Since I started researching and writing my books I've occasionally come across articles that promised great new possibilities, but that wouldn't let me access them unless I coughed up forty dollars or the like. Being on a tight budget (or a cheapskate, take your pick) I balked at paying out cash on the off-chance that I might learn how some Roman tied that loin-cloth thing that passed for underwear in the first century, or confirmation that they may not, in fact, have eaten dormice stuffed with larks tongues. There were a number of these sites, but the main one was something called JSTOR, which is an online repository of academic journals.
So there I was last week, frustrated again, when I looked at the list of institutions who actually do have access and one of them was the National Library of Scotland. Five minutes later I have a virtual library card and I'm in, feeling like a kid who's just found a fiver outside a sweety shop.
So I've spent the last couple of days with academics from Oxford and Harvard and the University of whotsit in Baaden Wurttenberg picking up the kind of nit-picking detail you can't get anywhere else on the planet and loving every dry, dusty mind-numbing minute of it. One of the most interesting things is how seldom articles on similar subjects agree with each other, which finally brings me to the point of this post.
I had an e-mail from a fellow author, James Mace, an American gentleman who writes the Soldier of Rome series, and he made the point that he always sticks as faithfully to known history as possible. Which begged the question: What do we mean by known history when we're talking about half a dozen sources who died two thousand years ago?
Reading my wordy academic works brought home that what we think of as known history is incredibly mixed up and messy. Roman historians, Tacitus, Suetonius and Dio, were writing decades, or in some cases hundreds of years after the events they're recording. Unless they tell you who was consul (and even that isn't 100 per cent reliable) they don't provide dates. Tacitus wasn't big on geography and he had a habit of missing out important detail. Suetonius lumps all the good stuff about an emperor at the start and the bad bits at the end, with no hint at when they happened. Dio pinched passages from earlier writers and added a few juicy bits. All of them will happily put words in their subjects mouths to make a political point, but I've read historians who quote Boudicca's speech before her last battle as if Dio was there taking it down in shorthand and we should believe every word. We don't know if the Boudiccan rebellion was in 59, 60 or 61AD, or if it happened over two weeks or two years. Dio's history of Claudius's invasion of Britain mentions an elephant, which gave me the foundation for my first two books. Fine, maybe there was, maybe there wasn't, but some quite highly regarded historian turned elephant into elephants, and somebody else turned elephants into a squadron of war elephants, which is just plain wrong. Yet kids will read it in their history books and believe it.
What I'm trying to say, in my long-winded way, is that when it comes to ancient Rome we don't know anything. We have sources and we have conflicting opinions about what those sources are saying and what they actually mean to say. We don't have facts, we have supposition and interpretation of tiny pieces of evidence.
So when you're writing historical fiction should you stick rigidly to the facts, or do you just go ahead and use what's there to write a good book and make it as authentic as possible?
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Thursday, 20 January 2011
I've seen the future and it might just work
One of the first recommendations at today's Working as a Writer in the 21st Century conference at the Scottish Book Trust in Edinburgh was to keep your websites up to date, so, as you see, I've taken that one on board at least.
It was a day that gave me an enormous amount to think about and increased my confidence that it is actually possible to make a long term living from writing, even in these gloomy times of dwindling advances, closing libraries and smaller publishers' lists.
It started off with a talk from Julian Westaby of Dunning/Creating Sparks who gave the forty or so assembled writers and agents a crash course in how to combine Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr into one big powerful marketing tool for their books and themselves. I'd never considered that either my books or, more importantly, me, lent themselves to video promotions, but by the end of his talk I was thinking how I could combine my love of Roman sites in Scotland with passages from the books to create something that people might be interested in.
Jenny Todd, from Canongate, gave us an insight into how e-books and the internet are changing the publishing industry's whole approach to marketing, with the emphasis on the above video promos, but independent bookseller Rosamund de la Hey and Birlin marketing boss Jan Rutherford made the case for the old-fashioned virtues of getting out there and meeting your customers.
Authors Sara Sheridan, Barry Hutchison and Janet Paisley used their own experiences to prove that there are a host of opportunities for writers beyond books if they'd only get out there and look for them. Everything from writing for TV, radio, the theatre, ghost-writing and hosting individual corporate events with a unique twist.
And finally, Aly Barr from Creative Scotland, Caitrin Armstrong, of the SBT and Borders Book Festival and Booknation boss Alistair Moffat talked about how help and support for writers is just an e-mail away.
