should find a broadsheet called "The Mainstream" and see whether they will review my novel. After all, Charlotte Roche's novel Wetlands, (penned by an already famous mainstream German TV presenter and published by a mainstream publisher) has done the predictable (ie mainstream) review rounds of the broadsheets and that was a novel which many women claimed was engineered to titillate men and alienate women, whereas my novel aims to celebrate and empower the older woman. And my novel has a higher star rating on Amazon than Wetlands. Ah, but it doesn't really matter, does it? You're either on the treadmill, or you ain't.

New Publishing. Print on Demand. Keep the riff raff out, yeah?

Never ever ever give up...

Fleur De Lys Publishing web galleries

2009-03-30T06:49:00.000-07:00

Psalter Lane Art College 1977

Summary for those in a rush:

I posted EIGHT new web galleries on the Fleur De Lys site, including shots of a plaster cast being made of my seventeen year old breasts.

The longer version of this blog entry:

An article about me appeared in the local press the other day accompanied by a shot of me looking like the harridan I sometimes become during the gap in my HRT tablets.

Discussing this article, and also arguing about the merits of the venue where the book launch party for my novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law took place, Bungalows and Bears, the following dialogue took place on a huge forum, Sheffield Forum, where they have given me my own Fleur De Lys Publishing megathread (a megathread is used by some large forums as a way of combining threads about a particularly popular subject.)

chris1983: point exactly, look at the state of her. as i said its gone down the pan.

Kthebean: Shes an author love not a page 3 girl.

chris1983: I know, but its hardly chinawhite because they have got some steamy author signing books there!

mkdr21: love the comparison with China White, all comes down to your definiton of classy I suppose

Yog Sothoth: Oi! That's my wife you're being insulting about!

Book launch party for Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law at Bungalows and Bears

chris1983: dont blame me, i didn't say she's not a page 3 girl! im only here to slag off the bungalows & bear bar cos its ****.

the white rose (that's me): Actually sweetie, you said "look at the state of her" which by any lady's standards is an insult. However I am no lady, I'm a grandmother who writes compendiums of filth to make little boys like you run off to the bathroom.

I agree with you, anyway, the picture is extremely unflattering, but then so are most pictures of Salman Rushdie. Who is also not a page 3 girl.

And if you're the same Chris who works for that recruitment agency, you're hardly Brad Pitt are you? Mmmn? Have a look in the mirror? Flex those pecs and let's be honest?

Here's a video I shot last week of me talking about the book launch so you can double check how revolting I look and then slag me off some more.

chris1983: good come back, i dont have any thing to say to that, only you must know me as i'm no "Brad Pitt", more "George Clooney" looking. apologies if the picture does you no justice and it was really ignorant of me to slag off someone i have never met (well i might have interviewed you by the sound of it because you guessed right i do work for at an agency )

the white rose:

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris1983

good come back, i dont have any thing to say to that,

Thankyou chris1983. If you buy my novel, My Adventures In Cyberspace, there is a chapter at the beginning where the protagonist goes onto a forum full of lads all slagging off not only one of her articles in a national magazine, but also her as a person, even though none of them have ever met her. They're talking about her as though she isn't human, just because her article and photo have appeared in one of their climbing lads' mags. She registers on the forum under her own name in order to defend herself, which is the last thing they expect, and a huge bunfight ensues....it was inspired by my own experience on a large climbing forum in the early days of forums, before user profiles and facebook.

There were many other bunfights on that forum over the years as at the time you weren't allowed to discuss anything other than climbing and I was trying to introduce the facility to discuss general topics, much to the horror of the old timers from the dot rec days. And it was watching these bunfights that inspired Yog Sothoth to start posting, and eventually we fell in love and 7 years later here we still are, the story in My Adventures is all inspired by that...forums are very important to me.

Me and my editor, Brian Trevelyan aka Yog Sothoth

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris1983

apologies if the picture does you no justice and it was really ignorant of me to slag off someone i have never met

That is extremely gracious of you. It takes a lot of courage to publically admit to making a mistake and then to apologise, thankyou. Anyway I work on the basis that anything negative that happens I should treasure and magic into fuel to make positive things happen. For a while I've been putting off assembling a photo gallery to go on the Fleur De Lys site because I've been up to my ears with every other aspect of the business, but you've spurred me on to get together all my modelling shots in one place so that when people slag me off for looking like (shock horror) an author, and not like a surgically face-lifted plasticised botoxed actress, I can direct them to some pictures of me from when all I had to do in my life was look pretty. Yeah, it was a tough life, being a gorgeous young lass

Me as a young freelance photo-journalist in London

Anyway, why don't you come along tomorrow and get your SF name sticker and meet some other fms? No-one's going to hold it against you that you slagged the place off I'm sure. You could say you were prepared to be converted. Although being a George Clooney lookalike you won't need a name sticker. Everyone will point at you as soon as you walk in and say "Blimee it's chris1983 from Sheffield Forum, he does look exactly like George Clooney!"

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris1983

(well i might have interviewed you by the sound of it

You haven't interviewed me, I've never needed to use a recruitment agency.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chris1983

because you guessed right i do work for at an agency )

I didn't guess. I used to be a freelance journalist. We're naturally curious. People love to think they're completely anonymous on the net.

They're not.

chris1983: Last thing before i stop dragging this thread on, i had chance to look at the modeling pictures you posted on here and Wow do i need to eat my words! i would love to come to your book signing but i have to help the old man put a new kitchen in. hope it all goes well though!

Me mucking around in one of the Razzle studios, 1998. © Jude Calvert-Toulmin. Pic by legendary climber John Allen.

So, threads on forums inspired my novel My Adventures in Cyberspace and now a thread on a forum has spurred me on to put some of my old photos, self-portraits and portraits all in one place. You can find all the links on Fleur De Lys Publishing but here they are as well:

Studio shots,
Breast plaster cast,
Book Signings,
Portraits and Self-Portraits,
My editor and me,
Live open-mic performances,
Webcam stills,
Webcam on Vimeo.

