Dear England: A Letter from America

Huffington Post: New Planet Is Right Out Of 'Star Wars'

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:57:00 +0000

		New Planet Is Right Out Of 'Star Wars'
	NASA reported on Thursday the discovery of Kepler 16b, a planet with two suns that evokes images of Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, from the...

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Charles Dickens Statue Planned For Bicentenary

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:09:00 +0000

		Charles Dickens Statue Planned For Bicentenary
	Charles Dickens might have written that he wanted no "monument, memorial, or testimonial whatsoever" to be erected in his name, but the UK's first ever...

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Is This The End For Books?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:19:00 +0000

		Is This The End For Books?
	In 1996, the US computer entrepreneur Brewster Kahle set up the Internet Archive, its mission being to provide "universal access to all knowledge". This admirable...

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What's A Kindlegraph?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 21:46:00 +0000

		What's A Kindlegraph?
	A new digital book signing tool called Kindlegraph has been getting a lot of ink from various publishing and tech blogs these days, so when...

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Why Borders Failed While Barnes & Noble Survived

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:57:00 +0000

		Why Borders Failed While Barnes & Noble Survived
	It appears to be all over for the Borders bookselling chain. The company will be liquidated â" meaning sold off in pieces â" and almost...

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America's Drunkest Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:59:00 +0000

		America's Drunkest Writer
	F. Scott Fitzgerald was kept in champagne in the '20s, already a crumbling alcoholic in the '30s, and dead by the end of '40. The...

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THE TURK by Tom Standage: The True Story of the Chess-Playing Machine that Fooled the World

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:29:00 +0000

The Turk: The True Story of the Chess-Playing Machine that Fooled the World

What was 'The Turk'?

With its exotic name and semblance of a man and mechanical arm over a chessboard, The Turk was an amazing automaton or 'automated device' from the 1770s that played chess...amazing crowds like a modern-day computer. But what was its secret? Was it really a machine that could play and beat anyone? Or was some trick involved?

Today, seated among world-class chess players Vladimir Kramnik, Viswanathan Anand and young prodigy Magnus Carlsen of Norway, we seem far removed from the players of the past. But do we have any idea how their brains - human masterminds - work? Great players of the past from Paul Morphy to Bobby Fischer, the Russians, Germans, Czechs or Cubans, are even harder to now dissect for glimmers of pathways for us to understand their genius. What about those chess machines - Deep Thought, Deep Fritz, Deep Blue - that claim artificial intelligence?

Author of THE VICTORIAN INTERNET and THE NEPTUNE FILE, Tom Standage is well versed in historical studies that focus how technology impacts our everyday lives, especially those that reflect our need of magical discovery. While those books explored the development of the telegraph and the discovery of a planet in the far reaches of the solar system, THE TURK focuses on the automata marvels of the eighteenth century that amazed, deceived and inspired their audiences around Europe, but were eventually unmasked.

Wolfgang von Kempelen was a senior court official in Vienna - he toured Europe an America with The Turk. Kempelen's showpiece could automatically move the pieces with its hand, astounding all. Benjamin Franklin and even Napoleon (see Tom Robertson's play Napoleon Vs the Turk) took on the so-called 'intelligent machine.' The great player François-André Danican Philidor challenged The Turk too, winning, but strangely exhausted by his experienced, as though fear were mixed in with the peculiarity of playing a machine...

The strength of Standage's book is its wealth of associated stories. Not only does it conclude with an assessment of the modern chess-playing computer, for example the defeat of world champion Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue in 2006, but the book's style is both gripping for its innovative science - for the tech junkies, if you will - and examination of human psychology, personality, rivalry and morality. Not to over-egg the pudding, but the eighteenth century is here a hybrid of real and make-believe experience, claiming progress and showmanship, and filtered through our minds as audience. Perhaps we are far removed from this Age of Enlightenment that had its fair share of tricksters and conman and theatrical sideshow entertainment. But don't we love being tricked? Are we really that far removed? THE TURK is an intriguing examination of this human mentality: the relationship between the delighting performer and the delighted audience as something distinctly human.

Conflicting theories tried to explain the secret of The Turk, everything from Edgar Allan Poe's MAELZEL'S CHESS PLAYER (1836) to French magician Jean Robert-Houdin's theory that a Polish soldier called Worousky - a paraplegic - was inside the device. You will have to read THE TURK to find out the truth. But ultimately, how could the truth surpass the audience desire to be entertained, even once the secret is known? We need our stories, however they are packaged. THE TURK is a revelation that keeps its secret. You will be puzzled and delighted in equal measure.

