‘Deranged’, ‘unhinged’, ‘a rant’, some of the comments on posts, but only some. Actually, I may be ranting about injustice, and the huge harm done to an author, a voice, and an individual, but the facts are all absolutely true, and I think I’m very sane! The irony is that the hits go up massively, when I start to rant, or tell that real and adult human story. That fights against the other elements of flapping Phoenix Ark, like Dragon Post, or what we want to get out there, or would like in terms of writers’ and artists’ involvement. Tis a strange and mysterious world.
Category Archives: Publishing
THE LOST AMERICAN?
What is the American voice? Is it something calling out of Last of the Mohicans? Some spirit drifting between those great cities, and the giant open spaces, the high wheat plains of modern America? A little idea formed today, perhaps out of my own troubles, and need to connect again, that there’s some urgent debate to be had about what it really is to be American, in 2010.
You cannot define a country by an individual, turn an individual into a cliché of a Nation. Yet Britain and America are clearly ‘divided by that common langauge’, and often don’t seem to understand each other. PJ O’Rourke said yesterday that the Republican backlash is because to be dictated to by any government is not ‘the American Way’. I wonder what he would have thought of a writer being dictated to by his own American publisher. When I travelled though, and toured in schools, or at signings, met such warm people, there was often a sense of Americans being lost. Of unique lives becoming swallowed in the vastness, the shiny, commercially demotic pace of it all, and almost some innocence or immaturity, needing to reach out and find its parent.
Was it reaching out, when the Twin Towers fell, in the modern confusion about what is real, and what a sequence out of Godzilla, or some monstrous global fantasy? Or in the signs that came up on the internet, ‘Sorry World’, during doubtful elections, no longer so filled with doubt? Or is there some far deeper lack? Something essentially cultural, something being missed in the American Soul, in its widest sense, and equally perhaps around the World. Perhaps we are all and always a little lost, in the face of existence, and the human condition. I do not think many Europeans understand the definitions of the Republican-Democratic divide though, and with that emphasis on the Bill of Rights, and Founding Fathers, as if a country is still fighting the American Revolution.
That is what flutters in those military banners, over so many homes, what stiffens the back in School-Time allegiances to the Flag, something we do not especially understand here, fearing a kind of cultural brainwashing. So often the tendency becomes not One World, if such a thing is possible, but ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, as it did at my own American publisher, and coming out of a Second War tradition, for me, isolationism is a great country’s worst instinct, Roosevelt its greatest voice. It’s flip side is that, while being so caught between the highest, most innocent idealisms, and real hardball, Americans believe the propaganda that says ‘try to make the World American’, and it will all be ok. ‘Job Done’. ‘Mission Accomplished’. Mission Impossible, perhaps?
The idiot always says ‘we bailed you guys out’, yet the cynic would do well to read the sadness and cultural mishaps of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American. America is a land of aggressive freedoms, energy, law, business, often hugely appealing to guilty Europeans, and has defined the modern world, in part because its driving spirit has been made by immigration from right across the world too. Or is that confusing America with New York, a land unto itself? Perhaps it was the sadness of so many of those Europeans, their quest for real freedom, that caused a kind of instant forgetting, the quickest desire to ‘move on’, and close a door fast on what is complicated, or even a truly original voice in the world. It’s why, for all our supposed ‘rights’, History taught in schools as ‘Social Studies’ in America, is the wrong approach. History is not there just to justify a present social model, but like literature, something independent, that contains the jewels of freedom and higher truth, beyond instant culture. In writing there, certainly storytelling, there is a tendency to encourage ‘World Building’ too, like a disconnected computer game, that does not breath in the real significance of cultural or imaginative archetypes, with enough depth. History is not just there to prove ‘we’ve never had it so good’, but an emotional, intellectual and imaginative in-breathing of the vast sweep of Man and Civilisations, out of which America was ultimately born too. That is real cultural depth.
So we look at America, often longingly, or out of a necessity of world capitalism, yet wonder why there were riots in New York, at the release of the newest PlayStation, and sense there’s an older, subtler consciousness in Europe, that needs to be heard in really linking global cultures, without fear or favour. We are shocked when we hear only 97% of Americans have passports, yet, in a shrinking world, know that how we travel is also how we can lose cultures to sameness. Is it geography, history, politics, or the stereotypes we carry in our own heads? That I carry, too much out of the pages of books: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Atticus Finch. Captain Ahab. Lee Scorsby. Colman Silk. Now I also carry the real people I got so close to in New York, and who did such unnecessary harm. But, even in a novel, a character only lives within the culture he or she can encompass, and really understand, or from which he or she is ultimately alienated. DCD
Filed under America and the UK, Books, Community, Publishing
A LETTER TO THE US SUPREME COURT!
