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Filed under Adult Fiction, Thrillers
ABRAMS MUST APOLOGISE AND GIVE REDRESS OR TAKE PHOENIX ARK TO COURT
“Writing is a struggle against silence” Carlos Fuentes
From rising interest in the Phoenix vs Abrams story, we believe a New York publisher are perfectly aware of renewed blogs at Phoenix Ark Press. A deal of time has elapsed, but on the so-called ‘principles’ of breach of privacy alone, Abrams should take us into court, or accept the charges, not that they will do anything about it. It was threatened by Oxford Law firm Manches, that a US company could close us down and slap a £30,000 legal bill on our heads, quite regardless of any other issue, or the truth. As the approach taken, supposedly softly softly, but again dishonest, might be worthy of reporting to the Law Society. Apparently people come to London to exploit privacy laws, or European Human Rights Acts, all the time, though in the mysterious ether, WordPress is hosted in the US. We can always copy the lot to another cyber site, though we don’t particularly want to be Julian Assange, and besides, there is no more room at the Ecuadorian Embassy. What fun it is being a creative author these days though, and falling in love, or building ‘friendships’ in New York! Don’t do it, go and see Toby Young’s How to Loose friends and alienate people instead.
Well, if they can close us, and it is impossible to tell a whole story without ‘breaching privacy’, they won’t get any money, because there is none, greatly thanks to them. Perhaps they could try to send an author to prison, for trying to do his work in safety, emotional as well as personal, or indeed to protect his livelihood, write valuable fantasy, or for trying to tell the ‘truth’, difficult as that has been. He has certainly never engaged in the kind of easy, horrid and brutal labels each one of them did at Abrams, beginning with a senior editor calling her ex and then a betrayed friend ‘mad’, ‘deluded’ and finally ‘evil’, in circumstances that came close to breakdown, and it just being left there for months on end, unanswerable, as he tried to work, while other book arguments were so distorted too. They saw very well what was happening but rather than helping, as promised, threatened under contract, to keep a secret from a CEO and made an emotional situation ten times worse. In the face of an open and generous apology too, considering what an ex had done over a year, into a wall of sinister silence, a powerful editor then brutally left an impossible professional position in place, we believe was discussed inside a department as strategy. Tara Break and Abrams do not know the meaning of love, friendship or peace, let alone a love of literature, or real human decency. They are a big American publisher, so perhaps in the land of the free or the brave, they know the meaning of the Constitution, free speech, or the right to protect your own livelihood, and work in safety, especially under two contracts. Perhaps they know the meaning of ‘mobbing’, the right of anyone ‘accused’ to a proper, but objective defence and hearing, they denied too in trying to stitch up an ‘enquiry’, or the harm of supposedly grown up editors being allowed to throw around words like evil, after their callous behaviour, even dark history, might be considered the source of real ‘evil’. Certainly what they then allowed to ensue was monumentally cruel.
But after a year trying to get it right and surreal circumstances, when they breached another agreement, refusing to heal anything, CEO Mike Jacobson thinks he can defame an author behind the scenes to The US Authors Guild, speaking scornfully of “our relationship with Mr Clement-Davies“, when out of a destruction of many relationships, initiated by a completely hypocritical senior editor, Tara Break, as she ‘grew up’ into mounting ruthlessness, an excellent publishing relationship, indeed a joy, was just suspended, under two contracts for three novels. His own editor could see they were ‘holding his life and work to ransom’ but then, with a career just starting to take off in the States, a massive body of work was destroyed. Removing any vital dialogue on books already there too, until he took back his eBook rights with the help of the Author’s Guild. As his own editor was allowed to threaten politically, months before a crisis, breach privacies to another publisher at Penguin US, and an ex so close to her betrayed vital trusts. As a department reversed promises, conspired, made virtually criminal threats, in the circumstances, insulted personally and professionally, and glossed it all with lies or half-truths, around the blatant internal political manoeuvring there. You should try fighting a US firm and your own publisher for a year on your own, with the memories of love and friendship in the background, or right in the foreground, or your ex suddenly doing a useless book with a so-called male ‘friend’, Hew, Screw and Glue, he had specifically warned her about inside a relationship, but whose ‘respect’ in the industry saw his work cancelled at Bloomsbury and complained about loudly. Who was the one person in the world that could do maximum damage, personal and professional, and spit on a hard-fought and once wonderful relationship with a New York publisher, not to mention two happy years of partnership. A beautiful form of respect or professional standards! It saw the removal too, because we cannot believe he happily stood down at Abrams, of publisher and Vice President Howard Reeves, and quite dreadful pain this side of the deep, dark pond. But unless that is just cynical proof of internal ruthlessness, that very loud evidence about so much that has happened being wrong has produced no equivalent redress for an author, kept under conditions of psychological harm, trying to work there, for months on end and snatching away everything he had built over ten years. Tara Break could have taken responsibility and stopped it in a stroke. Harold Rove and their own contracted author were made the fall guys for something that could have been stopped so easily, except for the personal ambitions there.