Tom Standage is Digital Editor at The Economist and you can buy THE TURK from Amazon here.

Why Do Publishers Hope You're Reading More Crime Fiction?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:52:00 +0000

		Why Do Publishers Hope You're Reading More Crime Fiction?
	Crime often spikes when the economy sputters, but does demand for crime fiction surge as well? Publishers hope so. This year, as print sales continue...

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UK Booksellers Seriously Scared As Amazon Grabs British Online Rival

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:59:00 +0000

		UK Booksellers Seriously Scared As Amazon Grabs British Online Rival
	Amazon acquired its rival The Book Depository yesterday in a move that industry experts warned could tighten the American company's "stranglehold" over the online book...

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Amazon Publishing to Authors: 'Review' Our Books And We Will Promote You

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:05:00 +0000

		Amazon Publishing To Authors: 'Review' Our Books And We Will Promote You
	Amazon Publishing has already shown little interest in industry traditions, and The Observer has now learned how Amazon is looking to revolutionize the process of...

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THE CHESS ARTIST by J. C. Hallman

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:57:00 +0000

The Chess Artist

One of my favorite books on the subculture of chess players, THE CHESS ARTIST is a psychological travelogue about spending time on the road with a chess master. The book is a journey of discovery into the obsessions, passions and - at times, negative impact - chess can have on an individual's life.

Part insider, part outsider, like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, J.C. Hallman is able to explore an adventurous but sometimes darker side to 'the chess life' as he follows chess master Glenn Umstead first around the U.S. as he enters various tournaments, and eventually to the small impoverished Russian province of Kalmykia (ruled over by its president-dictator Kirsan Ilyumzhinov).

By having this double vision, this book both encapsulates and surpasses the ambitious world of chess into more universal expressions of what it means to devote your life to a single focused pursuit, to travel as an expression of identity, to win or lose and what they mean, and most of all, to develop friendships that are complex, challenging and rewarding all at once. THE CHESS ARTIST is a must for chess fans and readers interested in human psychology.

Click here to buy THE CHESS ARTIST on Amazon.

PAUL MORPHY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CHESS THEORY by Macon Shibut

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:24:00 +0000

Paul Morphy and the Evolution of Chess Theory

Two-time Virginia chess champion Macon Shibut's PAUL MORPHY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CHESS THEORY is a great introduction to both Morphy's life and chess games. Paul Morphy was undoubtedly the greatest player of the 19th century, but his reign as a fast and highly developed positional player was brief, his flame burned brightly and short, yet the games remain!

A book for the student as much as the casual admirer, here are more than four hundred of Morphy's best games. PAUL MORPHY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CHESS THEORY includes all the young champion's serious tournament games and 'special games' such as simultaneous and blindfold play. Morphy's games were full of risks and clarity, making them great examples of science and art combined - attacking play but with a purposeful exactitude. Mr. Shibut's book is a testament that Morphy has been forgotten by history, and yet the wonder of his chess games survive. Here is a revelation to any student of Morphy or examiner of chess history and the personality behind the board.

Click here to buy PAUL MORPHY AND THE EVOLUTION OF CHESS THEORY on Amazon.

Move over Twitter... Make Room for Tumblr

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:33:00 +0000

		RICK SANCHEZ: Move Over Twitter... Make Room for Tumblr
	No TV network or newspaper can convey the thoughts, sentiments and feelings of people on the ground as well as their own words can, but there are limitations to getting your news in 140 characters or less. That's where Tumblr comes in.

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Which eReader Beat The Kindle In Ratings?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 23:29:00 +0000

		Which eReader Beat The Kindle In Ratings?
	The Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch Reader is more than merely a worthy competitor to the Kindle, as I wrote when I saw the...

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The Most Bizarre '80s Choose Your Own Adventure Books

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 01:33:00 +0000

		The Most Bizarre '80s Choose Your Own Adventure Books
	Back in the days before video games became as ubiquitous as they are today, Choose Your Own Adventure books were the escape from reality of...

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Query Fail: How NOT To Write a Query Letter

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:07:00 +0000

		Query Fail: How NOT To Write a Query Letter
	Want to write a query letter that will really get the attention of literary agents? There are plenty of ways to do it, but not...

New publishing venture: Parkgate Press goes live!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:54:00 +0000

Parkgate Press is a new, independent publisher of literary and crime fiction (imprint Dionysus Books), non-fiction and academic books (imprint F Street Books) and poetry (imprint Prometheus Poetry). Our hardbacks are published by Parkgate Originals and our e-book by Parkgate Digital.

