It's random, Roderick, random... By Jan Needle
Isn't there something missing? I'm sure most of you reading this will be as relieved as I am that I'm not going to be scratching around for new things to say about Wild Wood. We had a wonderful launch party in the Slightly Foxed bookshop in Gloucester Road, another in the Albert Club in West Didsbury, and a third last night at the Conservative Club in Uppermill, near Oldham. Now, still slightly hung over from Ma Ferret's Special bitter, I intend to lie back and wait for the money to roll in. In case my fellow authors assume that that is just a normal part of writers' fantasy, let me tell you of something rather wonderful that happened today. I opened a letter and found a cheque from sales of my cut-down and edited version of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. (Pleased to see that my voice recognition engine did not put in a hyphen. Like me, it assumes that that unnecessary, and technically incorrect, punctuation mark was stuck in by a junior printer while Herman...