As those who remain sit behind desks, take large salaries and shares in author’s work, the human and writing story within that is terrible too, although extraordinary, much to the ever vanishing Tara Break’s shame, if she were capable, or of ever bullish Sarah Van More, new Vice President and doyenne of Grimm Sisters, or Wimpy Kid Diaries, but not of any real publishing and editorial standards, in defence of the author they ‘owned’, who could not walk away for threat of being sued. It’s really a rather grown up story, this one. But Abrams neither understand basic psychology, real writing and its vitally needed environment too, David had literally to plead for and was denied, nor the most fundamental legal principles, let alone wider kinds of humanity or love. CEO Mike Jacobson, since some buck should stop somewhere, should apologise on a firm’s behalf, compensate, attack legally for breach of privacy, which we’ll have him know would be a corrupt defence of the wrong principle, or just accept the truth. Once again we call for an independent publishing Ombudsman, not on the side of author or editor, but a way of objectively resolving dispute as it happens. An author under contract is not responsible for the kind of awful fear or politics inside New York firms that could lead to all that, nor the obsessive ‘privacy’ of an ex and senior editor, whose disrespect of his privacies and also working life and books became absolute. We think it the saddest story ever told, but then we would.
DCD
Filed under America and the UK, Publishing, The Phoenix Story
2012 AND “END OF THE WORLD” WEBSITES
Well, you will get the facts around The Mayan Calendar and end of world prophecies in the thriller, The Godhead Game, which to reassure sceptical readers is set in 2014, but there are a great many websites catering to interest and more importantly wider themes around the subject. Try this one
Filed under Culture, Education, Publishing, Thrillers
LONDON OLYMPICS, THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
The London Olympics, whether a success or wash out, are actually a wonderful chance for many valuable discussions and cultural discoveries. One, for American and world visitors alike, is the coming mega exhibition at the British Museum on Elizabethan London and all its writers, Shakespeare: Staging the World, from July 19th through to November. Another are the cycle of Shakespeare plays being staged at The Globe, in 37 different languages, but then, supported by a Bardic fest on the BBC, this is also World Shakespeare Year: A Cultural Olympiad too then, with Bill going for cultural Gold.
It is a chance for an obvious plug for work here, and the experimental posting of the story of Shakespeare’s Brother, above, on Southwark and William’s unknown younger brother Edmund, also a player, who died in Southwark in the freezing winter of 1607/8. It might be a chance to stop Thames Water mutilating an important and wonderful London district too, as the actor Patrick Stewart has been campaigning on, with its plans for awful new water tunnels, to quench the washed and unwashed in the capital, in the glinting shadow of the Shard. Southwark must be preserved, or protected, but perhaps not in that ‘theme park’ way we do history nowadays. But actually the story of the players, Southwark, The City and the Reformation lies at the very root of World banking and economic discussions too, ever looming over the City of London.
For years we have talked about that “American Dream“, good or bad, dream or nightmare, but it actually came straight out of the Elizabethan City of London, and speaks of a very long ‘special relationship’. In the establishing of the Virginia Trading Company’s Free Standing Lotterie in 1612, taken up by all 13 colonies and formed in the City of London, in the founding of the East India Company too, so much of what we believe and debate today was forged five hundred years ago, in the trading ethic of the City, the battle with Rome and Euro Centrism, and the discovery and colonisation of the ‘New World’. As those writers and players, vagabond or connected, were writing their works and building their theatres, often attacked by the City Corporation, in the hungry “Square mile”. Just as the violent religious debates of the Reformation, subtly redirected in Shakespeare, and the energetic freedoms of separatist Puritans and dissenters, were carried straight to the founding heart of often still Puritan America, or East Coast America, with the actually levelling idea of Lotteries and Capitalism powerfully in toe – levelling until capital became such an unlevel playing field. It may be why there is such interest in Shakespeare and Southwark from American academics nowadays, but in many ways American consciousness has not moved on from those Elizabethan London arguments and energetic opposites, four hundred years ago. Maybe the UK is always returning to them too, especially in its symbiotic or lap dog relationship with the USA.