We seek to bring those titles to the marketplace which are often overlooked by mainstream publishers, works we believe have a distinctive voice and can reach a viable audience. We supply directly to Amazon and BN.com.

We are welcoming submissions and proposals for academic mongraphs (including Ph.D. dissertations), novellas, literary novels (up to 160,000 words), crime novels (up to 100,000 words), short story collections, poetry collections, general non-fiction (especially history), and biographies (especially literary biographies).

All Parkgate Press books are printed on acid-free paper.

Please visit the appropriate submissions page:

For fiction, please see the Dionysus Books submissions page.

For academic, please see the F Street Books submissions page.

For non-fiction, please see the Woodgate Books page.

For poetry, please see the Prometheus Poetry submissions page.

For e-books and audiobooks (a-books), please see the Parkgate Digital page.

For hardbacks, please see the Parkgate Originals page.

For classic literature, please see the Parkgate Classics page.

A British and American Joint Publishing Enterprise.

Interview for Discovery Channel's "Deadly Women" (February 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 21:38:00 +0000

On 16th February 2011, I will be interviewing as a 'talking head' for Beyond Productions's television show "Deadly Women" in New York, NY. No doubt I will be fitted with a suitable office-like set for transplanting DC to NYC!

I have been invited to speak about the subject of my second novel, Kate Webster, one of an episode's featured subjects. "Deadly Women" will air in the US on Investigation Discovery during this fall's 5th season of the show, from August 2011. You can watch previous episodes of the show here.

To read more about my novel THE MURDERESS AND THE HANGMAN please click here.

I am also writing a non-fiction 'true crime' version of the story called THE LADY, THE MAID AND THE HANGMAN here.

Vermont Studio Center (August 2011)

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 20:02:00 +0000

Having enjoyed my time at the I-Park Foundation as a Writer-in-Residence (fiction) in July 2010, I am pleased to attend the Vermont Studio Center on an Artist's Grant in August 2011. Residencies: you can't beat 'em. The location looks beautiful and I hope to complete my third novel American Con Artist on-site. That would be a fine way to end the summer!

With Skull Found, Crime Novel Becomes Reality for GW English Professor!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:12:00 +0000

George Washington University's Professorial Lecturer in English Matt Fullerty, who is currently teaching ENGL 62 (Comedy) and ENGL 52W (English Literature), recently found himself in the middle of a national news story in the UK.

Last weekend, a human skull was dug up in the garden of broadcaster/naturalist Sir David Attenborough in London. It turns out to be the long-missing head of an 1879 murder victim named Martha Thomas, who was killed by her maid Kate Webster.

In a peculiar twist, Dr. Fullerty has been writing about the murder--in the form of a novel--for the past two years. After the murder, Kate impersonated Martha Thomas around London, wearing her clothes and jewelry, and selling her victim's belongings. After trying to flee to Ireland, Kate was arrested and put on trial at the Old Bailey, eventually confessing to her priest. She was hanged in Wandsworth Prison by the "royal hangman" William Marwood on 29 July, 1879.

When the story broke on Saturday in England, Matt became the go-to source for the British press. The result was a feature in Tuesday's Daily Mail about life of the killer (and the man who hanged her).

You can read more about Matt Fullerty's novel The Murderess and the Hangman here. Matt is currently looking for a publisher for his work, and we hope this strange turn-of-events will help him land a book deal in time for Halloween!

How a skull found in David Attenborough's garden has solved one of Victorian Britain's most gruesome murder mysteries

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:06:00 +0000

On a bright, spring morning, coal porter Henry Wheatley and his companion were driving their horse and cart along the Thames.

Shortly before seven o'clock, just before arriving at Barnes Bridge, South London, Wheatley noticed a wooden box lying half-submerged in the water.

He got down from his cart and, with some difficulty, hauled the box on to the bank. Noticing that it was tied with cord, Wheatley took out his knife and cut it open.

He then gave the box a kick and it collapsed. What he saw next turned his stomach. A mass of white flesh fell to the ground. At first, Wheatley's companion suggested they'd stumbled across a box of butcher's offcuts.

Workmen building an extension at the Richmond home of Sir David Attenborough unearthed a skull in the naturalist's garden. The police are almost certain it is that of Mrs Thomas, who was murdered 130 years ago

But Wheatley knew his find was far more grisly - in fact, he'd stumbled across the body parts of a dismembered woman. The date was March 5, 1879. Wheatley immediately reported his find to the police at Barnes.

A pathologist identified the body parts as belonging to a short, somewhat tubby woman.
The corpse had been cut up with an ordinary meat saw, and a contraction of flesh away from some of the bones suggested that the pieces had been boiled.