Dear Sir/Madam,
it may seem absurd that an author could post a letter to the highest US Court, especially since I am not an American Citizen, and I have no doubt it will never be read by any of you. But in Britain we not only provided the model for your own justice system, but, like the world, have followed the battles and arguments of your countrymen, and been profoundly affected by them too. We all know the ironies of justice that has to be paid for, especially 3000 miles away, and the truth is I could not afford to sue the publisher I was trying to work with in New York, who have, over a three-year period, stripped away my real good name, my livelihood and pretty much everything a human being holds dear. I am sure that if this did come to a real trial, Abrams could say many negative things against me. The first would be the ‘hundreds of emails’ I sent. The second would be my clear loss of balance, indeed my fury, in relation to a prominent employee, I loved, and then trusted as a friend, after a relationship over a two-year period. But that loss of balance was two years ago, and unless she, or Abrams, were willing to judge that matter in a court of law itself, I submit they had no right legally to let it affect a prominent writer, under contract for three novels. The implicit threat of that was one of the causes of the crisis in the first place.
Though there were many justifications for my loss of balance, especially the selfish and passive aggressive behaviour of an employee who, at every turn, seems to have set out to harm, no one was harmed but me, and I not only acted to allay their professional fears, but to make peace, or openly withdraw. I think a conspiracy then developed inside a firm, for the benefit of employees alone, which drove me towards breakdown, made it almost impossible to work, and was specifically because a department wanted it kept secret from their own CEO. Open working dialogue was throttled, promises made and broken, working time completely disrespected, calls made that lost me an agent, and principles of their own written contracts abandoned too. It specifically stated that in a second book contract, on a novel called the Pimpernels, there is a 16 month period since delivery, which would allow me to force them to publish, or walk away with the advance. I used that only to make it clear how wrong I think they became in handling me, especially in threatening negativity in the first place, over something they would not resolve, or let me resolve. Since I had been with a firm seven years, was in the middle of another book, my career was really taking off in America, and I had asked for a different energy on a short series of much lighter novels, they knew I never wanted to walk away. Not to mention having to deal with the reason for that departure and any potential ‘scandal’. In the end, they just tried to dump three books, and four years work, despite first promising the next book would be ‘a big one’ for me. Even the CEO was ‘appalled’ with the time involved, but the situation became so onerous and negative, out of that supposedly ‘unresolvable’ situation with a senior employee, although I tried several times for resolution, and which directly affected my entire future with Abrams, it was creatively and personally enormously harmful. I won several of these points, in battling with Abrams for a year, even as I was trying to finish a book called Scream of the White Bear, but in the long run the harm and the injustice were too great to stomach, especially involving another extraordinary personal situation, that I suggest no human law can judge as true or false, and, in disgust, I walked away. But I will assert the main points of my ‘case’ here, if nothing else for the benefit of writers who have been in a similar situation. I persist in my call for a publishing ombudsman here and in America. I think if I could afford to go to law, afford in every sense, and I would have to represent myself, I might win considerable damages, not to mention supporting the most fundamental principles involved, in both our legal systems. The salient points are as follows:
1) Abrams, or Amulet, believed it had a right to judge a personal situation, but even in an enquiry I later forced, refused the most basic principles of dialogue, any right to hear ‘accusations’, or any real standards of objectivity. Their employee had behaved extremely irrationally, especially in calling a prominent author ‘evil’, after her own abuses, and they also had a duty of care to my career as a major firm representative, who has the power to commission books inside a firm. It was an attack on principles of freedom of speech too, and done at the heart of a major New York publisher.
2) Abrams also attacked my professional reputation, when its CEO informed me ‘nobody will work with you’. Every experience of working with me, over ten years, before a personal relationship did such harm, showed how dedicated, passionate and in fact generous I have been. My own publisher had told me I was ‘loved at Abrams’. The only person who was half ‘working’ with me was my own editor, who already proved that she had lost her objectivity, because of an obsessive ownership of ‘her’ publishing list, and because of her intimate alliance with my ex at Abrams, and her own personal issues. Months before, that had been writ large when she warned me ‘we will protect our girl’, before it began to come into the open, and then their bullying and negativity began. They had no right to tell me ‘they were willing to bring happier memories into the future’, only if I ‘behaved’ or shut up, since we were under contract, and when my ex’s behaviour had been so harmful to my own happy memories, and working comfort, in a situation that had always mixed both personal and professional. Despite ‘owning’ the author’s work, not once did editors act to protect that work either, past work, or a 12 year career.