Perhaps the Olympics then are a chance to discuss what Shakespeare’s real vision and journey was, and if that can be a true guiding light once more, or if it is all just fustian recreation. Peter Ackroyd argues he did not have a meaning or vision, as such, since he was both a writer trying to make it, and please an audience, and all-encompassing in his mirror up to nature, or the world. Yet, if “we all such stuff as dreams are made of”, perhaps the good or bad life dream does revolve around that play Ackroyd does not think was effectively his last work, and we do, The Tempest. Especially what Shakespeare was trying to get at in terms of the creative ‘faith’ of the writer magician, Prospero, in that ‘isle full of noises’ of his mind, and those “brave new worlds that hath such people in it.” Much as Ackroyd may be right about some quality in Shakespeare drawing on “The English Imagination”, that is a world vision, for all humanity, not a London one, and a search for other ‘countries’, or reality and imagination, beyond the clashes of his time. Whatever golds the Olympics bring for Team Britain though, now branded just like the Corporation or ‘Big Apple’ New York City, there is a lot of cultural gold to be had in London this year. Enjoy.
Phoenix Ark Press
Filed under Uncategorized
WELCOME TO THE MAYAN END OF EVERYTHING!
Phoenix Ark Press are delighted to share an article by David Clement-Davies on the Mayan Calendar in The Weissman Report Click Here
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Filed under Uncategorized
US PUBLISHING PRESIDENT MIKE JACOBSON ACTED CORRUPTLY
The simplest proof of corruption at Abrams is the fact that publisher Harold Rove is no longer Vice President, but David Clement-Davies’s career was held to ransom, he was ‘mobbed’, his work destroyed but no apology or compensation ever given, for what Harold Rove’s removal surely proves was so wrong and unnecessary. Unless CEO Mike Jacobson simply manipulated everything for his own ends and Harold should not have been removed. Harold was liked by all his authors, was exceptional in his liaison skills, unlike often arrogant and aggressive Sarah Van More, new Vice President, but he, like David, was made a scapegoat for Mike Jacobson’s dislike of him and Sarah Van More’s conflicts and vaulting ambition. Welcome to the world of Amulet children’s’ books, that produce huge bestsellers at Abrams like Hello Kitty and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
The long-term actions of CEO Mike Jacobson though were extraordinary. Over a situation that could have been resolved but was used to bully an author and he would not go on, could not, a half-hearted ‘enquiry’ was held, until Mike Jacobson tried to bully, his natural instinct, and a glaring stitch up and lock down was attempted, that within a week reversed words of promised support, right in the middle of a hopeless galley edit. That glaring lack of objectivity, even corruption, was resisted, repudiation of contract effectively admitted and work began again, in a situation where Sarah Van More should never have just removed support from a contracted author, on three books, because of her ‘power over her list’, bullied both personally and professionally herself, left a word like ‘evil’ at the centre of a creative firm, or masked a long-standing alliance with Tara Break, personal and professional, loudly sounded in the threat “we will protect our girl” months before. If she took revenge for Harold Rove’ slight amusement at the pressure she was under, David tried to move away, her sins became far greater, and perhaps a savage company culture in New York is to blame, fully justifying David’s fears, and experience of other publishing cyncisms, that makes the ideals fought for in fantasy literature, in any real writing, that authors not editors have to undertake, completely meaningless, despite the pretty covers. It had all started with the betrayals and personal and professional arrogance of Tara Break though, for any ensuing loss of control or despair on David’s part. A personal unilateralism, over-projected fear and blindness, that became an entire firm’s and in fact had to, once Susan Van Metre absolutely synthesised issues into “US” against “YOU”, that should have been kept separate, somehow, and Tara Break so arrogantly and destructively kept them there too, after an apology, in a situation that could be considered illegal and certainly psychologically damaging.