Book Launch Party, and My Adventures in Cyberspace is now on sale on Amazon!

2009-03-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

STOP PRESS:

Book Launch Party for Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, this Saturday 21st March, Bunglaows and Bears, Division St, Sheffield. 2pm-5pm, all welcome. For more details see below.

EDIT: More up to date news can be found on Sheffield's liveliest and biggest forum, Sheffield Forum at sheffieldforum.co.uk. They have kindly set up a Fleur De Lys Publishing megathread for all discussions relating to our titles, and for related Sheffield based events such as the book signing next Saturday. I am really honoured as I have been saying all over the net for years, that Sheffield Forum is one of the best moderated forums I've ever known. And it's big. They had over 1,500 users simultaneously on line at the end of December!

Back cover blurb from My Adventures in Cyberspace:

2001 Maybe Kubrick was right. The film 2001, A Space Odyssey ends with man’s rebirth as a star child in space, at a time when cyberspace had yet to be invented.

By the dawn of the real 2001, more and more and pioneers are venturing into a strange, unknown territory which has yet to acquire smell or touch. These adventurers are treated with suspicion by many who have never left the real world, for this foreign territory is populated by geeks, freaks, weirdos and stalkers. The swords and sabers used in this new land do not draw blood, but still pierce the heart. Before MySpace and pre-Facebook, in the ruddy glow of social networking’s first dawn, the weapon of choice is the written word. Dominique DuBois knows she has to venture into the Wild West of cyberspace, but the last place she expects to end up is a Travelodge Inn in Leeds with the love of her life. And that's when things really start to unravel...

***

Finally, four years after I typed the words "Chapter 1" into Microsoft Word, in a last ditch attempt to preserve my sanity after a nightmare few years at the hands of various emotionally abusive males, both on the net and IRL (in real life), my novel My Adventures in Cyberspace is on sale.

I learnt that bitterness tasted dull, revenge made my eyes water and that being entertaining was the key to release me from the prison of my (slaps forehead and glances dramatically towards the clouds, focusing on the stars beyond) despair. And it's been a right laugh ever since.

Not really, I wouldn't call being an author "a right laugh" by any stretch of the imagination. I am chronically insecure though, and it's helping me deal with that because writing honestly is like an emotional version of going into a ring with Mike Tyson every day. Only fun. Being a company director's pretty cool as well, even though I've yet to make my millions, and I do love designing the book covers and publicity material, so generally, yeah, I think I chose to do the right thing.

So, you can buy My Adventures in Cyberspace on Amazon UK here and on Amazon US here , on Amazon Europe here and on Amazon Japan here. Pretty cool, huh? :) Click the pic below to see vlog#4 My Adventures in Cyberspace on sale on Amazon.

Bungalows and Bears exterior © professionalmagpie.co.uk

More news:

The book launch party signing for Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law will be at one of Sheffield's finest bars, Bungalows and Bears, Division St, on March 21st, 2pm-5pm.

I will be signing copies of the book with red lipstick kisses for those who want it baby, and the divine Ralph Razor, whose Razor Stiletto nights have become part of Sheffield clubbing legend already, will be DJing a smooth sultry lounge set of his choosing. Hopefully the Peekaboo Burlesque girls will be handing out bookmarks as well.

If you post on Sheffield Forum then come and get an SF sticker from my table and write your username on it if you want to meet other Sheffield Forum users.

And I will be signing copies of the book not only with a fountain pen, but also with red lipstick. Click the pic below to see vlog#5 about the book launch.

Above: Bungalows and Bears exterior © professionalmagpie.co.uk

Interview with David Winge, photographer for the cover of Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law

2009-03-04T00:56:00.000-08:00

Note to the hundreds of climbers who have already read this article over on my personal blog: My live online interviews with legendary climbers Johnny Dawes, John Redhead and John Dunne, and my published articles for climbing magazines On The Edge and High can be found here.

A year ago I decided to write a novel to cater for the number of people arriving on this blog having googled the key words "mother in law son in law sex". I spent the spring writing the novel, handed it over to my editor, then pored through hundreds of photographs on deviantArt, waiting for that one photograph to jump out at me as the cover.

As soon as I set eyes on Tree Shadows, David's beautiful shot of model Nora Saenz, I knew I'd found the one.

After my own input in Photoshop and Illlustrator, the end result was below. You can buy the novel on Amazon here in the UK or here in the USA.

So many people have commented on the stunning David Winge cover that I thought I would interview David for the blog. Here's what he had to say.

Jude: Hi David. What do you think of the final book cover result?

David: It's wonderful, and honestly it is a shot that almost didn't get posted, Nora picked it out. It was a result of Nora wanting to do some images in a more figure study style, as you know I tend to work more in landscapes where my model is part of the overall scene and not necessarily
the main subject in the photo. After the shoot we were reviewing the results and she saw this image and immediately asked me to edit and post it.

Jude: I understand you got into photography by restoring old family photographs. Can you tell us a little about that?

David: From the time I was very young I had a keen interest in old photographs, historical photos, old family photos and I would come across old family photographs but because of the age, original materials, storage and quality of these images they were often scratched, faded or damaged. I was learning to work in a darkroom and found I could actually photograph these images using my 35mm SLR camera and then using darkroom techniques, touch them up and enlarge them. I began a little restoration program and many of these redone photographs hang in the homes of my relatives today.

Jude: Was the first nude portrait you ever did in the desert? Or were you photographing desert landscapes first?

David: I have not been photographing nudes for very long, only about 3 years now, I was starting to photograph more and more in recent years and my candid shots of people were receiving wonderful reviews. Someone suggested I find a model to work with and try to expand on my ideas and concepts. Using landscapes for me goes back all of my life, then I discovered the desert in the early 80s and travelled out there often when I played the drums for a band whose
founding members lived in the Mojave just north of Los Angeles, CA.

Nudes in the desert was a natural collaboration of these two, the first several models that I met were wonderful and very creative people, I feel very fortunate to have found them and those first photographs we shot were amazing. After a couple of trips out there working with nudes in the desert I was hooked, I remember one specific instance while editing our work, I had to pause, I could hardly believe that I had helped create such beautiful images.

