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Boy, does Leonard Cohen know how to tear the heart strings. “It begins with your family, but then it comes down to your soul”, “I have tried in my way to be free”, “The lovers will rise up, and the mountains touch the ground”, “Oppressed by the figures of beauty” “So long, Mary Anne”! If anyone stumbles on Phoenix Ark, in the mad maelstrom of the net, you’re very welcome. I’ve thought of a new slogan, “telling stories, not just selling stories”. Well, maybe not. But Happy Christmas, or whatever, especially to anyone lost or hurt, frightened, confused, browbeaten, or alone, young and old. You really aren’t alone, others have been there, across the vast, mysterious sweep of time and existence, so never, ever give up on you. It’s only about connection, and knowing the light again, the light deep in everyone, and the astounding power of consciousness and the whole self. The ones who make fear are in the wrong, who disconnect, or swap humanity for politics or power, and everything we do is part of making meaning. “And who, shall I say, is calling?!” Leonard, of course, via a fluttering Phoenix.

Can a writer really build a publisher in front of your eyes, fight back for authors, and create a free novel, as it’s written?! Well, Dragon in the Post has a new cover, click the top right page, and so do some of the books in our Wildcall and Thumbmarks catalogues. But where will the Phoenix Ark story go – down the drain, or to the highest turrets of Pendolis?

I’m concerned some blog followers might think some pieces here are just about personal issues, or personal problems. It has certainly been a problem coping with something so personal, but the professional is far more important, especially in writing about the publishing industry, storytelling and authors. I’ve met many editors who show an extraordinary arrogance, and this is most certainly a case in point. In the UK a publisher long ago shut a door, after a department had moved jobs, and then told me ‘there was no market for animal fantasy’. It was complete nonsense, and Fell went on to be a small best seller in America, and sold here too. It is partly why having to face that attitude again, but with people I knew so personally, became appalling. The things I believe were specifically wrong though were virtually disallowing me to represent my own work properly, entirely for the comfort of someone else, allowing a situation to develop, seemingly unresolvable, that totally inhibited real editor-author honesty, and holding up another book for years, that was part of my potential livelihood, and so holding my whole life to ransom. As hokey as it might sound, I threw down tools at one point, and said I had not become a writer in the first place to allow those kind of values to operate. It’s true, but by then internal politics was far more important than any truth about art, the fight of writers, or what is vital to the writing process. DCD

PHOENIX TAKES WING – WITH ALL OUR WRITERS THE STARS!.

Dear gentle reader,

if you’ve been touched at all by the thrills and spills of a madly determined fantasy author, and a struggling little phoenix of a publisher, as the bitter cold frosts the window panes of involvement, love and connection, spare a passing thought for the Bob Cratchit of literature. His hands, in his half fingered woolen gloves, are crabbed with toil, his weary, tear filled eyes dim to the normals joys and camaraderie of powerful publishers, or indeed the common laughter of engaged humanity, at this very special time of year. Which is as much to say that he needs not a steaming jug of Smoking Bishop, nor even a pay rise, but a kindly word of recommendation. So you perhaps might bring a few friends, especially younger readers, just one or two each, even by navigating that link button in your email and by copying our url into the box that appears, to send to your chums, and suggest they take a peek at Dragon in the Post.

Though on the reading page, linked below, there is a Donation button, it is entirely free, and poor Bob must believe in the power of the word, you see, to strike a blow for writers everywhere, and if it’s any good, perhaps a story really is a gift. Old Harry Potter did it, by word of mouth in the schools first, or so the story goes, before the marketing juggernaut took over. Perhaps it is no good, and like the mounds of crumpled paper surrounding our Dickensian computer at Phoenix Ark Press, it should be consigned to the dustbin of eternity. But Bob thinks it is rather good, though he dribbles a lot, and has grown fond of it too, poor fool. Yet even the humblest clerk or scribe needs, now and then, to feel the electric current of direct connection, between author and reader, to feed the flickering fires of creativity. A very Happy Christmas though, Holidays, Hanukkah, and the rest, and God Bless us every one!

Phoenix Ark Press

To see a little related movie, although featuring our favourite Phoenix, and join the dragon story as it happens, click

If politicians here have talked about students living in a dream world, my deepest Texan source gives a fascinating insight into the different causes of students here, and in the USA, since this website seems to have evolved out of a ‘special relationship’. While student fees are through the roof in America, American students are not protesting about money and funding. But they are fighting a corner for immigrants, apparently with Hunger Strikes, trying to bring in the DREAM act, securing protection for the children of illegal immigrants, either to go to school, or join the military. How the sober visions of the old are seen through a different glass to the passionate young, but it is always good to know that people are fighting for things, especially the human, and have a right to be heard. DCD

A friend commented on Phoenix becoming political, and it felt strangely uncomfortable. Is it because, coming from such a political family, politics has at times been rather a dirty word to me? Although a fact of life, I don’t think politics is the key to human happiness at all. Or is it because a so called friend, at the heart of a US publisher, warned me how ‘political’ work is, before a nightmare unfolded in New York, and they acted so cynically and politically? As that firm underlined to an author, a writer is not an employee at all, and so protected by the benefits employees enjoy, but nor should I have been used as an internal political football. My work should have been protected too, and by extension my livelihood.

I and Phoenix, except that half the gnomes disagree with my politics, believe in the story, on either side of the political divide, and the truth and falseness of people. That is why law is so important too. As for freedom of speech, perhaps I believe as much in the intelligence of what is said and done. What happened in London yesterday might put a sharp curb on notions of absolute freedom. But then a group of thugs, showing off to camera, and labelled as ‘students’, can sour the vital right of peaceful protest. To see the windows of the High Court smashed, the Treasury, and the National Gallery invaded, and that security breach with Charles and Camilla, does not exactly symbolise a ‘free’ society to me. That might quickly turn people off the student cause, and education is a vital cause. As for Julian Assange, there is certainly a case that a blanket sharing of documents is a dubious or irresponsible thing, as there is if there really is a specifically anti-American agenda to Wikileaks. The fact is though, if a journalist starts to censor themself too much, then they become the Judge and Jury, so perhaps the blanket approach was the only option. Now, it’s time for us to get back to what we do best, telling stories. DCD

I just fell over laughing, to hear on Have I got News For You that Sarah Palin has called for Julian Assange to be executed! But then I’m fond of endangered species, like Polar Bears, ice caps, authors, and apparently freedom of speech too. This I will say for Abrams, no one I knew there seemed to like Sarah Palin very much. Perhaps they’ve changed, because some did seem very fond indeed of Prison Break, and that strange character, T-bag. DCD

The case of Assange could not have been thrown into greater relief than by that of the nobel prize winner, wu zhao bo. Apart from locking him up, China is making no pretence of using government power to intimidate academics, close down websites, and keep the news of bo’s prize in Oslo away from its own people. Does America really want to be associated though, as it is being, with that kind of attack on anyone, rather than embracing much of the spirit of what Wikileaks has done, and why the internet is a chance for significant world freedoms? If it is the job of some aspects of the intelligence services, military, or the administration, to protect information, and work in the corridors of diplomacy, it is surely the duty of journalists to find and reveal the truth. Of course there are limits, and one is The News of the World case, for instance, and mobile phone tapping, when personal privacy seems to have been invaded, for reasons that have little to do with the public interest. Although any journalist, and probably any intelligence service, knows it can be a fine line. DCD