So what did I learn? Firstly that its not just enough to write. You have to be proactive, both in your self-promotion and seeking out opportunities. Secondly that you have to be innovative and use every technological tool at your disposal. And thirdly, that with all the dynamism, energy and talent on display it's clear that Scotland's literary world is in good health, good heart and in pretty good shape to take on the challenges of the 21st century.
It was a day that gave me an enormous amount to think about and increased my confidence that it is actually possible to make a long term living from writing, even in these gloomy times of dwindling advances, closing libraries and smaller publishers' lists.
It started off with a talk from Julian Westaby of Dunning/Creating Sparks who gave the forty or so assembled writers and agents a crash course in how to combine Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr into one big powerful marketing tool for their books and themselves. I'd never considered that either my books or, more importantly, me, lent themselves to video promotions, but by the end of his talk I was thinking how I could combine my love of Roman sites in Scotland with passages from the books to create something that people might be interested in.
Jenny Todd, from Canongate, gave us an insight into how e-books and the internet are changing the publishing industry's whole approach to marketing, with the emphasis on the above video promos, but independent bookseller Rosamund de la Hey and Birlin marketing boss Jan Rutherford made the case for the old-fashioned virtues of getting out there and meeting your customers.
Authors Sara Sheridan, Barry Hutchison and Janet Paisley used their own experiences to prove that there are a host of opportunities for writers beyond books if they'd only get out there and look for them. Everything from writing for TV, radio, the theatre, ghost-writing and hosting individual corporate events with a unique twist.
And finally, Aly Barr from Creative Scotland, Caitrin Armstrong, of the SBT and Borders Book Festival and Booknation boss Alistair Moffat talked about how help and support for writers is just an e-mail away.
So what did I learn? Firstly that its not just enough to write. You have to be proactive, both in your self-promotion and seeking out opportunities. Secondly that you have to be innovative and use every technological tool at your disposal. And thirdly, that with all the dynamism, energy and talent on display it's clear that Scotland's literary world is in good health, good heart and in pretty good shape to take on the challenges of the 21st century.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
E-books, pricing and the end of the world as we know it?
Like everybody else involved with writing and publishing, the subject of e-books has been on my mind. Kindle was the best selling Christmas product on Amazon and more and more people I know seem to be buying e-readers of one sort or another. It's not something I plan to do myself. Mainly because I like proper books. A book for me is a treasure, to be kept for a lifetime and cherished, picked up and read at leisure. Some of them are works of art. It gives me pleasure to own books. I don't see owning a computer file on Kindle ever coming close to that feeling.
On the other hand, books, all kinds of books, are my future, so there's no way I'm going to be able to ignore what's happening.
It was brought home to me when I got my last review for Hero of Rome on Amazon. The reviewer loved the book, but he gave it only four stars because he thought the price was too high on Kindle. Just to ram the point home he got it out of the library instead and tagged it as a lost sale.
I took a look at the comments after some learned American was pontificating on his blog the other day about the future of publishing and if writers could ever be good publishers. His answer seemed to be a resounding No. It seemed a fair question to ask, and a reasonable answer, but just about every comment was on the subject of rip-off pricing of e-books.
Hero of Rome retails at £9.30 on Kindle. Caligula and Claudius just below a fiver. Now, you could argue, fairly, that the price differential is justified because Hero is pretty new and the others have been out for a couple of years. What's more difficult to justify is the differential between the e-book and the print version. A huge amount of investment goes into the printed edition (printing costs, cover design, paper etc.) whereas, and please don't quote me on this, as I understand it an e-book is about a 1MB file that is uploaded and needs a bit of editing. Then again, I doubt that the publishers make much of a profit from each copy of the print version, so there's also an argument that they're perfectly entitled to make a bit more on the electronic version.
The e-book anarchist movement seems to be of the opinion that no e-book should cost more than £1, and you'll find that most of those in the Kindle top 20 are in that price range, many of them by self-published authors who are doing a great job of marketing their books and are getting the lion's share of the price back in profit. That's fine and I don't grudge any writer a penny of what they earn. What worries me is that if Corgi or Bantam are forced to reduce the prices of my books to £1 or less and e-books take over the world, they won't make a profit, there'll be no decent advances, which are already few and far between, and fewer high quality, properly edited, really good books. - oh, and I won't make a living.
