Happy Birthday to Us!

What better way to celebrate our monthly sun allowance by partying hard to mark the First Birthday of the Penguin Blog. I’m sure all your delicately sculpted cakes are winging their way to Cafe Penguin as I type, but in the meantime I’ve eaten most of a bag of Haribo Tangfastics to get the party started.

Here’s our year-long history in a nutshell of comments:

Lovely welcoming emails began immediately, from Paige Harrison’s "There is something very appropriate about welcoming you to our world. I recall as a seven year old how Penguin opening up a whole new vista," to Bloglily’s "Welcome! No need to be nervous. Book lovers are a courteous lot and this idea for a blog, one that gives readers a look at how things are organized behind the scenes, is a terrific one."

Stefani [sic] at Lawlady.com clearly wasn’t singing from the same hymn-sheet as the charming Bloglily, as two of her earliest comments had us dancing in glee, with "Tell me for instance what a proof is. Link me to proof links. Upload a picture of a proof so I can see it. Now, that was valuable and worth coming back to.  As it is… I still don’t understand proofs and I’m annoyed about that stupid fruit thing that didn’t interest me to begin with" and "This font is a little hard to read. The other font works better on my screen… By and large, do the people who work at your company enjoy their work, or does the company have a fairly high miserableness factor?"

Our regular commenters were firm favourites (mostly). John Gooley flatters with: "I’m enjoying this blog, and I’m sure it’ll just get better and better, and more successful, and then of course they won’t let the junior copywriter near it. So for the record, I’m campaigning for the junior copywriter to keep on doing such an excellent job" and neatly sums up our feelings to the occasional comment with "As HG Wells said, ‘No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft’." John Gooley, we salute you.

The strength of the Penguin brand didn’t always mean dry old literature, either. Regular commenter Arthur informs us: "Reading your blog has caused me to reminisce about ‘Dogtanian and the Muskehounds’, which has just turned up 110,000 hits when googled… The joy of a night shift." But mention of a "brand" got some folks’ hackles up: Old Fashioned Cynic wails, "’product’? It’s so depressing. I was once a reader who chose books, now I’m a consumer who is sold products." Yet another much-loved regular retorts on our behalf: "Wouldn’t it be nice if we were all independently wealthy, and could gather in drawing rooms in the middle of the afternoon to discuss works of art while we sip tea? As it is, we live in a  consumer economy, where the Mona Lisa is printed on coffee mugs and t-shirts, and books must have pretty covers to attract readers. Such is life ~ Art, whether the printed word or paint on a canvas, is a product. Andy Warhol figured this out a long time ago…" Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jennifer Jeffrey.

Web phrasing seems to be in its infancy, too. I was under the impression that IMHO stands for In My Humble Opinion, but Matthew da Silva lets fly in this unintentionally hilarious gripe against Bookslut: "IMHO it’s a shit blog." Kiss your mother with that mouth, Matthew? Another Matthew, Matthew Tiffany, shares a tendency to swallow what he’s really feeling, this time about Jeremy Ettinghausen’s proclamations of Future Books: "I think that’s 100% bullshit.  The future of literature is in the same place it has always been – those lines of text.  New, immersive, interactive – all fine and good, but don’t call it literature, and don’t call it reading." Let’s just call a spade a spade, eh?

I am proud to have offered spiritual guidance to Guy Parsons, who comforts my waking wee small hours with: "’It helps not to do something rubbish’ is now my new mantra." And Kittyolone queries the very nature of web fame with an anxious question on the Penguin Masterplan: "Does this now mean that the penguin staff will get a number one hit with a chav inspired single??"

A regular commenter Dean perhaps needs to switch his computer to the other side of his bed, so we might see a slightly more upbeat side to the "Happy Antipodean". Choice quotes include "Who gives a flying f**k what the Daily Mail thinks of Tarantino’s latest creation? The idea that violence in a film somehow promotes violence in society is just ludicrous", "The links to those pictures are bad or else there’s something wrong with the formatting. Neither of them display in my browser" and the iconically classic "I don’t see what’s so special about Helvetica, personally. Making Helvetica suddenly ‘iconic’ or ‘classic’ doesn’t do much for me. It’s a bit of a cop out, a lack of imagination disguised with glamour kitsch." Nice.