However, the body was missing not only a foot, but also something vital to help with identification - its head.
Five days later, another gruesome discovery was made - this time on a manure heap in an allotment in Twickenham, about five miles from Barnes. It was a box containing the missing foot, which had been boiled in the same way as the rest of the corpse.

For the next few days, the police could only guess as to the identity of the body - which some newspapers speculated could have been used by medical students for dissection.

However, by the end of the month and with help from a key witness, the police and the public learned the body belonged to a 50-year- old woman called Julia Martha Thomas, who lived in Richmond.

Kate Webster - who murdered her elderly employer with an axe after she returned home from church on a Sunday evening

She had been murdered by her servant, a 30-year-old Irish woman called Katherine Webster.
Because of the gruesome nature of the corpse, the public were fascinated by the case. Some people even removed pebbles and twigs as souvenirs from the small garden of Mrs Thomas's cottage in Park Road, Richmond.

What was never discovered was Mrs Thomas's head. Its location remaining a secret - until last week, a full 130 years later.

On Friday, workmen building an extension at the Richmond home of Sir David Attenborough unearthed a skull in the naturalist's garden, and the police are almost certain it is that of Mrs Thomas.
Should this indeed be the case, then the final chapter of one of the most foul murders in Victorian London can now be written.

As a crime novelist, I've long been fascinated by the tale of the Richmond Murder - and I've even written a book based on the killing.

The murderer, Katherine Webster, was born in a small village in County Wexford in 1849. She spent her teenage years in and out of prison. At around the age of 17, she fled to Liverpool, where she lived as a drifter and furthered her skills as a burglar.

However, she soon found herself locked up and was sentenced to four years of penal servitude in 1867.
Released after three years, she made her way south to London, where she apparently attempted to make an honest living.

In 1873, she lodged in Rose Gardens, Hammersmith, West London, next to a family called the Porters, who would play a major part in her fate six years later.

Some time the following year, she gave birth to a son out of wedlock.

Unable to make ends meet Webster once more turned to thieving and, in 1875, she was sentenced to 18 months in London's Wandsworth prison for a staggering 36 offences of larceny.

As soon as she got out, she re-offended, and was locked up for another year in February 1877. In January 1879, she finally appeared to turn her back on a life of crime by taking a job as a servant for Mrs Thomas, at her home in Richmond.

Aged around 50, and recently widowed, Mrs Thomas was a small woman who took her religion seriously and was a devoted worshipper at the local Presbyterian chapel.

Unsurprisingly, the two women did not get along well. Mrs Thomas often had to reprimand her new servant for her violent temper and less than capable serving skills.

Gruesome: Builders unearthed a skull, believed to solve a 131-year-old riddle, in globe-trotter Sir David Attenborough's garden

On the evening of Sunday, March 2, Mr s Thomas returned from an evening service at the chapel. She found Webster had been drinking and a row ensued. The drunken servant girl was unable to contain herself and during the course of the argument she pushed her employer down the stairs.

She ran down after her, and seeing that Mrs Thomas appeared to be badly hurt, she decided to strangle her.
What happened next is like something out of a horror film. For the next 24 hours, Webster cut up the body of Mrs Thomas and boiled the pieces in a big copper pan.

Why she decided to boil the pieces is not clear, but it is likely she was hoping to disintegrate the flesh. She was unsuccessful and her attempts to burn the body parts also failed.

At this point , Katherine Webster decided that the only way to dispose of the body was to parcel it up and throw it in the Thames.

She placed the pieces in a box, and put the box into a large black bag. Then she assumed Mrs Thomas's identity.

On the late afternoon of Tuesday, March 4, she walked to her friends the Porters, whom she had not seen for months, and told them that she was now called Mrs Thomas and that her aunt had left her a house in Richmond.

Webster asked Mr Porter if he knew of an agent who could sell the house for her.

A little later, Webster, Mr Porter and his teenage son Robert went for a drink at a nearby pub. Robert carried the black bag, and it sat under the table while the three had ales.

Then Webster left - saying that she had to quickly see someone. When she returned, Porter saw that she no longer had the bag.

In fact, she had thrown it off Hammersmith Bridge.

Webster's greed knew no bounds. As well as trying to sell her victim's house, she also attempted to sell all its contents.

A man called John Church offered her £68 for some of the furniture, and she took £18 as a down-payment - insisting it be in cash or gold.

However, Webster was worried her crime would soon be discovered, and on or around March 18 she fled back to County Wexford.