So what's the answer? Some sort of compromise probably. But the honest one is that I've no idea. The problem is that neither has anyone else.
On the other hand, books, all kinds of books, are my future, so there's no way I'm going to be able to ignore what's happening.
It was brought home to me when I got my last review for Hero of Rome on Amazon. The reviewer loved the book, but he gave it only four stars because he thought the price was too high on Kindle. Just to ram the point home he got it out of the library instead and tagged it as a lost sale.
I took a look at the comments after some learned American was pontificating on his blog the other day about the future of publishing and if writers could ever be good publishers. His answer seemed to be a resounding No. It seemed a fair question to ask, and a reasonable answer, but just about every comment was on the subject of rip-off pricing of e-books.
Hero of Rome retails at £9.30 on Kindle. Caligula and Claudius just below a fiver. Now, you could argue, fairly, that the price differential is justified because Hero is pretty new and the others have been out for a couple of years. What's more difficult to justify is the differential between the e-book and the print version. A huge amount of investment goes into the printed edition (printing costs, cover design, paper etc.) whereas, and please don't quote me on this, as I understand it an e-book is about a 1MB file that is uploaded and needs a bit of editing. Then again, I doubt that the publishers make much of a profit from each copy of the print version, so there's also an argument that they're perfectly entitled to make a bit more on the electronic version.
The e-book anarchist movement seems to be of the opinion that no e-book should cost more than £1, and you'll find that most of those in the Kindle top 20 are in that price range, many of them by self-published authors who are doing a great job of marketing their books and are getting the lion's share of the price back in profit. That's fine and I don't grudge any writer a penny of what they earn. What worries me is that if Corgi or Bantam are forced to reduce the prices of my books to £1 or less and e-books take over the world, they won't make a profit, there'll be no decent advances, which are already few and far between, and fewer high quality, properly edited, really good books. - oh, and I won't make a living.
So what's the answer? Some sort of compromise probably. But the honest one is that I've no idea. The problem is that neither has anyone else.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
Season's Greetings
First Christmas has passed successfully. Daughter Nikki made it home two hours late from Madrid, but 24 hours ahead of the snowstorm that closed Edinburgh airport to all but departures.
She's off to Canada with her boyfriend Greg (blizzards permitting) on Thursday so an early Christmas celebration was required. It wasn't the traditional Jackson Christmas - we usually have Beef Wellington a la Doug - for some reason she opted for turkey, but it was traditional in most other ways. We had eight people at the dinner table, but we catered for sixteen. The cooks almost came to blows over how to stuff a turkey (who can tell the difference between neck and backside when they're both missing?) and when to start the veg, but despite the surfeit of giant kitchen knives bloodshed was avoided. On the plus side my other daughter Kara's smoked salmon and mackerel pate concoction was undoubtedly dish of the day and will be repeated. Secret Santas were exchanged and Ruaridh's gift of nuclear grade tabasco proved capable of setting fire to the street. It's now en route to Porton Down for examination.
On a more literary note, mine (courtesy of Gregor) was a winner. I now have a brilliant history of 69AD The Year of the Four Emperors, which would have played a pivotal part in my Hero of Rome, Valerius Verren's life and was probably the most traumatic eighteen months in the Empire's history. Valerius has already become acquainted with two of the main protagonists and he definitely has a role to play. Who knows if it's a story I'll ever write, but it's great to have another story that you are desperate to tell.
The countdown now begins to Christmas proper and the spirit is willing, even though the flesh is a little underwhelmed.
We'll be thinking of absent friends and I hope you will too.
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.
She's off to Canada with her boyfriend Greg (blizzards permitting) on Thursday so an early Christmas celebration was required. It wasn't the traditional Jackson Christmas - we usually have Beef Wellington a la Doug - for some reason she opted for turkey, but it was traditional in most other ways. We had eight people at the dinner table, but we catered for sixteen. The cooks almost came to blows over how to stuff a turkey (who can tell the difference between neck and backside when they're both missing?) and when to start the veg, but despite the surfeit of giant kitchen knives bloodshed was avoided. On the plus side my other daughter Kara's smoked salmon and mackerel pate concoction was undoubtedly dish of the day and will be repeated. Secret Santas were exchanged and Ruaridh's gift of nuclear grade tabasco proved capable of setting fire to the street. It's now en route to Porton Down for examination.
 |
| Nikki and Kara: dishes of the day |
The countdown now begins to Christmas proper and the spirit is willing, even though the flesh is a little underwhelmed.
