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Report Number 11
FEBRUARY 2004
Is this a “blog” and am I a “blogger”?
I ask because I seem to have been reading a lot
about “ordinary” people who write diaries and post them on the web.
Evidently this is “blogging” In a sense this is precisely what I’m doing
except that in my case the purpose of this web-site is essentially commercial. I
obviously hope these regular reports are interesting and amusing in the same way
as columns and diaries I write for the conventional press – the next of which
is a “Letter from Cornwall” in the April issue of BA’s in-flight magazine
“High Life” .But basically I hope the information in these reports and on
the rest of the site will either lead to new work or to enhancing what I’m
already doing. With my Village Cricket book and a new crime novel out in a few
weeks time I’m obviously hoping for ways of publicising them. Already, for
instance, I’m booked up for festivals in Swindon and here in Fowey as well as
a dinner hosted by a Nottingham bookshop and a lunch at Trent Bridge. None of
these came directly through the web-site but it does help, I think, if people
such as festival organisers have a reasonably comprehensive web-site to browse
through. The same applies to newspaper or magazine editors who might be thinking
of commissioning or writing something about the new ventures.
I mention this because although there is
obviously an element of ego-tripping in what I write here it is also supposed to
have a hard commercial purpose. It’s like freelance writing itself although I
find a disturbing number of people think one does it entirely for fun (which
sometimes seems to mean for free as well). As writers such as Doctor Johnson and
George Bernard Shaw were always insisting, you shouldn’t really write anything
for nothing.
Anyway it’s been a very strange time for my
wife, Penny, and myself. A few days ago her mother died (aged ninety-one but
still a traumatic event) and a friend of ours, walking home from dinner one
night, was set upon in the street a hundred yards or so away, was knocked out
and died in hospital a few days later. It was also the week of my sixtieth
birthday and Penny had organised a party at the local yacht club, where
coincidentally our dead friend had been dining with friends before the fatal
attack. After much thought we went ahead and I hope made the right decision. It
certainly seemed to be a cathartic occasion but I’m still not absolutely sure
we did the right thing.
It was salutary for a crime writer to have
something like this happen almost literally on his doorstep and obviously gave
pause for thought. I suppose the first question is whether it is right to write
murder stories for entertainment and profit. It is debatable. The
incident was deeply shocking and upsetting in real life and yet, in fiction, we
can seem to make light of such things. Another issue, interesting for a writer
and perhaps especially a crime writer was the nature of friendship and
community. One friend who spoke at the party has known me since we met at prep
school in 1952 ; other friendships were only a year or so old. It was
interesting to consider the relative values of these relationships – and good
material for future books. Present ones too because in so far as “Death and
the Visiting Fellow”, the next whodunit, is “about” anything it is about
the nature of longstanding friendship. Is it always what it seems? Is longevity
better than novelty? Discuss!
Most of my time recently has been a struggle to
finish the next whodunit and to organise new projects with publishers. I had a
fascinating day in Oxford with a publisher friend. We were reading through
letters written by a former tutor of mine which
are now in the archives at the Bodleian Library and Balliol and Merton. The
tutor, who died, a few years ago became a close friend and wrote wonderful and
voluminous letters. Naturally they were private at the time though I often
thought he had an eye open for eventual publication. Reading through them, some
of them in the Bodleian written to me more than thirty years ago, made me think
even more about the nature of friendship.
And “blogging” too!
Tim Heald
February 2004
NB Doctor Tudor Cornwall, the central character in
"Death and the Visiting Fellow", mentioned above, is introduced
in Tim's recent short story reproduced here in full: "Crime in Store"
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