Alan Stewart praises us with his faint damnation, piercing our leathery hides with his darts of April Fool’s Day observation. "The trouble with this idea is that it isn’t an obvious April Fool, if that’s what it’s meant to be. The idea isn’t any dozier than lots of people writing a wiki-novel, and not much more so than DIY covers. A typical Penguin Blog idea, I’d say." Um. Thank you?

And finally… the battle continues. Katie comments on a Gore Porn blog post, saying, "I thought the Guardian article was very interesting, but highlights a very disturbing trend." It’s true, it’s true, but it’s not the torture fashion that keeps me up at night. Rather it’s the raft of lazy and opportunistic journalism that seems to be devouring the Guardian from within. Critical attacks on blurb writing, Apu from the Simpsons, failing to re-publish a hacked-up Jane Austen from an unsolicited submission, and the mainsteaming of Classics (how dare we? How dare we?) had Colin and myself gnashing at our inky keyboards with despair. My own post about CA Barron’s critiquing of blurbs received this comment from the author: "I have only just found what you said here about my Guardian piece on book jacket blurbs — and commented on it. Would be lovely if you’d respond…" Wading through tonnes of embittered commenters found this suggestion: "Please update your blog if you are reading this and tell us whether you like @Mnemonia’s idea of using extracts from the books themselves." The idea? Put extracts on the books. There simply aren’t words.

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented over the last year – all your words, positive or not, mean a great deal to us here, and are often incredibly helpful. Here’s looking forward to birthday number two.

Sam the Junior Copywriter

………………………………………………………………….

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

Beware of Toy Films, and Burning Greeks

Two questions for you, on my return from hols.

I spent one lovely week on the island of Kefalonia. Lovely, until my blissful slumber was broken one night by a panicked neighbour informing my bumbled head of the encroaching forest fire. Cracking my door open confirmed that yes, the giant flames did seem to be rather near, and it was time to enact the Flee in Panic Protocol (passport – check, snorkel: to swim to neighbouring island – check, book – aahhh…) and potentially fateful seconds were lost as I dithered over which title to take with me. Who hasn’t played the What Would You Save From Your Burning Home game? I normally opt for the generic "my books, please", little realising the impracticality of such a preference. With seven books by my side of the bed, and space for only one, I suddenly knew how Sophie felt. Harry Potter had served me well, but he was read – that hefty tome had become little more than a fireguard, for current purposes. Although I was in the middle of re-reading Valley of the Dolls, I abandoned Neely, Jennifer and Anne to whatever fiery fate may befall them, and it was eventually Cassandra, Rose and the Cottons that received the highest honour bestowable, I Capture the Castle being stuffed shaken-handedly into my backpack (snacks for the journey – check). So my first question is this: which one book from your own library would you save?

As is the holiday rule, one must cram as much fun and hedonism into your time off, right until you enter the office door. Abiding, as I must, by these Laws of Decadence, I was swept off to the cinema last night to watch Transformers. I wanted to see it. I chose the film. I need to emphasise this to fully demonstrate how my only bias was for the film.

I don’t know whether it was the sub-Dungeons & Dragons dialogue, or the fact that the "mind-blowing" SFX were previously exploited years ago by a car ad. I’m not sure whether it was Michael Bay‘s usual insistence on not being able to pick a genre for even a single scene, or the feeling that the final script had somehow been substituted by the original draft version. I can’t attest that the paint-by-numbers plotting (U.S. Defence refuse to accept the truth, teenagers actually know everything, shady government operatives lurk, maverick army captain who the film-makers even dared to give a new born baby to) or the pointless elongation of each and every scene didn’t curdle my mind a bit. All I know is that it’s a real treat to see Jar Jar Binks back in gainful employ. So my second question is this: what’s the most unforgivable book-to-film adaptation you’ve ever witnessed? I know somewhere, synapses will be fusing shut as I imply Transformers started as a book. But you know what I mean.

Sam the Junior Copywriter

………………………………………………………………….

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

 

Seconds out … Round One!

Yes, it was to the ICA on Thursday last week, where a trio of Penguins (a parcel, a colony, a huddle, a puddle?) came to see a much-touted encounter between philosophic pugilists John ‘Hammer’ Gray and Anthony ‘The Scalpel’ Grayling.

