@alimercerwriter
Here but not here. Often sleepy and mildly baffled. Late adopter. Jotter-downer. Onetime diary keeper. Writes stuff. Sometimes cannot then read it back, especially when have tried to keep secret by using rusty shorthand. Likes tea.
today I met someone very nice who vividly remembered a book I published 12 years ago (and who I haven’t seen in about as long.) which was an out of the blue reminder that books have strange secret lives of their own.
You're not going to make any money doing this and no one is going to read it, so you must hope for a secret third thing to happen
maybe the secret third thing is realising that the first two aren’t the point
Oooh A Woman of Substance is back, Edwin Fairley watch out!
May (or may not) contain me.
I'm in excellent company between these pages standing up for UK copyright protections for authors..
ps You can see the full list of authors involved at dontstealthisbook.com
The UK government is considering upending copyright law to benefit AI companies. Don’t Steal This Book urges them not to.
Apart from the list of authors involved, the book is empty, representing the effect the government’s plans would have on authors' livelihoods.
2/3
We urge the government in the strongest possible terms to rule out legalising this large-scale theft.
And to AI companies we say: stop stealing our books!
buff.ly/cYnU2Mw
#DontStealThisBook
...and represents the impact on authors’ livelihoods and the publishing industry that is expected if the government proceeds with plans it has floated that would make it easier to train AI models on copyrighted work without a licence. 🧵
Almost 10,000 authors have come together to publish an empty book protesting the theft of books by tech companies to train AI models.
Titled Don’t Steal This Book, it is empty of text except the names of the authors involved.. 🧵
I WROTE A TIMESLIP! V excited to have signed with @bookouture.bsky.social for two more books and v happy to have written a dark twisty multigenerational family drama with secrets, lies, betrayal, heartbreak and a dash of time travel… Here’s the book deal announcement: bookouture.com/bookouture-a...
also a load of wine just arrived
In a parallel universe I would definitely be tempted to
Ok that’s it, am gonna stuff face with Christmas cake, it is currently only viable way forward
and MI5 has its own brass band (Mick Herron sez so)
#MickHerron #JohnleCarre
also did not know JLC coined the terms 'tradecraft' and 'honeytrap'... & came up with the term 'the circus' for the intelligence services (after their HQ address in his fiction)
& it was amusing to hear that IRL twice a year, former agents meet to reminisce (as they can't do this with anyone else)
'A writer is an actor looking for a part' (I *think* that was JLC)
'The novelist's childhood is his or her bank balance' Graham Greene
'a wilderness of mirrors' - from T S Eliot's Gerontion, used to describe intelligence services...
v enjoyed listening to Mick Herron's @bodleian.ox.ac.uk talk on John le Carre
a few quotes scribbled in my scruffy notebook:
JLC, asked where one should start a story: 'Begin as near the end as possible'
'We fight the wars we inherit' - not sure if that was JLC himself, or someone else...
the weird crux magic of Chapter 17 strikes again! Somehow it always seems to be the one where the really bad thing happens
on the bus in Christmas jumper (actually my son’s, outgrown two seasons ago) and the bus driver has a Christmas jumper too and maybe my Scroogelike heart is beginning to feel the teensiest bit tinselly
(have always slightly envied Jocasta’s Christmas in the bedsit in Pick of Posy)
hey-ho, hey-ho, it’s off to Winter Funland I go. Time to dig out my moderately tasteful Xmas jumper. Or maybe borrow the one that, if you look closely enough, features a dinosaur chomping on a reindeer. Bah humbug, one and all. Love Mrs Scrooge 🦖🧑🎄🙄😒🤷♀️
btw human authors can sign up to find out more about the UK human authored mark (due to launch 2026) @societyofauthors.bsky.social here: humanauthored.co.uk
bot authors can go embrace an eternity of writer’s block (… but can’t, as ‘they’ aren’t ‘authors’ at all but scam content pushed by chancers)
also I made the mistake of reading one of those articles on limerence and now my feeds are as full of dewy-eyed heartbreak as a round table full of courtly-loving knights
mixed in with content on safeguarding and The Summer I Turned Pretty, which is as headache-inducing a blend as an AI image
it is not a good harbinger for the day when the kettle is broken for morning coffee
(in 2025, I have quite often found myself thinking about that very good Raymond Carver short story about the birthday cake)
for the first end-of-November in many years, not putting the Playmobil advent calendar out tonight
Creeping back on here for the first time in ooh a long while with a #Jillystack which I am about to lend out to someone, and which will hopefully bring some pre-festive-season joy… (or maybe it is now the actual festive season already…)
I was taught to always avoid the Oxford comma by Mrs Nelson, my year 4 primary school teacher and a formidable dominatrix.
But seriously, I love the Oxford Comma. So I made a starter pack of other serial comma aficionados. And I'll keep adding to it as I find more members of Team Oxford Comma . . .
🙂 It was not bad, but I did not get a whole lot of reading/writing done! However, today is another day! x