We'll be thinking of absent friends and I hope you will too.
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.
Monday, 6 December 2010
You can't judge a book by its cover - or its reviews
I was going to have two weeks away from the computer, but I only lasted about ten days and to be honest my fingers were itching to be at the keyboard the moment I got back from my weekend in Madrid and from choice, not necessity. You just can't escape the next book.
But it gave me a chance to step back from things and take a slightly more detached view of books and book people. There were a couple of interesting stories in the papers about the Amazon review system, with suggestions that certain writers are planting poor reviews on their rivals' websites. It's not a new accusation; a friend of mine is certain that a much more successful author in the same genre has conducted a prolonged campaign against him under half a dozen different names. Only a couple of months ago the Russian scholar Orlando Figes was forced to apologise for savaging a fellow historian's books on Amazon under a false name.
Then there was the revelation that some publishing companies actually pay to plant glowing reviews of their authors' work on the site. A PR film has cheerfully admitted charging £5,000 for supplying the service, which probably makes it more lucrative to write reviews than most books. I suppose that helps explain why it's amazing how often when you look at a novel's Amazon page the first half a dozen or more five star reviews are followed by a one or two star as the actual paying customers get involved. Sometimes it's because it's the author has asked his mates to post a review if they've enjoyed his book, which I suppose is fair enough. But some writers seem to have a lot more mates than others.
Taken together it makes you wonder if the whole online review system isn't totally flawed.
Not that anything will change. No book publisher is going to take a single step back from the internet when the entire industry is in danger of being sucked into whirling vortex that is the world wide web. And, let's be perfectly honest, for a writer there's nothing better than someone giving their unbiased opinion that you've produced a masterpiece.
The only people who can improve the situation are the book buying public. If the first few pages of each and every book on Amazon were available in preview it would give readers the opportunity to try before they buy and there's no better, honest or more straightforward way of judging a product than that.
But it gave me a chance to step back from things and take a slightly more detached view of books and book people. There were a couple of interesting stories in the papers about the Amazon review system, with suggestions that certain writers are planting poor reviews on their rivals' websites. It's not a new accusation; a friend of mine is certain that a much more successful author in the same genre has conducted a prolonged campaign against him under half a dozen different names. Only a couple of months ago the Russian scholar Orlando Figes was forced to apologise for savaging a fellow historian's books on Amazon under a false name.
Then there was the revelation that some publishing companies actually pay to plant glowing reviews of their authors' work on the site. A PR film has cheerfully admitted charging £5,000 for supplying the service, which probably makes it more lucrative to write reviews than most books. I suppose that helps explain why it's amazing how often when you look at a novel's Amazon page the first half a dozen or more five star reviews are followed by a one or two star as the actual paying customers get involved. Sometimes it's because it's the author has asked his mates to post a review if they've enjoyed his book, which I suppose is fair enough. But some writers seem to have a lot more mates than others.
Taken together it makes you wonder if the whole online review system isn't totally flawed.
Not that anything will change. No book publisher is going to take a single step back from the internet when the entire industry is in danger of being sucked into whirling vortex that is the world wide web. And, let's be perfectly honest, for a writer there's nothing better than someone giving their unbiased opinion that you've produced a masterpiece.
The only people who can improve the situation are the book buying public. If the first few pages of each and every book on Amazon were available in preview it would give readers the opportunity to try before they buy and there's no better, honest or more straightforward way of judging a product than that.
Sunday, 14 November 2010
What's in a name?
When I was at a writers' conference recently a top London agent told the assembled literary hopefuls that if they wanted to get a crime novel published the best thing they could do was to put a diagonal line through every O in their name. He was joking, of course, but you only have to look at the number of Scandinavian crime novelists on the shelves to take his point.
By spooky coincidence, I have a couple of crime books sitting about somewhere just waiting for their final polish, but if they're ever published I doubt it will be under my own name. I might go for my recently discovered Serbian nom de plume, Daglas Dzekson, but then again, it could be something completely different. Whether its his real name or not, I don't know, but Harlan Coben caught my eye, and I pondered whether I might call myself Howden Burn, after the cowpat filled, nettle infested valley from which I frequently returned cold, wet, filthy but invariably happy, when I was a kid.