It was a restless crowd that gathered just before 7 PM, nervous that these two titans of thought might put on such a dazzling display of head-scratching nous that we’d all be sent home with fleas in our ears to bone up on our Bertrand Russell. The boys had been gathered together to resolve the banner question of the times: is atheism religion for a godless age? Naturally, they’d sworn an oath to take no prisoners.

With a brief warning to the audience to keep their bellows of support to a whispered minimum, the bell was rung and both men stepped out of their respective corners. And it was Gray who came out ontological fists flying. He delivered a terrific cross-cut that had atheism reeling: the thrust of his claim – that militant atheism is no more than Christianity defrocked, i.e. it’s the same pious naughty bits underneath (humanist man knows best, an apocalyptic belief in progress and achievable utopia, ends always justify the means) and that the Emperor should be really embarrassed by his new tailoring – was devastating and the liberal humanists cowered in horror: the project of the Enlightenment was doomed under Gray’s assault. Progress, he claimed, was at best cyclical: what moral and ethical habits we pick up we as often drop later.

But Grayling hit back. A left hook had Gray’s militant atheism on the ropes. With some fancy footwork, Grayling disputed that atheism could be militant (you either are an atheist or not, much like a stamp collector either collects stamps or is not a stamp collector). Grayling went on the back foot to concede that militant secularism was certainly worthy of discussion before going on to mount a robust defence of Enlightenment values, of progress and of how humankind crawls, slowly, half-blindly up a slope of achievement.

If Gray had given us darkness, then Grayling gave us light.

By this point the crowd had endured most of an hour of attack, defence, feint and counter attack. The philosophers were still in the match, politely dancing around one another’s arguments: the crowd was punch drunk.

The referee stepped in, took one look at the frazzle-eyed crowd and put an end to it. The philosophers had won the match.

As the dust settled on this encounter we realized that throughout proceedings God was the elephant in the room (I don’t mean that Ganesh, the Hindu God of Wisdom, was present, merely that God wasn’t mentioned once, which might have offended the big guy – if he existed, which science conclusively proved he doesn’t in the classic 1859 bout won by Charles Darwin on points).

John Gray’s Black Mass is out now and A. C. Grayling’s Towards the Light is out in September. I heartily recommend the first if you’re a glass half-empty person; if you prefer matters half-full then Grayling’s book should quench your philosophic thirst.

Colin Brush, Senior Copywriter

………………………………………………………………….

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

The Best Book Review Ever

This is not only one of the greatest bits of praise I’ve ever heard for a book, but also an entirely true story:

A man walks in to a restaurant. Shown to a smallish table, backing on to a busy crowd of happy diners, he tucks his napkin into his collar, orders a cheeseburger and fries, and settles into his new book, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. The time it takes to arrive flies by, such is his enjoyment of the tome. As is always necessary with this classic junk-food dish, the man tears his eyes briefly from the page to request ketchup from the waiter. Back in the story, he notices its delivery from the corner of his eye. Still reading, he shakes the bottle pre-serving himself – and shakes, and shakes – and begins to be distracted from his literary world by the faint sensation of something falling on his head, his shirt, his table… and as he looks over his shoulder to find the source of this disturbance, over the heads, shirts and table of the group behind him. It’s his ketchup. There was no lid on the bottle. Frightened for his dining life in the town, and pausing only to wipe the condiment from the pages of his treasured book, he leaves a hefty tip at the table, and scarpers.

Entirely true, but I’ll never reveal my sources (Captain).

Sam the Junior Copywriter

………………………………………………………………….

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

 

You can tell it’s the silly season …

… Because you have to put up with ridiculous pieces like the one I heard on the Today programme on BBC’s Radio 4, this morning, and which you can also read about at the Guardian. In summary, the short interview between John Humphrys and David Lassman – a frustrated, unpublished author and, more laudably, director of the Jane Austen festival in Bath – told us that eighteen publishers and agents received the first three chapters of Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which, according to Humphrys, Lassman had retyped, changing only a few names, retitling the books and then submitting them under the name Alison Laydee. Naturally, he received eighteen rejection letters, when he heard from anyone at all. Only one publisher – Jonathan Cape – took the trouble to write to him suggesting that he might want to consider something more original in future. In the Today programme piece, Penguin was singled out for a mention since we’d actually republished Pride and Prejudice a couple of months ago. The standard rejection letter he received said: ‘Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book First Impressions [Pride and Prejudice]. It seems like a really original and interesting read.’ You could perhaps concuss yourself on that boiler plate rejection. Lassman has said that his reasons for submitting these books was partly out of frustration at not getting his own – original – work published and partly wondering whether Austen’s work would be considered worthy of publication today.

