Stuck in a Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy weekend one and all! Hope you have a fun couple of days, and what better way to kick off the party than with some links and suchlike...

1.) The blog post - is courtesy of everyone's favourite literary foxes, those good folks at Vulpes Libris. They've done a great interview with Theresa Breslin, one of the brains behind the Save Our Libraries protest in Edinburgh. Click here to read it - and feel a little inspired for the cause. If you do feel inspired, here's the protest statement you can sign.

2.) The link - is to Short Fire Press. They publish short stories for e-readers at 99p a pop - having looked at Penguin's Mini Modern Classics yesterday, this seems an appropriate time to bring to light another publisher behind the short story cause. Their catalogue is very much hand-picked, with exciting debut authors as well as better known ones. Something to investigate for those of you with electronic devices.

3.) The book - is The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons. This is something of an advance warning, since it isn't published til April - but I'm excited about it. I don't think I've yet mentioned the Sceptre Books lunch event which I attended last Thursday - a few bloggers, authors, and publishing folk hob-nobbed, and it was a pleasure to meet lots of lovely people. Especially great to meet were Jenn Ashworth and Natasha Solomons, two authors for whom I have great admiration. I have even more admiration for Natasha now that I know she wrote her delightful first novel Mr. Rosenblum's List (review here) whilst studying for a PhD (how?!) and am looking forward to reading The Novel in the Viola. This is what the publisher has to say:

When they started coming for people like us, I was forced to swap my life of champagne and glittering parties in bohemian Vienna for the cap and apron of a parlour maid in a country house on the Dorset coast.

I knew nothing about England, except that I wouldn't like it. But then, clutching a copy of Mrs Beeton`s Household management that I could barely read, I saw Tyneford for the first time. That great house on the bay, where servants polished the silver and served drinks on the lawn, where Kit caused an outrage by dancing with me, where Mr Rivers read the letter on the beach that changed everything.

And now the house and that world is gone. All that remains is my story of the sea, of love lost and found, and of a novel hidden inside a viola.