Edmund Lester

Before you start thinking I am going to mention rejections, stop! I am not. Rejections are par for the course. You come into this game knowing you will get rejections. The most depressing part for me is finding the markets. I often spend more time trying to find where to submit a piece than I did writing it. And I have to say it is just plain annoying. I have found many places to submit stories, reviews and articles over the months I've been doing this. And I am grateful to them all for being so accepting, helpful and kind to me (and for the acceptances I've received of course). but I don't want to overload them with submissions - for one thing many of these sites limit the amount you can send for an issue. So having a newly written review in hand I set out to find a possible market for it. That was two hours ago and I am still looking...

After a period of pretty much ignoring my fotolog page - through pressures of work then job hunting and prioritising my writing over this kind - I have decided to start posting to it again. And hopefully I will get back to some kind of regularity. to this end, yesterday and today I have added two new photographs - of Rome's Pantheon and a terracotta-tiled roof in Turin (as seen from the Mole) If you want to go over and see my fotolog - all images are places in Italy, you won't get any cutesy family shots on my blog - you can find it by clicking the link below http://www.fotolog.com/ielester Hope there's something there you'll enjoy. IE

I've just received an update from nossa . They have decided to run another of my reviews in the August issue - that of Graham Masterton's The 5th Witch. So all three book reviews they are featuring in this next issue were written by yours truly. Kinda cool.

I have two new reviews appearing in Issue 4 of nossa morte. The first is a review of Tim Lebbon and Christopher Golden's Mind the Gap, the other of Nate Kenyon's Bloodstone. Should be available early next month. you can find them at http://www.nossamorte.com/

A little over a week ago an author I particularly enjoy reading committed suicide. I tried writing this a few days ago but the words just wouldn't come. If you asked me to list my favourite authors at any single point over the last few years Thomas M. Disch is unlikely to have ever featured on my list. Isaac Asimov, Edmund Cooper, Mike Resnick, Robert Charles Wilson, Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, Orson Scott Card, Paul di Filippo, Robert Heinlein, Stephen King and Zoran Zivkovic would all have been mentioned at one time or another - depending upon my mood. But not Disch. Thinking of that now I find it odd. I have found his writing consistent. Every book entertained me. He was a great writer and I am saddened that once I have read all that currently exist, then there will be no more. There will be no new books in the future. But equally I am saddened by the details I read - of his depression, of his mourning his partner, of his fears over eviction. His life he obviously felt n...

The miracle of miracles happened this week. A book exists that I have read and enjoyed, my wife has read and , and both her parents have also read and enjoyed. And the miracle title is Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader - a delightful short novel with Her Majesty The Queen as central character. It is a little irreverent, although in a very gentle way. And an absolute pleasure to read.

The rain's warmer. Okay, it's an old joke, but this supposed to be July. It's cold, it's raining all the time. Ah well, it does make it easier to be at the keyboard.