I can’t begin to describe the ignorance of the way publishing works (not to mention the self-serving nature of the enterprise) displayed by this ‘deception’. Oh wait, yes I can. Let me count the ways that this ‘experiment’ fails to even address its own parameters:

1) The slush pile: Anyone who thinks this is read first by a decorated, badged and gunned Editor is deluding themselves. Editors have enough to do publishing books from their own stable of authors and reading manuscripts from agents to add to that stable to bother about those people who haven’t done the proper research i.e. if you’ve submittted your work to a major trade publisher that says it does not accept unsolicited submissions you’re going to get short shrift. So who does look at this stuff? Well, I hate to break it to you, but, if you’re lucky, an editorial assistant might glance at it between their long hours reading the stuff they get from agents and their own authors. Most likely, though, it will be looked at by someone doing a spot of work experience. Yes. A student or someone who has just graduated and who wants to know what it is like to work at a publisher. Familiarity with the works of Jane Austen is not an essential requirement for work experience – which leads to my next point.

2) No one got rich reinventing the wheel. Jane Austen was writing two hundred years ago; even then her work was rejected (most famously Pride and Prejudice – as First Impressions – was turned down by Thomas Cadell in London in November 1797 with the now infamous words ‘Declined by Return of Post’; in other words he hadn’t read it, much like, I suspect, his modern counterparts). Publishers of yesterday as well as today are trying to make money and one of the ways to do so is to publish books that they think people will buy. Mostly, this is guesswork – yet agents and editors often know a good thing when they see it (hence some of the stupendous advances we see once a bidding war erupts). Yesterday’s books are not a good bet. By that I mean books that are clearly not of this time. That is not to say that historical pastiches are not successful. The Quincunx, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Fingersmith and The Crimson Petal and the White are all books set in the past, but they could have never been published and almost certainly never even written then. So unless you’ve got a two-hundred-year-old manuscript you can prove is such, as a first-timer handing in something to a publisher that reads like it was written in the early nineteenth century you’ll find that it ain’t gonna cut much ice.

3) Typing up a classic. According to Humphrys Lassman typed it up. Really? Is this story from the last century? Why would you type this book up? You can cut and paste it from the Internet. This is barely relevant, but seems to suggest some graft on the prankster’s part. Well done, you wasted your own time as well as that of the publishers and agents.

4) Jokes. Does Lassman think publishers have got time to give a proper response to every prankster out there? Did you expect a ‘well done, good joke’? The sad truth is the slush pile is a place of last resort. There is very little good stuff in there because the good stuff – the stuff that will sell, we’re a business not a charity – has almost certainly been creamed off by agents. And with the chances of finding anything any good, is a publisher really going to waste any more time on someone that is already wasting their time?

5) ‘We wondered if Jane would find a publisher or agent if she were around today.’ This is the parameter Lassman set out to test, but what does it actually mean?  The only thing that matters to a publisher or agent is whether a book has a chance of selling – i.e. can they make money off it. So the first three chapters of a world-famous novel written two hundred years ago submitted to the slush pile under a nom de plume is hardly something that anyone is going to give a serious, proper response to. If the experiment was simply: will anyone notice if we submit a Jane Austen manuscript? I think the only proper response is: why should anyone care? And the sad truth of the matter is nobody did. Publishers are on the whole a polite bunch and so he got a polite reply. That is it.

And yet we get acres of news coverage and I get irritated enough to write the longest post I’ve ever written on this blog. Er. Yes, I can see that it is a joke. And, yes it is the silly season so the newsdesks need to fill the air and their columns with something. And yes it probably is sad that many people – like me – haven’t read Jane Austen. But what did anybody really expect?

Colin Brush, Senior Copywriter

………………………………………………………………….

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

Monday Night at the Movies

Last night saw the first event in our virtual campaign for the launch of William Gibson’s Spook Country – a screening of his 2001 film No Maps for These Territories. We had a gratifyingly full sim, some interesting discussion and all, I think, learned a little more about William Gibson and his writing. There is a full set of pictures here (thanks to Kronos Kikorian for these) and there will be another screening as part of the programme of activities on Sunday at 11am SLT. More info available by joining the Penguin Readers group…

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

…………………………………………………………………..

