Have spent most of the day editing The Gifting and it seems to be flowing more easily. That will definitely be a temporary thing then!... I'm slowly coming nearer the end of Part Two as well, which is giving me a few flashes of hope in the darkness. And Lordy but how we need those. The end of the section I'm doing now though is just way too slow - I'm going to cut with the merciless determination of a surgeon on speed and shove in a bit of action instead. That'll up the drama factor - I hope ...

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If you’d just spent 48 hours in labour, you’d be understandably put out if the first thing someone said upon seeing your newly-delivered offspring was, ‘Shame about the hair, eh? And those features could do with a bit more definition, couldn’t they? I’ve never liked green eyes. And why, in the name of all that’s holy, have you gone for a yellow jumpsuit?’

Now, obviously, even if your ill-dressed progeny did happen to be genuinely unsightly, no one in their right mind would tell you so. Not unless they a) had some kind of death wish, b) were in no way attached to the current composition of their own face, or c) had recently ingested certain illegal substances known to eliminate all sense of personal inhibition, anyway. And while I understand that sitting at a desk and writing is a significantly less sweaty, bloody, painful and, let’s face it, messy activity than giving birth, the resultant piece of work is no less ‘your creation’ than the squalling infant might have been.


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Yes, today is officially the publication day for A Vengeful Longing, though it has been making discreet appearances in bookshops for about a week now.

I marked the occasion by making a nuisance of myself at Prospero's Books in Crouch End. They had some stock for me to sign and actually said they had put in another order as it had sold quite well so far. That's great news, of course, though I have a feeling I know every person who has bought a copy!

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Issue 4 Feb 08 of The Short Review is now available with reviews of:
WriteWords' member Sarah Salway's collection Leading the Dance from small, vibrant UK press Bluechrome;
Rebecca Barry's Later At the Bar - interconnected stories set in a small American town;
Comedian and writer Alexei Sayle's Barcelona Plates;
Courttia Newland's Music for the Off-Key: 12 Macabre Short Stories;
Highly-acclaimed Irish writer Roddy Doyle's first short fiction collection, The Deportees

as well as reviews of the Norton Book of Science Fiction, the Best American Mystery Stories of 2007, David Gaffney's second collection, Aromabingo, Ali Smith's classic collection, Other Stories and Other Stories, and our Valentine's special: My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro, edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.

The author interviews section of the site is blossoming too, with writers talking about their collections, how they came about, how it feels to know that people are reading your book, and how they approach the writing process.....

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In order to warn all authors who self publish about Diggory Press, I've decided to keep a blog about my action, along with 16 other authors, in taking Diggory Press to court.

Most of the other authors of The Seventeen, as we are known, have much worse stories to tell than me. However, I need to join in their action because Diggory Press, for about six months now, has not answered any of my emails or telephone calls. These emails and calls were to order 100 copies of my book from them. So responding to me would have put, I should think, some much needed cash in their pockets. So that's when alarm bells began to ring. What sort of company doesn't answer their voicemails or emails that are about sales? Only one, I thought, that's either going under, or else one that's fraudulent.

To learn more and keep up-to-date about the Diggory court case, please visit my blog at: http://gillharley.blogspot.com/

It may seem to outsiders pretty small potatoes, taking someone to court because they don't answer your emails. But the fact is, email is the only way that Diggory will accept any kind of contact at all with their authors. So by not replying to me over a long period, I had in effect no way to contact my publisher.

There is another issue. I got suckered in to their Platinum Package, where I paid them around £500 for a service in which they promised to get my books into the big book stores like Waterstones and Borders. Of course, they did no such thing. My books have not appeared in these stores, nor any others.

So this is the situation with me. But as The Seventeen, we have now filed our court papers and are now awaiting Diggory's response. In coming weeks, I'll add to this blog, as events to occur and when I have news to report.

Rejoice! Our email seems to be working. Good grief, Carruthers, break out the gin and book the dancing girls. Or nearest equivalent. After spending yet another hour on the phone to BT last night, they finally told poor Lord H that what had been happening was that the BT Yahoo account had unilaterally decided that everything sent into our inboxes was spam and was therefore delivering none of it. Now if only they’d thought to check that before … Still the people were very nice and hey it’s always good to talk. Ho ho ...

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Inspired in part by a post on a fellow writer's blog, I've reached the conclusion that I need to shuck off this bad habit I've fallen into - of seeing writing as yet another chore, a means to an end, when I used to enjoy it as an end in itself.

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Still no luck on BT mending my home email problem, sigh – no matter who we speak to! Poor Lord H spent 45 minutes on the phone with them before work this morning but they couldn’t solve it. They’re going to look at it today and ring us tonight to discuss the situation. Double sigh – don’t wait up then … Mind you, I doubt that huge numbers of publishers are frantically sending me offer emails or begging me for my next book, so I’m maintaining my inner calm. Ho ho ...

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I've decided to take myself in hand, because I have been drifting. I've been drifting away from my own writing, letting so many other things take over. And I don't mean editing The Short Review, because that is something I love, which involves reading short stories, reading reviews of short story collections, interviewing authors of short story collections - heaven, in other words.

No, what has been causing (or I should say, what I have been doing to cause) the drift is a building obsession with submissions. I have been spending more and more time looking for places to send stories, looking at details of competitions, sending stories off and then waiting, clicking, re-loading, emailing, to see if the results are in, to see if my story has been accepted. I keep a spreadsheet-like document to track all my submissions and also to remind myself of upcoming deadlines. But now I have been thinking of what I can write to submit to themed issues of magazines, which of my stories might be good to send to competitions...and I realised that I was trying to write FOR someone, FOR something. And I had completely lost that joyous feeling of writing just for me.

This actually has been put in perspective by the responses I have been getting by authors to my interview questions for The Short Review. .....

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All hands to the proverbial today as shed-loads of gubbins hit my desk in the last week before my holiday. Bloody hell, isn’t it always the way? It was just one thing after another – actually, no, that might have been nice. It was just the fact that everything came at once which was sending my blood pressure soaring. Big time ...

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