Jude: You have been quoted as saying "Putting clothes on a model is akin to putting a parking lot over a field of flowers." I love this quote, because it sums up for me one of the beauties of your work, your appreciation of the natural beauty of women's bodies. I had an article published in the final ever issue of prestigious climbing and mountaineering magazine, HIGH, entitled Tits vs. homo-Eroticism at the Crag, arguing that if men were allowed to take their tops off whilst rock climbing, so should women be. The article caused storms of controversy on the British climbing forums. Do you think women should be permitted the freedom to take their tops off in public just as men are? Why do you think that society still demands that women cover their breasts? After all they are beautiful, men love them and they nourish babies.

David: Thank you, that quote was born partly from frustration at attitudes and in my opinion nudity should certainly be a choice, I find it quite twisted that society equates nudity to something wrong or bad and especially something illegal except in very private locations. That said, this does not mean I would enjoy a ride in a crowded bus full of naked strangers, what I mean is I find it so ironic that we place a high value on classical paintings and statues depicting
nudes done by historical masters but deprive ourselves of this expression. Who and what are these laws and morals protecting? I don´t see that laws against nudity have done
more good than harm.

Another favorite quote of mine is from Peter McWilliams, "The laws against public nudity make no sense. The idea that Jerry Falwell can go topless while Cindy Crawford cannot is an absolute affront to logic, common sense and the 5000 year human struggle for aesthetic taste."

Jude: Another thing I love about your work is the fact that you so obviously have a lot of respect for women. By photographing naked women in stunning landscapes, are you trying to emphasise the fact that nature is beautiful, and just as no one would be ashamed of a mountain, no one should be ashamed of the bodies nature gave us? Or am I reading too much into it! At any rate, what inspires you to photograph nudes in desert landscapes?

David: This is it exactly Jude, my intention is to share the natural beauty I see, and I wouldn't mind at all if it changed a few attitudes along the way. My hope is that when people view my work they are able to see past the model and see the harmony of beauty in a natural setting, I would hope they see how we are part of it all.

Another factor is the desert itself because I feel we sometimes equate nudity with vulnerability, it is part of my goal to show the glory and strength of the human spirit. And I do have a great deal of respect for my models not only are they out there in remote areas of desert, in all kinds of weather and temperatures, at odd times of the day but they do all this nude and for the purpose of creating art.

Jude: One of the reasons I love Tree Shadows so much, which I used as the basis for the cover of my novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, is the interplay between light and shade. So how important is chiaroscuro in your work?

David: I try to remain aware of shadows, especially my own! Seriously, shadow plays an important role as does the lack of shadows, in photography I use shadows to add dimension and sometimes to add a level of drama. Nora has such a beautiful shape, in Tree Shadows it was Nora who chose that location, I found that using more shadow than light helped to soften the overall image and to further enhance the depth of field, to make her smooth skin appear in the image more as it does in real life.

Jude: How important is texture in your photographs? How important is the difference between the texture of the model's skin and the texture landscape's skin in your work?

David: This is where I just love the desert for my work, there is an abundance of textures, and shapes in the desert, I try to use both in a sort of interplay along with contrasts and light and appearance of the model.

Jude: I have heard top rock climbers say that they become physically aroused by their interaction with the rock, and climbers use many sexual innuendos when describing climbing, often referring to rocks as women and lovers. Do any of your models become aroused by the feel of the rock?

David: I hadn't heard this before, but honestly I would be so busy setting up to shoot I probably wouldn't even notice, though I have had a couple of models want to start a naked rock climbing club, so there may be something to this!

Jude:How important is the relationship between photographer and model?

David: I believe this is important, however also dependent somewhat on the type and genre of the work, the more creative and edgy the goal of the image the more important this relationship becomes I feel. I look at other photographer´s work regularly and I feel I can see a certain dynamic between certain pairs, now others may not believe this to be true and I myself didn´t believe it at first. I was under the impression that as two professionals getting remarkable images was something quite consistent regardless. But over time now I have come to realise there is something intangible going on as you move closer to the artistic side of photography, for myself it came in the way of improved images the more I work with someone and better images depending on our level of enthusiasm about the project.

Jude: I know from my own experience that being photographed naked is a form of making love to the camera, and that an electrical spark must happen between the photographer and model for the shoot to work at its best. Does this spark always exist between you and your models?

David: I'm afraid my answer may be disappointing to your readers, if by spark you mean a creative spark then yes, if you mean something more intimate than I have to say no. My time on location at a photo shoot is most often somewhat exhausting, I am constantly watching for the location of the sun and the type and style of terrain I want to use, the distant background as well as the models placement in setting up a shot. I'm conveying the emotional feel and at times the pose to the model and I am concentrating on my composition as well as the shadows, light and field of view.

The extremely naughty Fleur De Lys Publishing PA, "Honey Higginbotham"

Jude: Have your photo sessions ever led to further intimacy with a model?

David: Not yet unfortunately, should I have the opportunity to work with Fleur De Lys PA, the enchanting Ms. Higginbotham....however!

Jude: Have you ever fallen in love with any of your models?

David: No, I haven't, but this is an interesting question that I've been asked before, it seems there is a misconception about relationships when nudity is involved, people in general equate nudity with sex and this is far from the case. At least for me it is, there must be a good degree of trust in the relationship and mutual respect as artists, though I haven't fallen in love, I do love and have become good friends with several of the models I've worked with.

Jude: Have any of your models ever fallen in love with you?

David: Well, there was one early on and we dated briefly, I spend most of my time scheduling, planning and shooting then editing images so it fizzled out in short order, I just couldn't devote the time needed to sustain a relationship.

Jude: Have any of your models met one another? If so under what circumstances and how did they get on?

David: They meet all the time, many are good friends of each other, in fact one of our local photo studios has been doing a meet & greet style open house one day a month for some time, several of the local art photographers and models meet up there. At times there may be 8 to 10 of the models I've worked with all there at the same time. It's really a wonderful fellowship of artists and like-minded people.