But CEO Mike Jacobson’s actions over a personal and professional nightmare, where David asked for the wisdom of Solomon and got Saddam Hussein, became dreadful, and in the end are also proved by a highly regarded and committed author having to force dialogue and any say in the work already at Abrams, via the US Authors Guild. It was appalling. As Abrams used an Oxford lawyer to intimidate, pretend it was just about Tara Break, which so long back it was not, and try and silence an author and publisher on far bigger issues, instructing an entire department not to read a blog. But David had left because of the breach of a hardly acceptable agreement and the unilateral arrogance of new Vice President Sarah Break, in refusing to respect purely the work she had held there so long, or to heal the impossible atmosphere they kept there, to mask their admitted legal mistakes, and in ransoming his life and work, as she said she could see at the time. So perhaps a CEO and VP should stand side by side in taking responsibility for how Abrams disrespected work, fundamental principles of contract law, basic justice, equity, truth, the essential humanity literature should be about, especially children’s’ literature, and destroyed the excellent spirit that was once there at Amulet under Harold Rove. Tara Break’s irresponsibility underwrote the lot, but they ignore that issue, since it undermines their defence of David’s ‘bad’, they would never just put away in some act of mutual forgiveness and working peace. But the only buck that ever stops at Abrams is with over kind publishers, or vulnerable authors trying to work into walls of threat and nonsense, proving the power of editors over writers and money over justice. Why did Sarah Van More leave Dutton and why did both she and Tara Break not stand up to defend the man who hired them both, and who cared deeply about Tara Break, let alone Susan Van Metre defend the proper, indeed essential working conditions and spirit with an author whose work she said so good? Tara Break’s own ever cowardly silence, selfishness and in-action throughout, indeed long before, made an entire firm dance around her. Perhaps they tried, we hope they did, but ambition, back stabbing, cynicism and the failure to respect the truth and value of the writing itself are written right across that story. David was the one who wrote to say he would not work there if anyone was harmed, and look what happened. Roll on the next pulp instalment of Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but throw literature and ten years work in a dustbin!
Phoenix Ark Press
Filed under America and the UK, Books, London, New York, The Phoenix Story
PATRONAGE AND PHOENIX ARK PRESS!
Another ‘incidentally’ – if any mad, wandering billionaire feels like swooping in and backing Phoenix Ark Press, or funding a legal campaign for redress against nasty New York Abrams, you’re very welcome. We’re tired of so much work without earning a living, publishing is a collapsing sink pit of cynicism, and we need a holiday. If ‘free enterprise’ has replaced the structures of state support, while the rich and replete swan off to Davos, to talk rubbish about the ever-widening gap, perhaps we need to bring back the likes of the Earl of Southampton, and modern patronage without the patronising!
“Nobody but a fool wrote for anything but money” Dr Johnson
Phoenix Ark Press
Filed under Uncategorized
SHAKESPEARE’S BROTHER AND JAMES SHAPIRO
It was the US academic, and very nice guy, even if he would not help with an agent, who said that any work on Edmund Shakespeare was a ‘good idea’. So it was gloomy to take it to Faber and Faber and discover James Shapiro is doing another book on the year 1608 there, after his very valuable and enjoyable 1599. Sorry to correct editors though, but there is a great deal that was and is completely new in writing about Edmund Shakespeare and Southwark, in Shakespeare’s Brother.
Firstly is the precise discovery of where Edmund was living in Southwark and probably died in 1607, The Vine, who owned it and what it was. It was based on initial information in a lecture by Berkeley Professor Alan Nelson on the Token Books at Southwark Cathedral, but then original research into deeds and the ownership of The Vine by the Hunt family. That family also played a part with a fascinating local Catholic fraternity called The Brotherhood of Our Lady of Assumption, linked to the leatherworking Guild that played a large role at the all important church of St Mary Ovaries, later St Saviours, now Southwark Cathedral, where Edmund Shakespeare is buried.
There are jewels of information in those Token Books, that read like an Elizabethan Address Book, as there are in birth and death records, new to the Reformation, proving how long Philip Henslowe, who became a warden, lived in Southwark, precisely where, and the residence there of his son in law Edward Alleyn and his family. There are a great many things about other players living in Southwark at the time too. But following the trail of that Brotherhood of Our Lady there are also unknown facts, as far as we are aware, about ‘pleyers’ in the district and at the Church of St Margarets, that was thrown down during the Reformation, well over a hundred years before Shakespeare’s troupe, especially performing on St Margaret’s and St Lucy’s days. But in that Reformation earthquake also specific evidence of how The Bishops of Winchester were running and licencing brothels, and how so much of the history of Bankside was about the tavern and then coming brewing industry, and the battle for money and wealth in the great capital.
Much of the writing on Shakespeare nowadays comes from the US, perhaps because of the forming of a consciousness at a particular time, or a US need for roots, especially in Southwark, with the likes of John Harvard being born there (if he was). Also because of those religious echoes that still sound so loudly in America. But much as American academics can be very brilliant, and well funded, there seems also the danger of American literalism in work on Shakespeare that does miss some point about the mysterious well springs of language and inspiration itself. Read the story with us, as it happens, and perhaps James Shapiro can tell if it is of further importance or value.
Phoenix Ark Press
Filed under America and the UK, Education, The Arts
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