MACMILLAN AND AN ITALIAN ZOO

To be fair to Macmillan they have responded rapidly with information about Fire Bringer and Rizzoli, an imprint along with Fabri Editori in Italy. Perhaps they are picking up on some of the principles I am talking about, though it’s mostly due to the good offices of my very first and best editor, Rebecca Mcnally. The US have also asked if I will reconsider their ebook publishing Fire Bringer and The Sight, but I doubt it very much. Back in London the day is bright and crisp, but I’m missing Rome already. Yesterday, I went off piste and rather than consuming art in the Villa Borghese, strolled with my hostess’s family, Kate, Flora, Gironimo and Ileanna, through the great park. I didn’t know they had a Globe Theatre in Rome, but there it is, a copy of Sam Wannermaker’s Globe in London. ‘Il Signori Shakespere!”. Then we went to the zoo. It has a strange Nationalistic bias in terms of ‘Italian biodiversity’, rather than world biodiversity, and some of the animals, especially a sore footed giraffe, seemed not too well tended. But it is quite impressive, if you like zoos, and far larger than it seems at first. The finest encounter was with the two Hippos, because I have never got that close before. But zoos are necesarilly rather sad places, and divided by heavy metal bars in their water tanks, the great curly eyelashed killers seemed aching to be really side by side. They groaned, splashed and showed their teeth, to no avail. Still, on to great things this year, and I hope a healing of animals, books and people too. Keep remembering Carlos Casteneda, and the path of the heart. DCD