Jude: Does your partner get jealous of your work?

David: I'm single, for me it's not that easy to date anyway, not only do I have a very busy schedule and limited time, very few women my age understand my desire to go with young women out to remote locations and photograph them nude.

Jude: When I asked for your permission to use your shot Tree Shadows as the basis of my book cover, how did you feel?

David: Oh I was thrilled, I doubt 5 seconds elapsed in between the time I read your message and sent a message to Nora, I knew she would be thrilled as well.

© David Winge
Above: This shot of Nora inspired Chapter 6 of Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, "Cleaning The Window" where Alex lays on the bed fantasising about his topless mother-in-law being outside his bedroom window, cleaning it.

Jude: Have you read Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law yet?

David: Yes, yes I have.

Jude: What did you think of it?!

David: It's a wonderful read, I couldn't put it down! Well, a couple of times I had to. I especially love how you developed the characters and I followed right along with them and it was so easy to see the scene play out in my mind. I love how the plot developed over a period of time, everything didn't just happen at once but more methodically with a sense of things growing between the characters, no pun intended ;) What I also found very interesting was that you included some of your inspirations and influences at the back of the book, I saw that we have more than a few things in common.

Jude: I personally feel that your model Nora Saenz is one of the most stunning nude models I've ever seen. She has a vibrancy which sings with electricity. Can you tell me what it's like, working with Nora?

David: Nora is wonderful, I met Nora through another model I was with at the time, Nora had seen our work and wanted to work with me, she hadn't modeled nude prior to our first shoot. Though you wouldn't know it, we did a few shots in a field of desert wildflowers near dawn then drove further out into a low portion of the Colorado desert known as Pinto Basin, by the time we left that second stop she was a natural. She genuinely enjoyed our shoot and that must be some of the vibrancy you see in her images, photo shoots are such wonderful creative outlets and she is also a painter, so I think this was a natural extension of her creativity, almost from the beginning she was sharing ideas which made our shoots more like true collaborations.

Jude: And finally, when is your long awaited book Desert Nudes coming out?

David: I so wish I had an answer to this question, it spent 2 months with a graphic designer who has given up on the project, so now I have to start all over and find someone to help me put it together.

Most of my work can be seen on the following websites:

http://www.pbase.com/dwinge

http://dwingephotography.deviantart.com

David Winge interviewed by Chris St James on the highly regarded Univers d'Artistes

And finally: me climbing topless in protest at women not being permitted the same freedom as men to remove their tops. When it was published in the climbing press, this photograph caused nothing short of hysteria on the British climbing forums, with little boy climbers who probably hadn't shagged anything other than their hands for a very long time, publicly slagging off both me and my breasts in dozens and dozens of separate threads.

My Adventures In Cyberspace II, the second of a trilogy of novels inspired by my experiences on the net, is due for publication in September 2009...

The Sheffield Star - Today's Woman: Taboo Sex A Winner For Author Jude

2009-01-28T04:10:00.000-08:00

Photo by Steve Parkin. © Sheffield Newspapers

Last week I did the very first interview about my novels Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law and My Adventures in Cyberspace, for Sheffield Newspapers' Sheffield Star.

It's a feature length piece in the women's section, written by The Star's Jo Davison and it appears in today's edition (Wednesday 28th January) on sale throughout the Sheffield region. You can read a condensed version on The Star website: Today's Woman: Taboo sex a winner for author Jude

I thoroughly enjoyed the interview, it was a wonderful experience to be interviewed by such a lovely fellow lady writer.

The photographer, Steve Parkin, was an absolute hoot and we quite honestly had a whale of a time. He took photos in our lounge and also on the four poster bed which Brian made from found wood in our local woods. The bed is now covered in fluffy pink fairy lights so it all looked very glamorous.

Thankyou to Jo, Steve and The Sheffield Star for what was a really enjoyable experience.

Next week I'm interviewing photographer David Winge, whose beautiful photograph of model Nora Saenz forms the basis for the cover of Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, and whose book Desert Nudes is being published soon.

Above, David and model Amanda. © David Winge Photography

I'm tweeting chapters from my books on Twitter

2009-01-18T05:23:00.000-08:00

I'm still slightly confused about Twitter. In one of the many blog articles I've read about it, someone mentioned one of Twitter's assets being that because so many people don't understand it, it "keeps the riff raff out".

Well I am the riff raff, and this is exactly the side of Twitter that so far I'm not keen on. It seems to be populated by a plethora of self-congratulatory male peacocks smugly strutting through the matrix fanning their tails at one another.

However other parts of media reporting on Twitter are invaluable. On the AJGaza feed yesterday was a link to a YouTube with a tweet saying:

"doctor's tragedy caught on Israeli TV as three of his daughters were killed: http://tinyurl.com/8hhca8"

That story wasn't run on any of the terrestrial TV news channels here in the UK. So now I'm using Twitter to get news.

Finally, I can't really get excited and motivated about anything unless it's fun. So I've selected a chapter from my novel Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law and a chapter from my forthcoming novel My Adventures In Cyberspace, and am serialising each chapter in daily segments which fall within the 140 character limit on Twitter. As you can see from the sidebars of this blog, I've made widgets for these Twitter feeds so I can bung them on my blogs and main Fleur De Lys Publishing site. The daily segments run in order and appear at 8.30 every morning because I'm pre-scheduling them with TweetLater and cutting out the noise of multiple twittering by using TweetDeck.

Funnily enough, although Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law is a celebration of the sexuality of older women, it's proving to be popular amongst teenage girls. You can read the daily tweets from Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law here and from My Adventures In Cyberspace here.

My personal Twitter is here. Now that I've finished a "lively and fun" week of computer housekeeping in which I've uninstalled Vista and installed XP, Twitter will join forums as being a no-go area during work hours. Today's tweet is:

"DAY OH!" One of my fave bits of 60s animation. Speedy Gonzalez and Bugs Bunny doing the Banana Boat Song in the studio. http://bit.ly/H2k0

New Year's Day Address 2009

2008-12-31T14:49:00.000-08:00

My published and selling novel, on a shelf in my bookcase (click to enlarge to see some of my favourite books.)

