marypcbuk

Somewhere in the mists of December last year I wrote a post about new writers I'd come across over the previous year. I can't keep track of what I read book by book because I binge read (one book can last me weeks (I've been reading Wodehouse's Picadilly Jim for well over a year) but then I have some time or a journey and I go through ten books in a week (restarted Jim on Thursday, have got to the part where all the impersonations are in place and the farce can begin to unravel)), so I wanted to highlight writers I've recently found and really enjoy, like Donna Leon (the Brunetti mysteries, set in the Venetian police department) and Wen Sansom (who writes everything from fantasy to fantasy-SF-manga) and T A Pratt, who writes the wonderful, snarky Marla Mason series. Run, don't walk to somewhere you can buy the first four, to encourage the publisher to buy the fifth (I want to know what happens, dammit), read the Pale Dog story on the site, find Blood Engines as a free ebook; hell, you can follow Marla on Twitter. And then go bookmark Bone Shop; starting June 29th this will be a regularly-published-in-chapters prequel fo which you are invited to donate.

I think most of my friends and connections know that unless you are very lucky as well as very good, fiction is not a paying career; Pratt is one of several authors who are good enough that one feels instinctively they should be swimming in money - instead I believe they're more wading through the shallows of Layoff Beach. I keep being told that the disintermediation of the Internet is an opportunity for us content producers; I hope so...