3) The proof that a situation they claimed ‘had nothing to do with my books’ had everything to do with them is huge, and they know it. First my own publisher bent over backwards to appear impartial, yet did everything for that employee alone, not this author, supporting her side of the story entirely, even though they knew me personally. Secondly, a firm started putting undiscussed ‘Satelite Tours’ in a catalogue, implying, because of what had happened, and which they would not resolve, I could never tour in the States with that firm again. So, while owning my time, work and in part reputation, they directly attacked the ability to promote myself properly, and so my entire future livelihood and good name. When I had placed myself in the wrong by taking all the blame, they effectively held my life and career to ransom, and since it involved love, and humiliating circumstances, in the most brutal and ruthless way. As well as an attack on freedom of speech, it was also an attack on the most basic right to earn.
3) Because my ex refused to allow any professional peace when I had to apologise, disgracefully I think, considering how she behaved personally and professionally, and so helping to destroy trust there, a firm left an effective and potentially ‘criminal’ stalking charge there, for seven months. That itself was dishonest, because it did not reflect why I had ‘threatened’ an employee with writing to their CEO, or how and why it all really happened. At first they tried to avoid it, or brush it under the carpet, despite trying to keep me ‘in the wrong’ later, but they could see directly how it was harming me emotionally, and commented on it too. Yet because of the internal politics of the situation, with their trying to keep that secret for themselves alone, they also let it affect all their working responses. When an ‘enquiry’ came, they also distorted what I was saying, pretending it had much to do by then with an employee alone, which it didn’t. For me it was literally crippling, like being imprisoned emotionally, without trial, in the very place I had to try to function, and also an attack on the principle of no destructive accusations, without any allowed defence. Basically the most essential principles any real court must abide by, and with the depth of feeling here, but the constant emotional exposure too, it constituted a kind of human evil, with that time and hurt involved.
4) Abrams now refuses any dialogue, even though they publish two of my novels. How can I defend and promote my own published work in that situation, so it is a further attack on my livelihood and fan base. It also continues the negative attack on me, in an industry dominated by rumour and back room deals, and I suggest it is a purely legal ploy. Many times I tried to get to a peace, and the right treatment of the work they bought, claimed to admire, and so abused, and the harm it has done to entire career, not to mention the stories my fans and I believe in, is just staggering.
In conclusion, I wonder what happens in America, the land of the ‘free’, when a case can develop, especially in the publishing industry, that attacks freedom of speech, the right to earn, and basic principles of self-defence. One that also involves potential conspiracy and repudiation of contracts, itself defendable in seeking damages, and which brought an author to the very edge, and nearly destroyed him. I have not investigated, but I think it may be the only publishing case in history where a publishing firm, amid its bullying and threats, attempted to engineer a forced ‘agreement’ to publish a novel with no contact with the author! In a land that makes much of constitutional Rights, it was absurd, repudiatory and ultimately Kafkaesque. Perhaps the key is America believes in rights for itself, but nobody else. One of the reasons for the initial intensity, anger and distress with an ex was her own political fears, her terror of exposure inside a firm, backed by some clearly explainable life fears, out of her character and personal history, but her simultaneous abuse of basic human loyalties and respects too. I could deliver an eloquent broadside too, about what an utter disgrace it was in disrespecting the most basic artistic process. I am still staggered that people I knew and cared about could do that to any human being, or any author, but that a prominent American publishing firm could try to back it up, is appalling. It destroyed the values and insights in my own novels. These are in part my personal human responses, which courts can’t really judge, but by principles in law too, Abrams I believe were and are fundamentally wrong. Milton turned to self publishing, when he saw the politics of his time was destroying freedom of speech, but in a situation where we are not talking political tracts, but ‘children’s stories’, although with a very wide scope, it is truly extraordinary. You were once a nation that believed in the little guy, the individual against the machine, but if this case is possible, Corporate America is becoming a scandal in the world. In Fire Bringer, The Sight and Fell, not only is there a call for love, but loyalty and justice too. I say this at the risk of being sued myself, but if Abrams have anything to say in their defence, they can write to me here, and I will publish it too.
Yours Sincerely,
David Clement-Davies
Filed under America and the UK, Publishing
FACEBOOK, WORDPRESS AND ‘PUBLISHING’
The problem with clever links between WordPress and engines like Facebook is that it publishes the blemishes, too. So it’s a little horrifying to see experiments or drafts suddenly pasted to Facebook, in a welter of new posts, as if authors didn’t have anything better to do! In fact, Phoenix doubt a ‘social networking site’ is quite the right place to talk about books themselves, but you never know. People might stop looking in the mirror of their own lives and take a real look at one another again, off the internet!
Filed under Publishing
READER POWER?