A year ago, I was an unpublished author, still seeking an agent, but knowing I was likely to get published eventually, as one of the top agents in the country had told me that part of MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE were "brilliant." (As anyone in publishing is aware, reputable literary agents do not ever use the word "brilliant" about an author's writing unless they are serious.) As the comment was in a private email I've been advised not to publish the agency's name, which is the only reason I'm not telling you who it is. Why would I lie? There is no joy in deception, only personal misery.

A year on and I'm the director of Fleur De Lys Publishing Ltd, with our first title, Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, selling on Amazon, and as is standard with my work, polarising views.

MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE is already attracting pre-orders on Amazon and will be published late February.

I have concurrently started work on a new book, Christmas, which I intend to be even darker than MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE. Due to this workload I've had to reluctantly turn down several authors who, having seen what Fleur De Lys are doing, have asked us to consider their work for publication.

The new YouTube of me reading excerpts from Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law has attracted over 3,000 views in a month, and videos of my readings are being hosted on various other sites all over the world where they are attracting many thousands of views. Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law has been up to 16,000 in the Amazon charts 3 months before its official book launch in Spring 2009, and I'm already being asked to do more book signing and readings.

All this has been the result of my thinking positively and working hard. But of course some people, due to a fey terror of pursuing their own dreams, resort to belittling the achievements of others, even more cowardly when conducted wearing the brown paper bag of anonymity on their heads.

So for those of you little boys who have nothing better to do than register on Amazon and for the first time ever post a book review simply in order to desperately grasp at any old opportunity to shoot your load slagging off my work, here are a few hard facts to counter the floppy and lazy allegations made recently both on the net and in private anonymous hate mail (yes, people out there actually do care that much.)

Self-Publishing. Allegations that publishing your own work negates its value merely demonstrate a lack of knowledge and research. Here is a list of some authors who have published their own work:

James Joyce
Rudyard Kipling,
Edgar Allan Poe,
Virginia Woolf,
D. H. Lawrence,
E. E. Cummings,
Deepak Chopra,
Benjamin Franklin,
Stephen Crane,
Zane Grey,
Thomas Paine,
Ezra Pound,
Carl Sandburg,
George Bernard Shaw,
Upton Sinclair,
Gertrude Stein,
Henry David Thoreau,
Walt Whitman
Mark Twain.

Typos. Many bestsellers and award-winning novels contain typos, just as Oscar-winning films have little continuity errors in them which trainspotters love to categorise and compare.

It is pretty much standard for a publisher's first edition titles to contain at least a couple of typos and for the publisher to issue any number of revisions after the first print run. Bothering to post a "review" slagging off a book for having a couple of typos demonstrates that the "reviewer" is ignorant of standard procedure and merely has an axe to grind (not to mention too much time on their hands.)

Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, as can be expected, has a couple of typos that will be amended during the first revision within the next couple of weeks. Emailing a webmaster, publisher, blogger, whatever and pointing out errors or broken links is a far more constructive way to spend your time than to publicly ridicule the person or organisation for the mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. Especially a publisher publishing their first ever title by a debut author. In fact, I allocated three months during the Spring of 2008 especially to write a lightweight "test run" novel (Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law) on which to make my mistakes as a new publisher as I wanted any inevitable nOOb problems ironed out before publishing MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE.

Too much explicit sex. The clue is on the Amazon blurb and on the back cover where it says "sexually explicit".

Spelling mistakes. Typos aside, as far as we know there are no spelling mistakes in Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law. The character Matt speaks entirely in phonetic south Bradford dialect so when he says "abaht" that is not a spelling mistake. It is the word "about" spelt phonetically. This should be obvious to anyone with the most basic grasp of English.

The character Colin is a minor character and therefore less rounded than the major characters. He doesn't having any saving graces and is a complete cunt. As an Englishman, the fact that he pronounces his "ts" as a "d" reflects this. So, for example, during this exchange between Colin and Kate, there are no spelling mistakes:

Kate: Yeah, well, I was upset Colin. In case you didn't notice. I do love you, you know.
Colin: Diddo.

As well as being a cunt for replying "Diddo" he is also enunciating the word "Ditto" in cunt language. (Jesus it's not rocket science, this, is it?)

The sex didn't degrade women enough. We respectfully suggest you read Last Exit To Brooklyn. Or just fuck off. Take your pick.

Pages "missing" or "misaligned". There are no missing pages. In the first print run page 160 was out of sequence due to a mistake with my initial PDF submission. This was at the beginning of a chapter and so did not affect the text flow, it merely meant that Chapter 23 started on the left rather than the right page. The printer immediately amended this problem.

My name is Burbage Big Boy. I'm a climber and I hate you coz you're JCT and you took the piss out of boulderers for being gayers in your article Tits vs Homo-Eroticism at the crag published in our climbing Lads Mag, "High Mountain". And now you're a publisher and an author. Who do you think you are?

I'm the director of a publishing company and an author. I'm planning an erotic book entitled "MY ADVENTURES IN A TIGHT CRACK" just for boulderers.

Anyway, this is a meant to be a New Year's Day address.

I start 2009 by looking at my bookshelf.

And on that bookshelf is my book.

Not my critics'.

Me wearing vintage marbled-blue Raybans with my partner and editor, Brian "Kiss My Arse" Trevelyan, at Sheffield Gay Pride Festival, 2008.

New Year's Day Address 2009 at Jude Calvert-Toulmin personal blog

New Year's Day Address 2007: The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner

New Year's Day Address 2008

December 08 Newsletter

2008-12-19T08:46:00.001-08:00

The beautiful and very naughty Fleur De Lys PA, Honey Higginbotham, on her way to a swanky office Xmas party in Mayfair (not the official Fleur De Lys one, which is Jude and her mates down the local pub in Sheffield S8.)

The December 08 newsletter is online here for all the latest news.

