Bubbling with ideas, forging ahead, in control of the electronic rights to published and successful work, and with a wealth of finished work in the background, Phoenix Ark still needs a serious investor and ideally a hands on business partner, with experience in publishing, passionate about story, books and culture.
BUSINESS INVESTOR AND PARTNER
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
WILDCALL YOUNG ADULT IMPRINT
Phoenix Ark proudly present the Wildcall Logo!
Filed under Childrens Books, Young Adult
THUMBMARKS ADULT IMPRINT
Phoenix Ark proudly present the ThumbMarks logo
Filed under Adult Fiction, Thrillers
IRONIES
‘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.
Filed under Publishing, The Phoenix Story
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
RAKING OVER OLD COALS
Two very helpful thoughts from a reader. Firstly ‘the Phoenix rises from the ashes, but doesn’t rake over old coals’. Well put, although when your whole writing life has been dismantled, over three years, those coals are not so old. Secondly, some posts misrepresent the talent at Phoenix. Maybe it’s true, although a blog is just a way of talking direct, and from the heart, not a finished novel, nor a completed work of non-fiction. I’m also concerned that younger readers might be upset by things I’ve said though, so the majority of posts about Abrams have now been password protected. Not only do I think I’ve a huge case against a publisher, simply as an author who was so badly mistreated, but a story about words and actions in a fantasy novel, becoming real in actual fact, are startling, and possibly important, so any adult reader who wants to know about ‘the strange case of Abrams’, can write to me here for the password.
It’s time to get on with real work, storytelling, and trying to overcome the past by looking to the future. DCD
Filed under Uncategorized
OLD BORES?
What might be unforgivable though, in posting so much, is that fatal error, either in fiction or fact, ‘never bore your reader’! I’ve also started to use exclamation marks, which you’re never supposed to do in good writing. Sincere apologies, this doesn’t happen that often, although more often than you might think. Neil Gaiman wrote Stardust out of such a crisis, apparently, and I wish I had. Wonderful fantasy, charming love story.
Filed under Uncategorized
UNHINGED?
A reader just called one post ‘seriously unhinged’, I think my ‘Letter to an American Editor’, although he kindly asked if I was ok! There were moments of becoming almost unhinged, two years ago, but the point is the healing, and if you read the whole story, the harm and ultimate injustice that was done to an author over so long is very important to talk about. I could say a great deal about the whys and hows of human psychological hurt too. Otherwise, the being ‘ok’ bit is really about getting a writing life back on the road. You cannot know, until you get into a situation where our most basic rights, or assumptions of freedom and decency, are so challenged, how appalling it can be. Out of a situation of intimacy and personal friendship with three people, it was really terrible. I won’t say anymore now, it’s all been said in various ways, cultimating in the facts of the ‘case’ in a Letter to a Court, but the only good it can do is being allowed the privilege of freedom of speech here, in a blog. I’ve said before, at least WordPress believe in the First Ammendment.
Filed under Uncategorized
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
READER POWER – HOORAY!
We don’t expect younger readers to donate to Dragon Post at all, but we were moved when Phoenix Ark got its very first donation, this weekend. We hope it was the enjoyment of the story, not writer empathy over Abram’s behaviour, or anything else, but out of little acorns…so very many thanks! We love to ‘feel the lurv’ at Phoenix, so we can give it back again, and that was exactly what was throttled at Abrams, in its attack on basic human principles and storytellers.
Filed under Uncategorized
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