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

Horse play with Horse boy

It doesn’t happen very often, but every now and then a book comes along that sparks a little in-house tug-of-war. Being on the larger end of the publishing spectrum, Penguin has quite a few imprints regularly getting their feet wet in the pool of new writing talent, vying for the opportunity to break the Next Big Thing. And on rare occasions, editors from two Penguin imprints find themselves in the position of ‘rival suitor’, wooing the same author. For the most part, these tussles are of the civilized variety. On one occasion, two editors – equally keen and equally qualified to publish the book in question – resolved the issue by tossing a coin. In an admirable approximation of the British ‘stiff-upper-lip’, the victorious editor was duly congratulated by his disappointed rival. 

Earlier this year, a similar occasion arose where a proposal for a new book crossed the paths of two excited Penguin editors. The story was one-of-a-kind, utterly unique, and both editors instantly saw its commercial potential. Right now, the author – writer and human rights activist Rupert Isaacson – is riding a horse across Mongolia with his five-year-old autistic son, Rowan. This trip is the culmination of three years spent by the author and his wife watching their son ‘floating away from us… drifting off like smoke’, and trying to figure out how to ‘catch him, bring him back, connect with him, make him want to stay’. The answer came in the surprising form of a grumpy horse and has led to this amazing journey:

‘When Rowan first met Betsy, my neighbour’s quarter horse mare, he was behaving as autistically as ever. Shrieking, writhing on the ground, babbling incoherently, completely wrapped up in his own world. Betsy put her nose down on the ground in front of him and began to make small mouthing motions with her jaw. The gesture of submission in a horse herd. I used to train horses for a living and this behaviour was familiar to me – it’s what you look for when breaking a young horse to know that the beast has accepted you as the alpha. Yet Betsy was not my horse. In fact, she was a famously grumpy animal, and very much the alpha in her herd. Yet here she was spontaneously submitting to my son. ‘Do you want to get up?" I asked Rowan. ‘Up’ he shouted, the first direct answer to a direct question I had ever received. I had found my way into his world.

That same year, as part of my human rights work, I helped bring a group of Kalahari Bushmen over to the US. The tribe had been cleared off their land with much brutality by the Botswana government to make way for new diamond mines, and they’d asked my organization to help them come to the West to find a voice. During that crazy six-week journey across the US, Rowan came along for ten days. We had arranged for the bushmen – who have a strong tradition of healing through trance – to attend a meeting of tribal leaders and healers from all over the world. There were a number of shamans and medicine men there from different traditions: Native Americans, people from other parts of Africa, from the Amazon, the Arctic, Australia. Some of them worked on Rowan, and incredibly, some of his autistic symptoms began to reverse themselves. So much so, that I had to question my own sanity.

So – where in the world combines horses and shamanic healing at the centre of the culture? The answer: Mongolia.’

Contrary to popular belief, it is very rare for a book to be bought without the input of a veritable horde of people, from various departments, with varying motivations and axes to grind. Proposals such as this are circulated amongst the immediate editorial teams, passed on to sales, marketing, publicity, and finance people, and waved under the noses of the respective MDs, before a consensus is reached. Of course, in some cases the excitement of the submission can lead to this process being expedited in favour of a pre-emptive bid – to ward off potential rival publishers, and decrease the chances of an auction inflating the author’s advance. Add the element of cross-imprint jousting though, and the process can get a little more interesting.

On this occasion, The Horse Boy proposal was met with universal enthusiasm and the only detail to iron out was which editor would have all the Penguin eggs in his/her basket. And unlike the situation above, there was no tossing of coins but rather an hour-long, trans-Atlantic phone conversation between the author and one of the editors – who abandoned her dinner guests mid-Boeuf Bourguignon, in order to make the call.

As the Isaacsons make their way amongst the tribes of Mongolia, we hope to be able to fill you in on their progress, but in the meantime have a look here for more details.

Stephanie Collie, Viking Editorial Assistant

…………………………………………………………………..

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

Keeping Up Appearances

What with Bond, Gibson, and more October weather than you can shake a stick at, normal service has been a bit out of whack but will shortly be resumed any day now. In the meantime, lots of hot news from the top of the Penguin tree.