Festive greeetings! :)

Live radio interview on Sheffield Live, 93.2 FM

2008-11-30T08:15:00.000-08:00

Back in February 2008 I was asked to do a live interview with Anita Guy from Shefffield Live, about my performances at Sheffield's premier open mic night, Words Aloud, and about why I wrote my debut novel, MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE. I also talk about forum addiction, where people get addicted to posting on internet forums, and why I no longer spend much time on forums.

I've edited the hour long show down to 19 minutes. It was my first ever radio interview and I can't wait to do more, I love radio.

Review of Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law

2008-11-25T04:35:00.000-08:00

You can buy Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law here on Amazon.

Above: The first delivery of my first title for Fleur De Lys Publishing,
Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law

Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law is on sale, it's selling, and it's just got its first review on Amazon. I will be reading an excerpt from the book tonight (Tuesday 25th November) at Sheffield's finest open mic night, Words Aloud at The Lescar, and signing copies purchased on the night.

Review from Amazon here.

This is a book which I would guess was written for women, by a woman. By which I mean to say that the author 'Julia' (not her real name, one presumes), probably tired of the tide of so-called erotica aimed at the male readership, giving a decidedly masculine view of sex and its attendant emotional satellites, has crafted a book which presents a realistic portrait of female (as well as male) sexual frustrations, leading to an unavoidable and achingly erotic collision between two of the protagonists, as their feelings for one another, fuelled by their trapped energies, leak, and then explode, into the open.

Initially, although the book is ostensibly written in the first person by 'Julia', we find ourselves looking through her Son-in-law, Alex's eyes. Indeed, the book gives us the opportunity to 'be' Alex, Julia and Julia's daughter (Alex's wife) Kate. This works very well, and the characters are believably and realistically drawn.

As the book delves, fairly early on, into quite explicit descriptions of sex, featuring the 50-something Julia, this may be off-putting to anyone who A. doesn't like graphic sex scenes or B. doesn't like the idea of 'old' people having sex. For the rest of us, this is a very funny, very erotic book which I am sure most people will find some degree of resonance with.

Far from being just a series of sex scenes hung on the loosest of plots (as with most male-oriented equivalents), MILSIL manages to walk the line between a tragi-comic look at the disintegration of a marriage (Alex and Kate) and the erotically charged development of a relationship (Alex and Julia).

Also drawn into the mix are the obnoxious Colin, habituee of London's fetish scene, with whom Kate is having an affair, and flaxen haired male model Matt (from 'Bratfud') whose pride in his Yorkshire heritage extends to his constant use of dialect words and phrases. The West Yorkshire speech of matt is well-rendered (it's my neck o' t'woods), and written phonetically in a similar fashion to Jeff Torrington's rendition of 60s Glasweigian in 'Swing Hammer, Swing!"

As to the sex scenes, well, all I can say is that they did it for me. So many writers are unable to describe sex as most of us know it, either presenting it as some ethereally transcendent experience, or as something almost brutish and atavistic. 'Julia' manages to describe sex which most of us would recognise, sometimes furtive, in cars and garden sheds, sometimes blissfully abandoned in sunlit bedrooms. It's often described by the characters using the f-word, which is about as offensive these days as 'bloody' was when I was a lad, but this in no way detracts from the real feelings that the lovers find for one another, despite their age difference. People say f***, even in their 50s, whether we approve or not.

I said this is aimed at women. Women of a certain age perhaps, yes (like 25 and upwards!). But I'm a man, and I loved it. I laughed out loud at parts of it (it's absolutely hysterical in places). I genuinely cared about the three main characters, and I defy any straight man to remain physically unaffected by the erotic charge which surfaces frequently throughout the book, like islands over a volcanic hotspot. It's like literary viagra.

Above all though, it's a story about people, not about sex. The people in it are real enough that I could recognise the characters in real individuals whom I've known or know now. It's unpretentious, easy reading and, unlike a lot of the 'chick-lit' brigade, it has a wider appeal than 20 and 30-something middle-class women. The character of Matt, despite his trade as a fashion model, is refreshingly straight, a blunt, intelligent northerner who is amused by middle-class pretensions and intolerant of snobbishness. I cheered when he appeared in the book, and loved the way his 'Yorkshireness' is presented, not for laughs, but as a subversion of the usual order.

At first, you think 'Oh dear, a Yorkshire stereotype' but then you realise Matt is fully aware of how people (including us as the reader) perceive him, and uses it to his advantage and amusement. Matt uses it entirely knowingly and with deliberate post-irony to undermine the prejudices and artifices which he frequently comes across. He's a bright lad, is Matt. Good on 'Julia' for creating a 'real' Yorkshireman.

Anyway, I wouldn't want to give out too many spoilers. Needless to say, MILSIL should appeal to the post-Bridget Jones readership who found that book a bit too twee and tame, and wished for a bit more naughtiness. It'll appeal as well as to anyone who might want to inject some zest into their relationship (perfect xmas present for your wife/husband/partner!). Oh, and if you're a connoisseur of pure erotica, you can always flick through the bits in between the sex scenes. Works for everyone.

Pearls Of Poison

2008-11-21T03:24:00.001-08:00

My beautiful PA, Honey Higginbotham, preparing to cut and paste some bitching.

There's a brand new section on the official Fleur De Lys Publishing website entitled "Pearls Of Poison."

This is the current content for your enjoyment. Hopefully as I become more and more successful leading to even more claws coming out and even more fur flying, we will have more content for you on a regular basis...

Pearls Of Poison.

Due to nothing other than sheer good fortune, I was born with brains, exterior beauty, talent and a stunning pair of tits.

This has led to my being the target of much jealousy over the years.

I learnt to ignore the spiteful barbs which occur with tedious regularity. Then I became a full time writer. Now, all insults are material and the best material goes into my books. My books are making money, which goes straight into my bank account, rather than the bank account of the insulter.

Here are some recent comments about me which have been repeated back to me, two from the last week alone!

"Jude's so pretty. She's got a lovely face. She's got such lovely bone structure as well. It's such a shame she's so fat."

