Sunday 7th October

I've been loading up the Ebay shop with stuff this weekend - mostly bookmarks, as I've got so many of them to upload for Xmas. If you're looking for stocking fillers, nip over is my tip, but don't despair if there's nothing there that catches your eye. I've a lot more to put on over the next 8 weeks or so!

Now just sit back and think of the obscenity of what I've just written. Take a look at the header of this post. It's the first week in October, and I'm loading stuff on for Christmas. .. actually I just checked, and it's not as obscene as I first thought, there are in fact 11 weeks left til Xmas, and of those 11 weeks, approximately 2 paydays, possibly 3. I can't say I've done much thinking about it personally, although I daresay I'll get round to it at some point, but I'd like to build up a bit of an Xmas nest egg by selling a good few - yep, you guessed it, bookmarks. Among other bits and bobs of course. Sainsbury's, my local supermarket, has started to load up it's shelves with all sorts of stuff - the usual giant tins of sweets, advent calendars, cards - just the non-essentials to start with. Well, of course, buy your advent calendar now, and there's every chance you'll loose it, and need to buy another.

I know that basically, personal economics now demand that you start your buying early. And no doubt, if enough money is sunk into the excess of the season, we may stave off public economic collapse for another few months. But boy, it does seem to get worse every year, with things appearing earlier and earlier - I always think of it as being daft and obscene, but of course it's not. Not really. If its not there early, you can't afford it, and so much of what we think of as being Christmas depends on the excess. It papers the cracks in our social fabric. It's like the annual jokes about the meaning of Christmas - indigestion and a good row. Papered over with another sherry mother, and fried Christmas pudding for Boxing Day breakfast.

You'll have to forgive my sourness. We've - that is to say, the family, have not had a good week, and to compound it, I couldn't possibly write why here. There must be millions of people who blog, thinking they're going to write about the reality of their lives, only to find that so many people are reading what they're writing that they can no longer write with the freedom that they originally intended. Alas that is the case here, but let's just leave it at the fact it hasn't been a good week.

What I can write about is the book that I sort of semi-reviewed last week, The Alton Gift, by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah Ross, although it's more likely to have been more the work of Ross than Bradley. See the post below if you want to fully get the drift of what I'm going on about, but essentially, I was talking about the problem of new writers taking over established series of books. Darkover - for this is a Darkover book, is beloved by many people who've been reading them for years - I don't have the date the first book was published at the tip of my fingers, but it's got to be 20 - 30 years at least, and Bradley died some time back. The latest book, published this year I believe, is the result of a collaboration between Bradley (who was notoriously protective of the Darkover oeuvre) and Ross, who's also been involved in writing other's in the series. It's pretty much the latest thing in publishing - the Dune series, written for years by Frank Herbert was taken on after his death by his son, Brian, and another writer with more actual writing experience.

I think that the fact that this appears to be the latest 'trend' in publishing says an awful lot about why it's happening. Firstly, it must be a disaster for a publisher who's counted on a banker of a book coming out say once every year to two years for the past twenty years to suddenly be faced with the loss of the income from that book. Anyone who loves books has to also be prepared to support the publishers who produce them, so long as they don't get too excessive about the prices that they charge. So yon publisher of course is going to look about him for someone to produce that new banker. If there are notes for a 'new' book, all well and good, you can put in a good chunk about blurb about that - it links in the new writer to the existing series. If you've got a family relationship, or a past collaboration to add to that chunk, again, all well and good, it's a peg to hang the change on.

But do we as readers actually know that what we're being told is the truth? It's not like the new Dune books are labelled by the paragraph - Herbert Snr, Herbert Jnr, Anderson (the new guy) and the same goes for the Darkover book. Every time I pick up one of these types of books I get the feeling that basically I'm being ripped off. I have nothing to depend on that what they're telling me about where the book came from is the truth.

And as I said in my earlier post, all I can actually go on in the end is whether the book itself is actually any good or not. And alas, I'm sorry to say that pretty much like the Dune books, The Alton Gift isn't a disaster, but my God it's poor by comparison.

So Assuming that Bradley left some kind of notes for the book, it's clear that she intended Domenic (the central character) to be a figure in the mould of Regis Hastur, and to have the same crisis of faith prior to assuming the position of Regent (do excuse me if you know nothing of Darkover - I'd skip this bit if I were you!) but the reality of what appears on the page is a pretty shallow echo of her normal sterling gift for characterisation. Appallingly worse is what happens to Marguerida, one of my all time favourite characters out of Darkover, who I have been left feeling has been hung out to dry! The betrayal of Marja, having to beg pardon for using her gift to the Comyn Council is appalling! Lou, creeping off to Nevarsin to spend his final years in retreat for using the Alton Gift - it just doesn't fit. I don't know, this could have course have been what Bradley intended, and my feeling is that if it was, she'd have handled it in a way to make it fit, and us her readers comfortable with the outcome. As it is, I'm left with a very sour taste in my mouth, and the wish that I'd never read it. And maybe that's what I need to remember, that I just shouldn't bother to buy these books. But there are masterpieces of people taking other's characters and working with them - The Wide Sargasso Sea for instance, and I read a book a good few years ago now, when someone (and I'm sorry to say I've forgotten who) had taken the heroine of Rebecca and written a follow up. It was terribly good. Mrs De Winter, I think it's called. But as I've no doubt you're saying to yourself as you read this (or at least I hope you are) are, but there you're dealing with classic works, fine fiction. Which is all very well, but I happen to like reading Dune and - for arguments sake, Exile's Song. I enjoy them just as much as I enjoy Jane Eyre, and Rebecca. I'm no literary snob, for heavens' sake I watch Neighbours. (And you should see me turn up my nose at EastEnders, now there's trash for you...) In particular, when it comes to so called good fiction, I regularly read and re-read the Sherlock Holmes stories. And one of my favourite thrillers of all time is The Woman in White. You can't beat it with a cup of tea, and a good storm going outside!

So anyhow, bookmarks. Shall I post a few photo's? After all peeps, we've all go stocking fillers and presents to buy in these next few 11 weeks!!! All of the below are on sale now, or going on sale over the next week.

This is a small pink and plum crackleglass beaded Shepherd's Crook bookmark!

This is a close up of the beaded tag of another - a pink glass lampworked bead (i.e., it's got glass flowers worked onto the surface of the bead), with a garnet crystal Swarovski heart hung pendant underneath.

And this one is quite similar, except it's a green lampworked bead, and a Swarovski heart in padparadsha. You can see how brilliant the Swarovski crystal is in this one, look at the reflected light!

This is the tag of blue crackleglass beads, with a silvertone butterfly charm hung underneath. If you flip the charm over, it has 'inspire' embossed on the other side.

This is a new bagcharm that's on sale - hematite charms, on three silver plated chains.