Is it true that the Harry Potter phenomenon really began by word of mouth and in schools, or was it carefully guided by the cleverness of the Bloomsbury marketing campain, and their partner publishers? Fans just care about the stories, quite rightly, not how they get out there, but maybe word of mouth can really produce some ‘Dragon power’, with Dragon Post. That’s up to you, and if you like it, or think others would, but at least you’ll know you will have been here on the ground, when it all began. Click
Filed under Childrens Books, Publishing
Protected: FIGES, WRITING REPUTATIONS AND CYBERSPACE
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Filed under Publishing
Protected: FRANZEN, FREEDOM, AND PUBLISHING SCANDALS
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Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
PHOENIX ARK ‘YOUNG POETS COMPETITION’
ANNOUNCING THE 1ST PHOENIX ARK YOUNG POET’S COMPETITION
Yesterday saw the launch of a new poetry competition. The age range is 13 to 17, for original poetry on the subject of ‘Man and Nature’, with the general theme of expressing thoughts and feelings about Humanity, and the challenges of the modern world. Entries should be accompanied by your Full Name, Age, and Contact Mailing Address, preferably a School Address. The idea came out of a worrying chance comment on a British TV programme by a highly intelligent boy, which suggested how frightened or depressed he and many young people can be about growing up in today’s world, with all the weight and guilt of adult and media concerns about pollution, the environment, and Global Warming. Though we must be aware of our world, that’s a worrying trend in itself, because it seemed to block his own joy and confidence in being alive. Or maybe worrying is the wrong word, if it’s true of many younger people and is naturally expressed in their art. Don’t be dictated by a title too much though, because great poetry can be serious, funny, didactic, or anything you like. The key is using ‘Man and Nature’ as a guide to fire your imaginations, find ‘the right words, in the right order’ and your own original, poetic voice. We want to see your feeling for nature, and your thoughts on Mankind. The winner and runner up will be published online, here, in The Poets Sweatshop, with a chance for formal publication in any future anthology, though that is yet to be decided. They will also receive signed copies of one of the founder’s novels, and a Phoenix Ark personal letter of commendation. School classes are very welcome to contribute in groups and entries must be submitted direct to the blog, by the closing date of December 22nd 2010. The publisher regrets that no direct correspondence can be entered into regarding submitted work, and the decision of the judges is final. The authors retain full copyright in their material.
First published September 28th 2010
Filed under Poetry, Publishing
Cheering us on!
‘Picked up The Sight in 7th grade about 8 years or so ago and it’s been my most prized book out of all the books I own. Fell was just as great. Firebringer is another one that is beautifully written and also graces my shelves. I was extremely disappointed when Scream of the White Bears wasn’t released in the U.S. It was the book that I was most looking forward to reading. I hope it gets the release in the U.S. that it deserves. I’ll keep checking back for news. Keep on writing this wonderful world. One that’s kept me enthralled for years.’ ~Buwie
It makes such a difference to hear. It may be a while to get my writing life back, after the two-year Abrams scandal, and give myself and other Phoenix authors the very best shot at publication, so doing what we do best, being allowed to write and create. But I’m sorry for disappointing, please hang in there, and help to make this your publisher too, by spreading the word! Thank you for taking the time to write. DCD
Explaining to younger readers: For anyone I’ve dissapointed in cancelling Scream originally, because books seem to magically appear in shops, perhaps Phoenix should try to explain. Writers too have to eat and survive, and apart from the writing time, to publish independently means getting the best chance with reps, who sell books, and with shops, who work on long time frames for orders, as shops do with any ‘product’. We still believe dedicated writers are far more than just products, and should be treated as such, which is why we have broken away from the often cynical giants like Abrams and Amulet, though that is a very particular story.
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story, Young Adult
Headings…
We’re not sure we like the new logo, now fully and ‘professionally’ set in the frame, but we would love to know your thoughts. As, if it interests, we want to create a separate page ‘forum’ for thoughts on Dragon Post, as it unfolds, the whole publisher’s style, and reactions to coming Imprint designs, for Wildcall and Thumbmarks too. Be frank, be critical, be supportive, be whatever you like, though we can’t promise to publish comments. As for different age-range story excerpts up online, The Poet’s Sweatshop is not really for younger readers, though with everything thrown at us nowadays, we believe people mostly read or absorb what they like, and are sure can cope with the meaning of words on a page. In terms of spelling, some don’t realise different spellings in the US and UK. The excerpt from Scream of the White Bears is is in US spelling, other work in British spelling. As for Dragon Post, you must forgive gruff screeds about copyright, below a free story, but it’s standard form and we haven’t worked out the style and size yet! It’s not to put people off, just to make it clear a writer would love to hear from you, but doesn’t want any lines confused, as he works on it. The first little change is that it’s not right an egg-box is delivered from Phoenix Ark. The real publisher is the publisher, the world inside a book, it’s own. So…how about Curly Tail Press? The next instalment rather depends on what the weather’s like in
Filed under Childrens Books, Publishing, The Phoenix Story
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