Back in London, John Church began to grow suspicious and tracked down a friend of the real Mrs Thomas, who informed him that she was in fact in her 50s - and was most certainly not in her 30s with an Irish accent.
Church informed the police and, with evidence from Church and the Porters, they quickly put the puzzle together. On the 25th, Webster was arrested and detained at Clerkenwell prison.
At her trial that April, huge crowds thronged around the Central Criminal Court in London. Webster was found guilty, although she denied the murder.

She finally confessed the night before she was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on July 29.

What she never admitted was the location of Mrs Thomas's head, a secret which she took to her death at the end of the long rope.

Now, thanks to the unwitting help of Sir David Attenborough, the case can be finally closed.

Matt Fullerty's author site is www.mattfullerty.com

His novel based on the crime, THE MURDERESS AND THE HANGMAN, is currently with Watson, Little Ltd, and looking for a publisher.

Beryl Bainbridge dies, aged 75

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 17:59:00 +0000

The grande dame of British literature passed away in the early hours of this morning, her literary agent has confirmed.

Grande dame of British literature ... Beryl Bainbridge. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

Maverick, unique and horribly funny, according to her fellow authors: the world of British literature felt an emptier place today following the death of Beryl Bainbridge, aged 75.

She was admitted to hospital last week following a recurrence of cancer, and died suddenly in the early hours of this morning.

One of the grandes dames of the UK's literary scene, Bainbridge was a prolific writer whose short, dark comic novels – which invariably included a streak of tragedy - landed her five shortlistings for the Man Booker prize (and the label of perennial Booker bridesmaid), made her a two-time winner of the Whitbread award and saw her awarded a DBE in 2000.

"She was a wonderful writer in the tradition of British petit guignol that included Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark: coolly stylish, meticulous, beady-eyed and horribly funny. I would have wished her more injury time, but her record stands," said the Man Booker prize-winning author John Banville. "I met [her] on a couple of occasions and was much taken with her manner of stark lugubriousness tempered with high and subversive irony - just like her books."

"Beryl had an absolutely original voice: she was a serious comedian, all of whose novels ended tragically," said the biographer Michael Holroyd. "She presented herself sometimes as a clown, an entertainer, but behind that mask was a committed novelist. She was unique."

"What was so splendid about her was that she was completely maverick," agreed the novelist Penelope Lively, winner of the Booker and Carnegie awards. "When she first began you were very aware of her fresh, startling voice. I remember coming across her first novels and thinking 'goodness, I haven't read anything like this before'."

"Very sad," tweeted Margaret Atwood of her "old pal" Bainbridge this afternoon. "Wondrous original, great sport, loved her books. Hope she has champagne in heaven & a smoke..."

Bainbridge's literary career can be divided neatly in two: her earlier novels, from The Dressmaker and Sweet William to Guardian fiction prize winner The Bottle Factory Outing, drew on her own life – her upbringing in Liverpool, her time working as an actor (including a stint on Coronation Street), her life in Camden in the 1960s. She then began to write historical novels, tackling Scott of the Antarctic in The Birthday Boys, Samuel Johnson in According to Queeney and the voyage of the Titanic in Every Man for Himself, and died with 18 novels, two collections of short stories and a handful of plays for stage and television to her name.
She was, said Lively, "so versatile". Her historical novels "were completely different from her earlier books. She had a distinctive voice, but also a wonderfully pliable and versatile one".

Bainbridge was "putting the finishing touches" to a novel – her 19th – which she had been working on for the last six months when she died, said Ed Wilson at her literary agency Johnson & Alcock. Little, Brown will publish the book, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress – about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy - next year.
It's "fantastic - more like her early, more comic work", said Richard Beswick, her editor at Little, Brown, who called her "a one-off, a total original, a legend that deserves to be a legend". "I don't think anybody else writes like her [although] she's got elements of other people - bits of Harold Pinter and Kafka, that morbidly humorous take on life, that very dark humour," he added.

Known to chain-smoke while she wrote her novels (at an ancient computer), Bainbridge gave up smoking in 2004 but took it up again - "though I smoke far fewer now - about six a day", she told the Observer last year. She was also a keen whisky drinker, getting through half a bottle a week. "It began as a social thing because if you go out to launches you were always offered a drink," she said. "I never saw the point of drinking wine, because you have to drink so much to get that feeling, so I'd always have a whisky."

Lively said that Bainbridge "was always good fun at a party - and unexpected, because you never knew what she was going to say or do".

"I have huge admiration and respect for her," she added. "She was someone who, when she entered a room, you thought 'oh good, there's Beryl'."