Quote by: A woman who by her own admission hasn't had sex for a very long time.

"I've unsubscribed to that mailing list. It's filth. It uses the "F" word... disgusting. As for that PA, Honey whatever she's called. Jude hasn't got a PA. I know she hasn't. She hasn't, you know."

Quote by: A woman who by her own admission hasn't had sex for a very long time.

"She's got more chance of winning the lottery than getting any of her books published. She should do what other women her age do, get a nice little part time job in the Co-Op."

Quote by: A woman who by her own admission hasn't had sex for a very long time.

Are we seeing a pattern here? Is the cause of these women's bitterness actually that they need ten pints of Guinness and a good shag? When am I going to hear some insults made by women who are getting serviced regularly?

If you've witnessed someone insulting me, please send me the quote using the Contact link in the header. The most poisonous will be featured on Pearls Of Poison and may even make it into one of my books.

Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law on sale!

2008-11-15T06:18:00.000-08:00

Update Sunday 16th November: Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law has now shot up to 45,323 in the Amazon sales ranks (out of 3 million +) and it's only been on sale for a day.

My daughter Jodie, last week on a night out in Manchester. I'm proud of publishing my first novel. But not as proud as I am of my gorgeous children and grandson!

Finally, after four years of fairly constant struggle, self-doubt, panic, fear, determination, stubborness and dogged refusal to give in, my first novel is published. I've chosen to set up a publishing house to do it, because I believe that self-publishing and Print on Demand are revolutionising the publishing industry and that New Publishing, a phrase first coined by one of the gurus of the movement, Aaron Shepard, is here to stay.

You can buy Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law here for less than the price of a round of drinks in the pub, and you get free postage and packing as well. My Client Services Rep told me last week that the pre-orders considering the book hadn't even been released were staggering, which bodes well.There are over 3 million titles on Amazon and even before my book was available the pre-orders had shot it up to 250,000 in the rankings. Amazon rankings change by the hour so don't hold that much store by them. Basically, if the book gets in the top 1,000 through genuine sales, we've got something to celebrate. The best things in the life are always the result of the hardest work though...

The first page in the book is a specified dedication page so you can write a personal message when giving the book as a gift.

Here's Chapter 1:

My wife doesn’t understand me.

But my mother-in-law does.

My wife doesn’t want to fuck me.

But my mother-in-law does.

My wife is always off having ‘down time’ with her secret life.

My mother-in-law’s got a secret life too.

With me.

The book has been written as a literary alternative to Viagra (only much cheaper and works time and time again.) It's not a high-faluting arty- farty heavyweight book, it's easy to read and hopefully entertaining as well as arousing. If you order it from Amazon now you'll get it in plenty of time for Christmas. Anyone who has helped specifically with this book is thanked in the acknowledgements section.

1970s Custom Car Magazine Shots and Update

2008-11-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

Firstly, congratulations to Barack Obama. Let's hope this really is the dawning of a new era.

Secondly, we are busting a gut here at Fleur De Lys HQ to get Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law ready for sale. The files are now with the printers and as soon as the proof is approved then the book will go on sale on Amazon worldwide.

I know that many of you are impatient to get your hands on it because I'm answering texes and emails every day asking "When can I buy it?!"

I've just spoken to the printers and distributors and this will now be around the 20th November although you can place your orders now in plenty of time for Christmas!

As you can see from the recent comments sidebar on the right, one of my prospective readers has asked whether the book will make her horny or not. Well, my editor Brian and I really did our research in this department. After every new chapter was complete, he would lie on the bed and I would sit next to him wearing very unsexy clothes and monitoring his reaction with a clipboard and pen as he read. There wasn't one chapter when the clipboard didn't end up tossed aside on the floor...

As this isn't a formal editor/client situation, we didn't need to adopt traditional copy or proof editing procedures. We devised our own form of communication for editing which we both understood. As regards the erotic sections of the book, Brian devised a humorous rating procedure which he christened "Stubby ratings" - there are some illustrations and a short article about Stubby Ratings here.

The grades of Stubby rating are: Semi, Single Stubby, Double Stubby, Triple Stubby, Full Spurty and Spurty Rating of "11" (Probably not work safe. Unless your job is fun, like mine.)

Anyway, I'm aiming at my writing being responsible for thousands of babies being born. In fact once the book is shooting up the Amazon charts, I may include a page on the main Fleur De Lys site where readers can leave their messages of joy at imminent babies caused by my book. That's what I call job satisfaction.

Ooooh I promised readers some shots of me from a 1970s issue of Custom Car magazine, didn't I?

OK here they are...classy, eh? ;)

How New Publishing Led To Fleur De Lys Publishing Ltd

2008-10-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

As a rock climber, I would rather climb than talk about climbing. As a writer, I would rather write than talk about writing. As a publisher, I would rather spend hours in Adobe InDesign, typsetting, or hours in Photoshop, designing a book cover, or hours researching the fundamentals of running a small business, rather than talk about publishing.

So if you want to find out what's happening in the publishing industry, go to Publisher's Weekly (the hot topic at the trade shows has been Print on Demand.) I won't be endlessly droning on about publishing, or banging on about writing. I won't be griping about customers or publishing anyone's emails. I won't be bitching, sniping or sneering. I'll just be posting every couple of weeks about whatever fluffy little cloud is drifting across my horizon. Some of it will be rude. There will be swear words. Some of it will be completely irrelevant to "the publishing industry." In fact, the next blog entry on here will be some shots of me sprawled across the bonnet of some classic cars wearing a very short skirt, from a 1970s issue of Custom Car magazine.

However, as this is my inaugural and introductory post, I'll start with a bit of background.

The publishing industry is in the middle of a revolution. Old publishing is dying. New publishing is here to stay. Digital printing and Print on Demand (POD) are completely revolutionising the industry; machines are being installed on four continents as we speak which will allow customers to order any book online and choose how they want the book to look, and in minutes it will be printed and there for them to buy and hold and read. In fact some bookstores already have these ATM-like machines already installed...

