{"id":694,"date":"2018-05-01T14:50:10","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T14:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thearmchairkitchen.com\/?page_id=694"},"modified":"2018-05-01T14:05:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T14:05:17","slug":"whats-new","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/thearmchairkitchen.com\/whats-new\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s New?"},"content":{"rendered":"

1st May 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael Chabon is an American novelist and short story writer. Before his first book was published he had an encounter with an older, successful writer who gave him some unsettling advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t have children. Each one represents a novel you\u2019ll never publish. You can write great books or you can have kids. Children are notorious thieves of time. Don\u2019t stay in one place; you need to keep moving, always onward. Travel is a must.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Chabon was about to get married and was naturally highly concerned at what he had just heard. In the event, he divorced his first wife, married again and then had four children, ignoring the painful advice he had been given many years earlier.<\/p>\n

In a recent interview Chabon talks about the decision he made. \u201cWriters need to be free of everything but the writing, free of commitments to everything but the daily word count. Children, by contrast, need stability, consistency, routine and above all, commitment. In short they are the opposite of writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He goes on to say \u201cIf I\u2019d followed the great man\u2019s advice and never burdened myself with the gift of my children, or if I\u2019d never written any novels at all, in the long run the result would have been the same as the result will be for me here. Having made the choices I made, I will die and the world in its violence and serenity will roll on, through the endless indifference of space. It will consign to oblivion all but a scant few of the thousands upon thousands of novels and short stories written and published during our lifetimes. If none of my books turns out to be among that bright remnant because I allowed my children to steal my time, narrow my compass, and curtail my freedom, I\u2019m all right with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce they are written, my books, unlike my children, hold no wonder for me; no mystery resides in them. Unlike my children, my books are cruelly unforgiving of my weaknesses, failings and flaws of character. Most of all, unlike my children, my books do not love me back.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read more about the interview please click here<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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February 8th 2018<\/p>\n

Who says a free book can\u2019t be a success?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We all know about give-aways. In a moment I\u2019ll tell you about my experience with free Kindle books. But first, can you guess which is the most successful book ever to be distributed? It\u2019s been translated into 35 languages and 203 million copies have been published. It is in more homes than the Bible or the Koran.<\/p>\n

What is it? The IKEA catalogue. The cover photo receives as much attention in promotion meetings as the glossy picture on the latest copy of Vogue magazine. I haven\u2019t even begun to find out how many meatballs IKEA sell while the purchasers are figuring out how to assemble the flatpack furniture they have bought.<\/p>\n

So now, back to literature and real books. When my novel SEXTET was published I heard that Kindle was offering a special deal. If you give away your book on a day of your choice, you can inform all your friends and contacts, and they will be able to download it free on Kindle. The incentive for the author is that, if by chance they miss the day, sales the following day will rocket.<\/p>\n

So of course I did this. Figures for the \u2018give-away\u2019 day were very high. Hundreds of people were reading SEXTET. But sales? Not a single one. Even my friends didn\u2019t buy a copy, with one even asking me when the next free date was, since she had missed the one I told her about! Kindle books aren\u2019t very expensive and I had set my price quite low (below \u00a33\/$4). So I did wonder at this friend who took the time to ask me the question – probably while she was in a cafe drinking a coffee that would have come to the same price as buying the book.<\/p>\n

July 2017<\/p>\n

Truth in fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today I’m featuring Sebastian Barry, award winning novelist and a man who seems to have experienced many of the things he writes about. But that’s unlikely to be true. His first World War epic A Long, Long Way<\/i> (2005) is quite outstanding and his descriptions of an Irish soldier’s life in battle make you think he must have been a soldier. Perhaps the skill of a great writer is to make you think you were there, <\/i>to make you believe that what the author is saying is true, and that the experiences described are so vivid they must have been lived.<\/p>\n

His other books also make you think the author is speaking from personal experience. Talking about his Costa winning novel Days without End<\/i> (2016) he comments that his son ‘instructed him in the magic of gay life.’ And in The Secret Scripture (2008) <\/i>words come out of his characters’ mouths that seem to imply he has great faith in God.<\/p>\n

Here are two quotations from that book:<\/p>\n

\u201cGardening – the white, yellow, blue sequence of snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells – is an effort to drag to earth the colours and the importance of heaven.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cFred Astaire. Not a handsome man…. he couldn’t sing. He was balding his whole life. He danced like a cheetah runs, with the grace of the first creation. I mean, that first week. On one of those days God created Fred Astaire. Saturday maybe, since that was the day for the pictures.\u201d *<\/i><\/p>\n

* For those of you too young to remember ‘the pictures’ meant the cinema<\/p>\n

*   *   *   *  *<\/p>\n

June 5th<\/sup> 2017<\/p>\n

Birthdays … and deadlines
\n<\/b><\/p>\n

Today is the birthday of:<\/p>\n

the author Dame Margaret Drabble (78)<\/p>\n

playwright Sir David Hare (70)<\/p>\n

novelist Ken Follett (68)<\/p>\n

chef and writer Simon Hopkinson (63)<\/p>\n

It’s also my own birthday. The date of my birth corresponds with the writer I most admire from this list. Everyone wished me “a really happy day” and this is what happened when four sons and thirteen grandchildren sent kisses and good wishes from three different countries.<\/p>\n