I have a hunch that Howden Burn is the kind of name that would light a fire in the American market, and cracking the American market is every (commercial, and I'm nothing if not commercial) novelist's Holy Grail. The Hardback (yes, I did say Hardback) sales top 10 for 2009 tells you exactly why. Despite the publishing industry's wails, it is still a huge, vibrant and voracious readership with an eclectic appetite that isn't particularly made clear in the list below.
1. The Lost Symbol: A Novel. Dan Brown. Doubleday (5,543,643).
2. *The Associate: A Novel. John Grisham. Doubleday.
3. The Help. Kathryn Stockett. Putnam/Amy Einhorn (1,104,617).
4. I, Alex Cross. James Patterson. Little, Brown (1,040,976).
5. The Last Song. Nicholas Sparks. Grand Central (1,032,829).
6. *Ford County. John Grisham. Doubleday.
7. Finger Lickin' Fifteen. Janet Evanovich. St. Martin's (977,178).
8. The Host: A Novel. Stephenie Meyer. Little, Brown (912,165).
9. *Under the Dome. Stephen King. Scribner
10. Pirate Latitudes. Michael Crichton. Harper (855,638).
(Source: Publishers Weekly)
So how do you crack the US? If I knew that, I'd be writing this on a Caribbean beach and not looking out of my spare bedroom window at a dreich, grey monument to the Scottish Calvinist tradition. Clearly, it helps to be American, which, at first glance, you might think is a drawback. But if you're going to lie about your name why not lie about your background? Howden Burn could be a one-legged Californian Vietnam vet who gave up booze and found God before hearing voices in his head that told him to write about a cross-dressing serial killer.
It also helps if you write like an American. I was surprised that Stieg Larsson's Girl series did so well in the US (actually I was surprised it did so well anywhere) because it's written in a very dry, dense style that doesn't appear to fit with the quickfire, snappy prose that Americans seem drawn to - I exempt Dan Brown from that, naturally - although the late lamented Stieg has become a worldwide phenomenon and also coincidentally fits neatly into the third criteria: his books start with The (five out of ten above is a pretty good strike rate).
If anyone has any more sage advice on how to crack America, please let me know. I'm just off to start a gentle rewrite of my next book, but one, The Doomsday Testament. And yes, it would fit very nicely about number 2 or 3.
By spooky coincidence, I have a couple of crime books sitting about somewhere just waiting for their final polish, but if they're ever published I doubt it will be under my own name. I might go for my recently discovered Serbian nom de plume, Daglas Dzekson, but then again, it could be something completely different. Whether its his real name or not, I don't know, but Harlan Coben caught my eye, and I pondered whether I might call myself Howden Burn, after the cowpat filled, nettle infested valley from which I frequently returned cold, wet, filthy but invariably happy, when I was a kid.
I have a hunch that Howden Burn is the kind of name that would light a fire in the American market, and cracking the American market is every (commercial, and I'm nothing if not commercial) novelist's Holy Grail. The Hardback (yes, I did say Hardback) sales top 10 for 2009 tells you exactly why. Despite the publishing industry's wails, it is still a huge, vibrant and voracious readership with an eclectic appetite that isn't particularly made clear in the list below.
1. The Lost Symbol: A Novel. Dan Brown. Doubleday (5,543,643).
2. *The Associate: A Novel. John Grisham. Doubleday.
3. The Help. Kathryn Stockett. Putnam/Amy Einhorn (1,104,617).
4. I, Alex Cross. James Patterson. Little, Brown (1,040,976).
5. The Last Song. Nicholas Sparks. Grand Central (1,032,829).
6. *Ford County. John Grisham. Doubleday.
7. Finger Lickin' Fifteen. Janet Evanovich. St. Martin's (977,178).
8. The Host: A Novel. Stephenie Meyer. Little, Brown (912,165).
9. *Under the Dome. Stephen King. Scribner
10. Pirate Latitudes. Michael Crichton. Harper (855,638).
(Source: Publishers Weekly)
So how do you crack the US? If I knew that, I'd be writing this on a Caribbean beach and not looking out of my spare bedroom window at a dreich, grey monument to the Scottish Calvinist tradition. Clearly, it helps to be American, which, at first glance, you might think is a drawback. But if you're going to lie about your name why not lie about your background? Howden Burn could be a one-legged Californian Vietnam vet who gave up booze and found God before hearing voices in his head that told him to write about a cross-dressing serial killer.