For many years, the UK publishing industry has been dominated by a handful of large companies whose only concern is profitability, rather than quality. An author wanting to be published by one of these dinosaurs has to go through a literary agent.

Due to the fact that the agents have to sell the work they take on, quality is not important to them either, only marketability. This has led to many spurious submission hoaxes, where journalists from the broadsheets have submitted (with name and place changes only) best selling and Booker Prize winning books to dozens of agents who have then all flatly rejected them as being "not for us." My favourite is described in this article from The Times online, Booker winners need not apply. Top novels in disguise rejected by publishers in which the manuscript for V J Naipaul's 1971 Booker Prize winning novel In A Free State, is turned down by twenty agents and publishers.

This is due to the fact that agents and large publishers do not have a viable quality control system, because they don’t need one. The only books they want to deal with are ones which they know will sell, such as celeb bios or books from already marketable, known authors.

After submitting my debut novel, MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE to forty agents, I realised that my work was marketable enough to be viable for publication, as two agents asked for full manuscripts (agents request "fulls" very, very rarely.) One of the top agents in the country wrote to tell me that parts of the book were "brilliant". But, it wasn't for them. Then I realised that I was barking up the wrong tree trying to get an agent.

After having spent over a year researching how to get an agent and then trying to get one, I went back to the drawing board to do more research.

I discovered that all the large publishers do, apart from taking most of the book’s profits, is publish. That's because they are publishers. They do what it says on the tin. They are not marketing companies. So, unless you are already a superstar author like JK Rowling, they're not going to be sinking a great big wad of cash into publicising your work once it is published. They do not promote your book. That is up to the author.

So, I figured, what the fuck was I doing begging to be accepted by an agent who has no quality control system, who will take 15% of the book’s profits, and then sell my book to a publisher who will do no more than publish the book whilst taking most of the remaining profit. It simply isn’t good business sense.

And I am not writing books in order to skip down the garden singing "Tra la la I'm a writer doncha know" to the birds and bees. I am writing to get published, to get books in hands, by beds, on aeroplanes, by seas, on rockets, one day, long after I'm gone. I want my books to live. And that means business.

Then I realised that the entrepreneurs, the renegades, the cutting edge writers are forming their own small presses and publishing their own work via Print on Demand.

Many writers in the past have published their own work, here's some of the more well-known ones:

James Joyce
Rudyard Kipling,
Edgar Allan Poe,
Virginia Woolf,
D. H. Lawrence,
E. E. Cummings,
Deepak Chopra,
Benjamin Franklin,
Stephen Crane,
Zane Grey,
Thomas Paine,
Ezra Pound,
Carl Sandburg,
George Bernard Shaw,
Upton Sinclair,
Gertrude Stein,
Henry David Thoreau,
Walt Whitman
Mark Twain.

Yes please, I want to be in their gang.

When I say "self-publish" I am not talking about vanity presses, where you pay a stack of money to have a company like Authorhouse or Lulu publish your books. Vanity presses similarly do not have quality control systems; give them the money and they will publish any old shite.

When I talk about self-publishing companies, I mean proper independent publishing companies which are interested in quality as well as profitability.

Now, the nuts and bolts of setting up your own publishing company are very cheap nowadays; the expense comes from hiring graphic designers, photographers, cover artists, typesetters and marketing people. But as I’m already a reasonably experienced photographer with a degree in graphic design, learning new software (such as Adobe InDesign, for typesetting) is a passion of mine, and I poo self-publicity, I realised that for me, this is the right way forward.

Simultaneously to all this realisation and research, I noticed that the most popular of my performances on YouTube were the ones containing the word "sex" in the title. I also noticed that the people arriving on the personal blog I set up in 2006, Jude Calvert-Toulmin were doing so split 50/50 between googling my name and googling the key words mother in law son in law sex.

At the time, there were no articles about mother in law son in law sex on my blog, but the word "sex" had been mentioned a few times, and there was a separate article about my son-in-law's rock climbing abilities.

However, now I knew there was a market for the subject of sex between mothers-in-law and their sons-in-law.

So I thought, OK, I'm going to give the public what it wants, and knock off a book about this particular niche topic, and it can be the guinea pig for my new publishing company. I realised that I was bound to make mistakes, so I figured I would learn lessons with this new book which is not based on my life and isn’t my precious darling goo goo baby like MY ADVENTURES IN CYBERSPACE (MAIC).

And then I discovered that writing about something that isn’t so personal is actually a lot more enjoyable than wrenching my heart out as I have done with MAIC, which had me in fits of tears after writing several of its chapters.

In the space of a month, I had written 40,000 words of the new novel, Mother-in-Law, Son-in-Law, designed the cover and obtained permission from the Californian photographer David Winge to use one of his photographs on the cover. (I will be interviewing David for the blog in the near future.)

I finished writing the book in two months. Over the summer my partner and editor, Brian Trevelyan, has been editing the book, whilst I focused on forming Fleur De Lys Publishing Ltd, which has meant working fifteen hour days, every second of which has been gripping. Brian, incidentally, is also the assistant film programmer for the prestigious Kendal Mountain Film Festival and the up and coming Sheffield Adventure Film Festival.

So in the space of a few months, I've gone from enduring the joyless and mind-atrophying task of desperately seeking an agent, to being an excited, enthusiastic company director with one book about to go on sale on Amazon, and another one due for publication in Spring 2009.

I could not have done this without the encouragement and support of many different people, but the most thanks has to go to James Benstead of Tallis House, publishers for the estate of Booker long-listed author Michael de Larrabeiti. His help and encouragement have been pivotal to my having the courage to set up my own publishing company.

Thankyou James.

Recommended listening:

James Benstead interviewed by Rose de Larrabeiti about Print on Demand and New Publishing.

Recommended reading:

Aiming at Amazon by Aaron Shepard, originator of the term "New Publishing".
Print-On-Demand Book Publishing by Morris Rosenthal
Real World Adobe InDesign CS3 by Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner

2008-09-04T22:45:00.000-07:00

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