Last week had its own excitement in the form of the first ever Penguin Design Award. Crisps and pop were offered to the crowds that gathered for the prize-giving, with the final award going to Ara Youn for her frankly charming cover for Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. For her troubles, Ara received a £1,000 cash prize as well as a six-week work placement with our crack Art team, and she wrote later to say that we had made her feel warm heart. Likewise, Ara – we look forward to seeing your next beautiful piece. See here for more details about runners up and the whole Award, and here for some nice attention.

Elsewhere, the Guardian leaves Team Copywriter slackjawed with the stun-gun of more lazy journalism. It’s almost stream of consciousness, some days. CA Barron argues that publishers ought to have an honest star rating ("One star: pretty weak actually. Not sure why we bought this one") on the jacket, and should undersell, rather than oversell, with its blurb. While I entirely side with poor CA Barron on blurbs blowing the story of a book, the mind boggles at the naivety and tear-jerking block-headedness that such a suggestion seems to imply. It’s nigh-on impossible these days to remind people that the publishing houses that bring 99% of their favourite books to them are business, not Fforde-esque alternate world builders, scurrying around in labyrinthine libraries, searching for the perfect plot to pour, free and gratis, into the reader’s brain. Has CA Barron ever ventured into a modern bookshop? They’re pretty full of books, these days. If I picked up a handsome paperback in a 3 for 2 that advertised itself with "Two men meet in the North of England, a while ago, and may or may not make some odd things happen. The books continues for a while in this vein, then ends", I’m not sure I’d ever have had the chance to be quite so enamoured with Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and their misadventures. However, if CA Barron ever wishes to publish a big old mainstream paperback, I’ll be more than willing to put my star rating on the front of it.

And further teeth-gnashing as a Penguin ad gets turned down by London Underground.

Here’s the original:

And the version we ended up going with:

Any thoughts?

Sam the Junior Copywriter

…………………………………………………………………..

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

The name is Bond, James Bond…

Today is a momentous day for us here at Penguin Towers – today we announce to the world that BOND IS BACK.

It’s been a closely guarded secret here for a little while, but
thankfully the time has come that we can reveal to all that in May
2008, Penguin UK will be publishing the next literary instalment in the
glorious tradition of Ian Fleming’s most famous double 0 agent.

And so, we bring you DEVIL MAY CARE – the
new James Bond novel. Most excitingly of all – I can tell you now that
the author of this next instalment is one of the true greats of British
writing … Sebastian Faulks…

Famed for his "French Trilogy" (The Girl at the Lion D’Or, Birdsong, and Charlotte Gray), and more recently for Human Traces and Engleby
– Sebastian has for the last twenty years reached out to readers with
his masterful prose, his meticulous eye for detail and setting, and his
exceptional ability to make his characters transcend the limits of the
page. And now he is applying his style and skill to writing the next
chapter in the life of our favourite spy – Bond, James Bond.

Picking up exactly where Fleming left off, DEVIL MAY CARE
is set during the height of the Cold War, the action played out in
exotic locations across the world – and it seems Sebastian very much
enjoyed getting into the swing of things:

“In his house in Jamaica, Ian Fleming used to write a thousand words
in the morning, then go snorkelling, have a cocktail, lunch on the
terrace, more diving, another thousand words in late afternoon, then
more Martinis and glamorous women. In my house in London, I followed
this routine exactly, apart from the cocktails, the lunch and the
snorkelling.”

I can’t reveal too much about the book at this stage – you’ll have
to wait until next May I’m afraid – but believe me – it really will be
worth it. DEVIL MAY CARE has everything one could possibly
ask from a James Bond novel, everything one could possibly ask from
Sebastian Faulks’ writing, and most of all, it’s a bloody good
thriller. I promise you all – you’re in for a real treat.

For more information – please visit www.Penguin007.com

Alex Clarke – Senior Editor

…………………………………………………………………..

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use. If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing reportabuse@penguin.co.uk

……………………………………………………………………

In Cyberspace everyone can hear you scream

"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by
billions of legitimate operators, in every nation … A graphic
representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in
the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the
nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city
lights, receding."

In 1984 William Gibson invented the word cyberspace in his seminal novel Neuromancer
and today, nearly 25 years later, a growing and significant number of
people are spending increasing amounts of time and money inside
‘computer generated constructs’, whether they be perhaps the most
analogous to Gibson’s idea of cyberspace (Second Life), game-like
(World of Warcraft) or social (facebook).