Bainbridge told the Guardian in 2007 of how she had become convinced that she would die at the age of 71, like her parents and grandparents. "My generation weren't expected to get as old as this; they all died off quite soon," she said. "I've always been interested in death."

In an interview with the Guardian in 2005, Bainbridge said that she had "everything ready" for her death. "In files. I'm extremely ... no, I'm very ordered in that sort of way. I think it's important. You have to know where things are and how and what."
--
Alison Flood, The Guardian, Friday 2 July, 2010

Is Bernie Madoff 'Free at Last'?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:45:00 +0000

In a recent New York magazine article, writer Steve Fishman sheds light on Bernie Madoff's life behind bars. The lengthy profile reveals a string of insider details, some far more telling than accounts of Madoff's prison rumble back in October.

For starters, the disgraced financier viewed by most as a thief and criminal for swindling an estimated $65 billion in history's worst Ponzi scheme, is regarded as somewhat of a celebrity at the federal correctional complex in Butner, N.C. He has an entourage of "groupies," according to the article, and though he shuns all autograph requests, he has managed to cultivate these relationships over time. Some even go as far as dubbing him "a hero" and turn to him for advice on anything from investing to entrepreneurship.

Then there's Madoff's talent for delegating duties on to others, hiring an inmate to do his laundry for $8 a month -- negotiating a discounted rate nonetheless. On the flip side, Madoff has energetically thrown himself into the prison-work world, even though he's exempted from chores because of his age. Fishman writes:

"He proposed that he serve as the clerk in charge of budget. He had qualifications—he'd been chairman of NASDAQ. 'Hell, no,' said the supervisor to Evans, laughing. 'I do my own budget. I know what he did on the outside.'"

Instead, Madoff was assigned to maintenance and cafeteria floor-sweeping duty.

Perhaps the most startling inclusion in the article is that Madoff reportedly feels little remorse for what he has done. Instead, Fishman suggests he might even be relieved that he is no longer living a lie. The article explains:

"'It was a nightmare for me,' he told investigators, using the word over and over, as if he were the real victim. 'I wish they caught me six years ago, eight years ago,' he said in a little-noticed interview with them."

As for his victims...

"'F--k my victims,' he said, loud enough for other inmates to hear. 'I carried them for twenty years, and now I'm doing 150 years.'"

For an in-depth view on Madoff's life in prison, read Steve Fishman's full article in New York magazine.

--

Message Edited by ReneeDeFranco on 06-09-2010 10:08 AM

Porfiry Does Perugia

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 22:45:00 +0000

Regular readers of The Rap Sheet will undoubtedly recognize the name Roger (or “R.N.”) Morris. He’s not only an infrequent contributor to this blog, but he’s also the author of a pair of novels that feature the fictional mid-19th-century Russian detective, Porfiry Petrovich, introduced in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866): 2007’s The Gentle Axe (published in Great Britain as A Gentle Axe) and 2008’s A Vengeful Longing.

This author was born in Manchester, England, and studied Classics at Cambridge. He worked for many years as a freelance advertising copywriter, while simultaneously penning fiction. He has a composed a horror story, “The Devil’s Drum,” which became a short opera, and was performed at the Purcell Room in London. His first novel, Taking Comfort (Macmillian, 2006) was a contemporary urban thriller. Building on the popularity of his first two Porfiry Petrovich yarns, Morris has recently submitted to his publisher the third book in that series, A Razor Wrapped in Silk.

Morris’ prose is polished, his plotting is superb, and he has a refined sense of black humor. He’s a writer from whom other writers might learn. So, when Morris and his family arrived on holiday recently in the Umbria region of central Italy, we asked him to speak to readers in the local capital of Perugia. The temperature at that time was in the mid-30s, which we feared would put off all but the most enthusiastic fans. Fortunately, though, almost three dozen people turned up to hear us ask Morris questions (and ask a few questions of their own) about The Gentle Axe (which was published in Italy as Il Giudice Porfirij), his evolution as a writer, and his associations with the land and literature of Russia.

Michael Gregorio: Tell us about the curious dedication which introduces A Gentle Axe: “For my mother, Norma, who likes a good murder.” Surely there’s a story there.

R.N. Morris: My mother was a keen reader of what we would probably call “pulp.” She liked nothing better than a good thriller. A good murder, too. I suppose that’s where my own interest in the genre springs from. There were always crime books scattered round the house, and it was inevitable that I would start to read them sooner or later.

MG: What kind of thing were you first drawn to?

