The only thing I love more than writing is wandering around bookshops, and the only thing I love more than wandering around bookshops is reading books. So it was only a matter of time before I launched a newsletter covering all those pursuits.
I originally envisaged Terry Freedman's Books Bulletin as simply a means of keeping anyone who was interested up-to-date with my book writing activities. However, I realised that it would also be a useful vehicle for sharing news of any interesting-sounding books I come across, and any interesting bookshops I wander around in.
It's going to be a monthly publication, at least initially. The first issue, which you can access by clicking on the picture at the top of this page, contains the following articles:
- Welcome to this Bulletin
- Review: Waterhouse on Newspaper Style
- Books I've come across
- Bookshops I like: Hatchards
- Progress report (about the book I'm working on)
The next issue will, I hope, include details of how to grab hold of a sample chapter of my (by then) completed book, and how to get the chance to have a free review copy.
If you'd like to subscribe to the Bulletin, please check the Privacy policy for information about how we treat your data. If you don't feel like reading that, the long and short of it is that we keep your data secure, we don't sell it or give it away, and we don't keep it longer than necessary. We don't go in for spam either. The signing up process involves confirming that you really do wish to receive the Bulletin, ie it's what is known as a 'double opt-in' process. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Here's the sign-up form for this newsletter: subscribe.
I am pretty sure that all this binge-watching and doom scrolling reduces the number of active brain cells.
I’ve been reading Phillipa K. Chong’s “Inside the Critics’ Circle”, in which she attempts to discover the process by which books get reviewed. It’s a very interesting read. I haven’t finished it yet, so am not in a position to review it as such, but I was struck by the extract cited here.
An article caught my eye recently. Entitled “The sneaky trick for solving problems without answering them”, Jacob Aron describes a mathematical approach to solving a publem without actually doing anything about it. What’s this got to do with creative writing?
Georges Perec famously wrote a novel without using the letter ‘e’. A cool literary trick, but what did it really signify?
In a couple of weeks’ time I shall be teaching a course called Creative Writing Using Constraints, at the City Lit in London. I felt that the blurb on the City Lit’s website was a bit mundane. So I got AI to write a better one.
Some years ago I stopped accepting work from editors who liked everything about my work apart from paying me.
Just in case I might get too complacent, a malignant Fate decreed that an article I’ve spent hours on has been rejected — by the person who commissioned it.