Quote for Sunday

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
- Steven Weinberg

500gb

Bought an external 500 GB hard drive, made by Western Digital Elements (£78 from Amazon UK), to back-up all my desktop files and provide extra storage for photos, music, and movies. So easy to install, with fast USB 2.0 connection to back of the computer, and it works perfectly straight from the box. Very pleased with this purchase.

Yarmouth

Here's a couple of photos from last Saturday afternoon in Yarmouth...

Writer's Market

With a blurb claiming it's an "essential new annual resource," Writer's Market UK 2008 edited by Michael Cady is a hefty paperback from David & Charles. The cover price of £12.99 includes a free 30-day trial subscription to www.writersmarket.co.uk but that might be worth looking into even if you don't buy the book.

The content starts with a series of articles for beginners and novice writers, covering many of the basics about contacting publishers, agents, selling your work and negotiating contracts, with key points, notable case studies, and helpful introductory advice highlighted as block quotes or panel inserts on nearly every page, which improves the impact and appearance of the book's standard two-column text layout. Everything from novels, journalism and poetry is briefly addressed by this comprehensive section, before the main directory listings of UK and Irish book publishers, European and international publishers, music, magazines, national and local newspapers, websites, pod-casters and (of course!) bloggers.

This directory section continues with broadcasting (BBC TV and radio and commercial channels), theatre, literary agencies and editorial services, plus various groups, clubs, and info about various reference or research organisations. You also get up-to-date details on grants, courses, lit prizes, festivals and conferences. All these entries have the required contact data, where appropriate, and there's plenty of useful insider remarks to provide a welcome guide to the aims or profile of publishers and editors, whether corporate professionals or independent/ small press amateurs.

If you can find something of your personal attachment to writing (as vocation, craft, profession, obsession, dream, prison, curse...) reflected in Peter Ackroyd's inspiring foreword, this book is definitely for you.