RNM: Well, initially, I suppose, Agatha Christie and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, but even before that I had got a taste for suspense by reading Enid Blyton. Do you remember the series of books that she wrote for children featuring the Secret Seven and the Famous Five, where a minor mystery turns into an adventure for the kids who stumble on it? I really loved those books!

MG: So, how did you graduate, let’s say, from reading to writing about crime?

RNM: It all started at school. I always seemed to love writing, and I liked telling stories. And then at secondary school, we had an English teacher who gave us homework at the weekends, and often we had to write a short story. Well, that was fine by me. I didn’t attach much importance to it, until, one day, our teacher was absent, and another teacher sat in with the class and decided that we ought to read our stories out loud. “Who shall we begin with?” he asked the class, and all the kids called out in a single voice, more or less: “Roger, Roger Morris!” That was when I began to wonder whether I might eventually become a writer ...

MG: How did you eventually become a writer?

RNM: Well, it all comes down to mum again. As well as crime novels, she used to read women’s magazines, like Woman and Woman’s Own, and so on, and they all contained short stories. I’d pick them up and read them, and I suppose I learnt from them because I began trying to write stories along the same lines. Inevitably, I began to submit them, too. But I just kept getting rejection after rejection ...

MG: But that changed, too.

RNM: Well, yes. I suddenly realized that I was trying to write for older women, and that maybe I wasn’t ready for it. I also realized that there were other magazines aimed at teenagers--mainly girls, again--and I had a go at writing for them. And finally, one of my stories was published. That was a real thrill for me. Well, I did some more of those while I was studying at university, and, of course, the next step was to think about writing a novel.

MG: Which you did.

RNM: Well, I did, but they didn’t really go anywhere. I have a suitcase full of unpublished novels under the bed. Eventually, I found myself an agent, and the books were sent out to publishers, and they came back again, and all with the same result. Zilch!

MG: Just like us! Mike [aka Michael G. Jacob, the English half of the husband-and-wife writing team who publish as “Michael Gregorio”] has had three agents, Daniela [De Gregorio] has had two, and we have the same stack of old papers hidden away somewhere. What about you, Roger?

RNM: I’ve had two agents, as well. The second one, my present agent, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, did the rounds with the books, and it was just the same, they didn’t really seem to be going anywhere. He was on the point of giving up, I think, but then I had this idea for a crime novel featuring Porfiry Petrovich and St. Petersburg. His eyes lit up at that and I could tell I was on to something.

MG: People in Italy don’t really understand how important a literary agent is. Here, they hardly exist, you know, because so much fiction--over 90 percent--is imported from America and the European countries. OK, Roger, so you had an agent, you were writing novels, and suddenly you got a break. Well, in fact you got two breaks!

RNM: Yeah, that was funny, really. I wrote the first Porfiry book, A Gentle Axe, my agent sent it out, and [publisher] Faber and Faber expressed an immediate interest. At almost the same moment, Macmillan were keen to take on a literary novel--let’s call it a novel of “contemporary interest”--which I had written, entitled Taking Comfort. Well, that caused a bit of confusion. I didn’t want to tell either publisher in case they both pulled out.

MG: And thus, you published both books. One as R.N. Morris, the other as Roger Morris. So, in a sense, you were free to choose the direction that you wanted to take after that experience. Why did you concentrate on crime-writing?

RNM: Can I say “for the money”? It wasn’t only that, of course. When Faber bought the first Porfiry book, A Gentle Axe, the contract was for two books, so I was lined up straight away to write a second one, and I already had ideas for four novels featuring him … Also, I was fascinated by the prospect of working in the crime genre; I saw it as a real challenge. I wanted to know if I could do it.

MG: Where did your interest in Porfiry Petrovich come from?

RNM: Well, I had started reading the Russians in English translation, and I picked up a copy of Crime and Punishment from the library. I was taken in by the amazing blurb on the back cover, really. It concentrated almost entirely on the figure of Porfiry, who was described as being “one of the very first detectives in fiction.” It made the book sound like a crime novel--which it was, of course--though when I read it, I realized how minor a role Porfiry actually plays. Still, I was fascinated by the book, hooked by the crime that Dostoevsky described, the leaden atmosphere and the crushing poverty of the time, as well as by the huge religious and philosophical ideas in the book. I saw a lot of scope in the character of Porfiry Petrovich, too, and I dreamt of doing something with him. At the same time, it all seemed a bit daunting. I didn’t speak Russian, I hadn’t been to Russia. I didn’t really know how to go about it. The more I thought about it, however, the more I wanted to do it. In the end, I sat down and I tried.

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE:How did you go about researching the book?