It also helps if you write like an American. I was surprised that Stieg Larsson's Girl series did so well in the US (actually I was surprised it did so well anywhere) because it's written in a very dry, dense style that doesn't appear to fit with the quickfire, snappy prose that Americans seem drawn to - I exempt Dan Brown from that, naturally - although the late lamented Stieg has become a worldwide phenomenon and also coincidentally fits neatly into the third criteria: his books start with The (five out of ten above is a pretty good strike rate).
If anyone has any more sage advice on how to crack America, please let me know. I'm just off to start a gentle rewrite of my next book, but one, The Doomsday Testament. And yes, it would fit very nicely about number 2 or 3.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
All the world's a stage
As a writer, you tend to spend a lot of time on your own. You develop an outer skin that encourages other people to flow off it like a drop of olive oil on a non-stick frying pan. You lose the power to communicate in words of more than one syllable. Yes. No. Tea. Out. You don't need a Do not Disturb sign, because it's written on the back of your head - the only bit of you anyone ever sees.
Then your book comes out and everybody wants to be your friend. The shy, reclusive creature who has just spent six months in solitary and has forgotten what the sun looks like is invited to sign books, speak at events and appear before vast (hopefully) audiences at book festivals.
Suddenly the hermit has to transmute into the performer.
Some take to it quite naturally, for others the process is terrifying and as much fun as a visit to the proctologist. But these days no writer can avoid it, any more than they can avoid writing blogs, keeping their Facebook page turning over or Twittering about things no-one is really interested in
But just how much does a writer have to be an entertainer?
I've come to enjoy talking about my books and the craft of writing, even to large audiences, because generally they're there because they're interested in what I have to say. But I know my limitations. I was at the Manchester Literary Society/Historical Novel Society weekend in Manchester. On the Saturday I appeared on a panel with four women novelists: talented, witty, feisty and clever ... and me. It was great fun, especially when they started to talk about sex and I began to slide down into my seat before the inevitable happened.
'So what was sex like in Roman times?'
Now an entertainer would immediately have recalled that the sex in Caligula was so erotic that his wife thought he must be having an affair. Doug Jackson, author, threw up his hands and said: 'I surrender!' Yes, it got the biggest laugh of the day, but that wasn't the point.
Day two I shared the platform with an Oxford professor who could have doubled as a stand-up comedian, a lovely young Irish fella with the gift of the gab, and a larger than life Viking re-enactor with a beard you could hide a badger in. What do you do? You try to compete in your enthusiastic, earnest, but slightly dull way and just hope you're adding to the mix. And you learn.
Not everyone can be an entertainer, but you have to remember that in all the best comedy partnerships one of them is the straight man.
That'll have to do for me.
Then your book comes out and everybody wants to be your friend. The shy, reclusive creature who has just spent six months in solitary and has forgotten what the sun looks like is invited to sign books, speak at events and appear before vast (hopefully) audiences at book festivals.
Suddenly the hermit has to transmute into the performer.
Some take to it quite naturally, for others the process is terrifying and as much fun as a visit to the proctologist. But these days no writer can avoid it, any more than they can avoid writing blogs, keeping their Facebook page turning over or Twittering about things no-one is really interested in
But just how much does a writer have to be an entertainer?
I've come to enjoy talking about my books and the craft of writing, even to large audiences, because generally they're there because they're interested in what I have to say. But I know my limitations. I was at the Manchester Literary Society/Historical Novel Society weekend in Manchester. On the Saturday I appeared on a panel with four women novelists: talented, witty, feisty and clever ... and me. It was great fun, especially when they started to talk about sex and I began to slide down into my seat before the inevitable happened.
'So what was sex like in Roman times?'
Now an entertainer would immediately have recalled that the sex in Caligula was so erotic that his wife thought he must be having an affair. Doug Jackson, author, threw up his hands and said: 'I surrender!' Yes, it got the biggest laugh of the day, but that wasn't the point.
Day two I shared the platform with an Oxford professor who could have doubled as a stand-up comedian, a lovely young Irish fella with the gift of the gab, and a larger than life Viking re-enactor with a beard you could hide a badger in. What do you do? You try to compete in your enthusiastic, earnest, but slightly dull way and just hope you're adding to the mix. And you learn.
Not everyone can be an entertainer, but you have to remember that in all the best comedy partnerships one of them is the straight man.
That'll have to do for me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)