RNM: Mainly through reading Russian novels of the time, particularly Dostoevsky, of course. Also, I studied street maps of St. Petersburg, did a lot of reading, used the Internet. It was more complicated than it sounds, because so much had changed--the names of streets and squares, for example--as a consequence of the [1917 Russian] Revolution. Finally, I thought, well, it’s all there, Dostoevsky knew the place, and it worked for him. I sort of followed the topography as he had laid it out ...

QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: And you’d never been to Russia?

RNM: Not then. I went on holiday shortly after the first book was published, and while I was writing the second novel, A Vengeful Longing. I was amazed, you know. It was a surreal sort of experience. Very dreamlike. I seemed to know the place like the back of my hand, it matched up pretty well with what I had imagined and written. And with what I’d read of Dostoevsky, obviously. I met a Russian guy--a genuine St. Petersburgian called Andrey--who was on my flight over. We got chatting on the Metro into St. Petersburg. He told me his life story and offered to take me on a walking tour of the city. I gave him a copy of A Gentle Axe and he contacted me after he had read it and told me he was struck by “the strong Russian, St. Petersburg feel of it.” I think he had been a bit skeptical, with me being an Englishman.

MG: And there’s more of Porfiry Petrovich in the pipeline, right?

RNM: Well, I have just submitted the third novel in the series, and I’m pretty pleased with it. It is entitled A Razor Wrapped in Silk, and it features the abduction of a child factory laborer and the sensational murder of a society beauty--two crimes from opposite ends of the social spectrum.

MG: It sounds fantastic. We look forward to reading it, and to seeing the Italian translation of A Vengeful Longing, which should be appearing soon in Italy. A final question, Roger: Will A Razor Wrapped in Silk bring the Porfiry Petrovich series to an end?

RNM: Book 4 is all planned out and I’m ready to start writing it just as soon as we get home!

(Author photo by Claire Morris.)

---

Michael Gregorio, The Rap Sheet, Tuesday September 8, 2009

Unpublished Stieg Larsson manuscripts discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Matt Fullerty) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:45:00 +0000

A young Stieg Larsson on holiday in 1987. Photograph: Per Jarl / Expo / SCANPIX/Press Association Images

Sci-fi stories The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo author wrote when he was 17 and sent to a magazine discovered in library.

The National Library of Sweden has unearthed unpublished manuscripts by a young Stieg Larsson, author of the bestselling Millennium Trilogy, which begins with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

According to Sweden's deputy national librarian, Magdalena Gram, "they were donated to the national library in 2007 and well known by us. The manuscripts were an integrated part of an archive from the Jules Verne Magasinet, a magazine with science fiction materials."

The science fiction stories, written around 1970 when Larsson was 17 and called The Crystal Balls and The Flies, were sent to the magazine by the teenager in the hope of having them published, but were rejected. In his accompanying letter to the magazine, Larsson described himself as "a 17-year old guy from Umea with dreams of becoming an author and journalist". Larsson did go on to become a founding editor of the magazine Expo, and then a hugely popular author, but did not live to see all his dreams become reality.
Larsson died suddenly at the age of 50 in 2004, just a few months after selling the first book in the Millennium series and leaving completed manuscripts of the two subsequent books. There are also believed to be 200 pages of a sequel to the trilogy stored on the late author's laptop.

Given the global success of the trilogy – the books have sold 22m copies in 42 countries and a Hollywood adaptation is under way – there is likely to be massive interest in any unpublished material, despite its age.
However, the discovery is also likely to intensify the bitter dispute around Larsson's estate. When the author died intestate, his partner of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson, lost all rights to his estate to Larsson's father and brother. In 2005, she refused an offer by the family to hand over Larsson's computer in exchange for the half of the flat she had shared with him. There is speculation that outlines for six further novels are also contained in the laptop.

Gram could not say if the stories would ever be read by a wider audience. "A national library is not a publisher. The rights to the texts are owned by Stieg Larsson's father and his brother," she said, and confirmed that the library was in contact with Larsson's heirs.

While fans devour posthumously discovered and published work, its publication does not always enhance a writer's reputation. Philip Larkin's Trouble at Willow Gables and Michaelmas Term at St Bride's, two novels of lesbian intrigue set at a girls' boarding school, published after his death in 1985, led many to agree wholeheartedly with Larkin's own note that they were "unforgettably bad". Last year saw the publication of Vladimir Nabokov's uncompleted final novel, The Original of Laura, that he had requested be destroyed upon his death. Again the critical response was overwhelmingly negative.
--
Michelle Pauli
The Guardian
Wednesday 9 June 2010